“Don’t Tase’ me, bro”

The internet is full of videos of police Tasing suspect. We can all remember University of Florida’s Andrew Meyer exclaim “Don’t Tase’ me, bro” during his arrest at a John Kerry appearance in 2007. And the case of Baron Pikes being Tased to death while in custody alarmed us all. And yet Tasers now grace the overcrowded belts of countless military and police personnel. But few have stopped and questioned the ethical and safety issues that arise with this new form of non-lethal weaponry.

Tasers were developed in the late 1960’s by quirky NASA scientist Jack Cover. By the mid 1970’s he had created a working model, which he named after Thomas Swift, a protagonist from children’s fiction in the early twentieth century. The Thomas A. Swift Electric Rifle (TASER) was not an immediate success. Early models used gunpowder to propel the electrodes, leading the device to fall into a special class of firearms, requiring a permit for ownership. Tasertron, the business that produced the first Taser, simmered for some time after this period until a rival company, created by Rick Smith after being inspired by the death of his friends, started some competition in the non-lethal weaponry game during the early 1990’s. After some legal battles, Rick Smith and CO. won out and created Taser International, the company that now supplies Tasers to U.S. police.

Tasers work by overloading the sensory and motor neurons with electrical signal. When the trigger is pulled on a taser, two electrodes are expelled via compressed nitrogen at velocities up to 160 feet per second. The electrodes themselves are pointed and barbed to penetrate the skin and remain in place (they don’t have to penetrate the skin to work, however this is generally the case). Once attached to the target, electrical signals are sent into the body via two wires that connect the barbs to the Taser device. The effective range of the Taser is a maximum of 35 feet, however non-police issued Tasers only reach 15 feet.

The electrical signals sent through the target can be defined in terms of their power (energy per time). They can also be described by their Voltage (potential) and current (charge per time). The power of a signal is equal to the voltage multiplied by the current. Tasers actually operate at fairly low powers by using extremely high voltages at extremely low currents. If we use a common water analogy where pressure is like voltage and amount of water is like current, a taser is like shooting a very small amount of water at a very high pressure. By operating at such low currents, Taser International claims that their products are entirely safe.

Tasers certainly seem to appear safe, but they may pose more of a threat than Taser International would like you to think. While sending several thousand Volts of electricity may not be unsafe for a healthy adult, it could carry far greater consequences for person who suffers from heart illness or is on drugs. The fact of the matter is, police have no way of knowing whether a suspect resisting arrest or suffering from an epileptic seizure, as was the tragic case for an epileptic man who was Tased to his Death after loosing control of his vehicle. Tasers have also been shown to be dangerous to people with elevated heart rates, from drugs or adrenaline from struggling with police (fatal ventricular tachyarrhythmias). Amnesty international claims that in about 90 percent of deaths associated with Taser use, the target was unarmed and posed no serious threat to police.

Taser International reports that most injuries resulting from Taser use are secondary, coming from the resulting loss of coordination as opposed to the electric current flowing through the victim. As a taser victim is incapacitated with electric signal, they often fall to the ground hard with no ability to lessen the impact. These injuries should no doubt be included in any safety reports about Tasers.
A new independent study has examined the effects of Taser use in many of the nation’s precincts by looking at the rates of in-custody sudden death in the absence of lethal force, fire-arm related deaths, and officer injuries. The study surveyed 126 police departments across the country, however police in the 10 largest U.S. cities would not comply. The findings were shocking. In the first year of Taser deployment in California, in-custody sudden death rates increased 6 times and fire-arm related deaths doubled during the same period (so much for a non-lethal solution). While both rates declined back to pre-Taser levels after the first year of deployment, the study definitely highlights the need for further research into the real world effects of Taser usage.

Tasers may seem like a new safe alternative to deadly force, but it appears that all they actually do is increase the amount of force used on non-violent, non-threatening suspects. Regardless of safety issues, we need to ask ourselves if it is ethical to electrocute non-violent offenders for merely disobeying police commands. With a police force that resists transparency and has demonstrated little understanding on how to safely operate Tasers, combined with a government that is continually eroding our civil rights, can we afford to outfit our “peace-keepers” with a potentially dangerous new weapon?

University of California - San Francisco (2009, January 26). First Study To Test Real-world Effects Of Stun Gun Use Raises Questions About Safety. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 12, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2009/01/090123101213.htm

http://www.amnesty.org/

http://www.taser.com