I don’t think Tasers are a step up from other methods. Billy clubs do more damage than Tasers. At a rough guess, I would say they are roughly equivalent to a sleeper hold.
FTR, sleeper holds are illegal for police in CA because a few people died after being subjected to them.
My feeling is that Tasers get used as an alternative to physical force. It is easier to zap someone than to take them down and handcuff them, especially if the police are trying not to injure the person being subdued. The advantage of the Taser is that you zap them, they fall down, and ten minutes later they are unmarked. Unlike the bruising left by a clubbing, or the broken/sprained joint of a come-along hold.
I suspect people are spoiled by watching Star Trek into thinking that there ought to be something equivalent to “put phasers on stun” and the Bad Guy falls helpless and harmless to the ground, and there are no bad effects two minutes later. Sleeper holds don’t work that ways (all the time). Tasers don’t work that way (all the time). Nothing works that way (all the time).
There’s a very significant difference between a sleeper hold and a Taser beyond what you describe: a person who gets tased has no control over their fall. In my days as a nightclub employee (and patron), I’ve seen several people get tased, and I can tell you that they very rarely escape uninjured. At the least, their heads typically bounce off a hard surface, and at the worst - well, there was one guy who was running across the street when he was hit, and basically curb stomped himself. I hear they were able to reinsert six or seven of the dozen teeth he lost.
Aren’t most of the deaths that resulted from tasering accompanied by mitigating factors, like heavy intoxication, pre-existing heart conditions, obesity and the like?
Isn’t this true of almost all potential causes of death, intentional and otherwise? That the people who succumb tend to be less healthy than those who don’t?
Although I agree that you have a point, standard practice is to take the subject down before applying the sleeper. And you have to be behind them to properly apply the sleeper. So they often go down face first, which is not optimal for a safe fall.
People are also often Taser-ed after being taken down, to compel them to stop struggling and submit to being cuffed and put in the squad car, as appears to be the case in the OP’s story.
My feeling is that Tasters seem to get used (not by every officer, obviously) as the first step up from verbal intimidation. It’s just very effective, easy to use, and as other people noted, there’s usually no long-term effect, and it looks a lot less dangerous than it is (to the general public).
My objection to Taser use is when they are used not for a “take down” of a subject that is potentially violent to themselves or others, but rather as a tool for compliance/punishment. The use of Tasers has increased (as cited in the Braidwood enquiry above - “The number of deployments has increased at a rate faster than the increase in the number of weapons.”)
I theorize that this increase in use is due to an increase in use for compliance/punishment. Essentially, police are using this tool to make someone move when they are deemed to be “too slow”, or to give someone a jolt when they are perceived to be rude or “mouthy”.
I find this use of Tasers to be entirely inappropriate.
The training that officers receive is also (IMO) completely inadequate on the whole.
I actually learned how to do sleeper holds once upon a time, and in the process it was drilled into me that I should never use them unless absolutely necessary, because there’s a very narrow window between subduing someone that way and killing them.
I disagree strongly with this. Guns are used when lethal force is called for - there’s no point in greying that line. Tasers (used properly) are a step down in violence from methods like sleeper holds and billy clubs. There’s no doubt they can be abused, but used properly they are safer than the other methods.
32% of people survive a gunshot wound, and 40% survive a head shot? That still sounds like most people die to me. Also, we’ve only discussed mortality; that doesn’t get into the other aftereffects of a gunshot wound like possible paralysis, organ damage, serious infection, etc.
Agree with you on your point of police being trained to stop suspects with the body shot, runner pat. I meant that they weren’t trained to try to shoot a leg or something, but shoot to stop is more accurate.
If you bother to read the cite you’ll notice he’s posting his percentages backwards. The figures listed are “CFR” or “case-fatality-rates,” which would indicate that 32% of people die from gunshot wounds. Non-headshots are lethal in just under 19% of cases. Even self-inflicted injuries by males result in fatalities only 77% of the time. This would indicate that bullets are (maybe) less lethal than people are thinking.
Although obviously we shouldn’t be using lead as a compliance tool. I like that we can use electricity to make people fall down on the ground, but we shouldn’t be torturing them once they’re there.
There are some outliers, though - there’s one cop who got tased in training (the idea being that if you’re going to use the thing you should know what it feels like) who had, IIRC, some kind of freak muscle spasm that broke his back.
Not really. I have applied sleeper holds hundreds of times and been choked out several times myself. In the whole history of competitive judo, where sleeper holds are common, there has never been a fatality.
Unfortunately, when it comes to police work this is almost beside the point. People have died after being subdued with choke holds. Because police don’t need just to choke out relatively young, athletic people in the prime of their lives, as in judo - they have to subdue people who are sloppy-ass drunk, wigged out on drugs, suffering from all sorts of undiagnosed medical conditions, homeless, obese, enraged, and an exhilarating mixture of “all of the above”. It is also sometimes the case that a rather innocuous sleeper hold is mis-applied and becomes a trachea choke, which can be more dangerous. Same thing with Tasers - in theory, they are no big deal, and ten minutes after a zapping the subject is up and yelling for his lawyer. Unless he has a heart condition, or hit his head when he fell/was subdued, or died from something totally unrelated to the Tasering but some tort lawyer’s eyes light up like kids on Christmas morning when he hears about it.
It’s a mistake to decide “Tasers are good” just like it is a mistake to say “Tasers are evil - ban them”. Because what you need to decide is “how good are Tasers compared to the alternative?” Sleeper holds instead? Fine - realize, however, that this means the officers have to get up close and personal with the suspect - and sometimes the suspect will die. Jab them in the solar plexus with the end of a police baton as they used to teach (when I was teaching this kind of thing). Same problems, or a little more - it doesn’t leave any marks, but people can die from it.
There are no perfect solutions, unfortunately. What I am arguing against is the idea that Tasers are bad because they are not perfect. Any weapon, even a non-lethal one, can be misused. And any weapon, even if used “properly”, can cause injury or death when used against a medically compromised subject - and the police cannot easily tell who they are.
For what it’s worth, I agree with this. Getting up close and grabbing someone in a choke hold or hitting them with a baton is instinctively perceived as dangerous for both the “victim” and the “purpatrator”. Some electrical shocking device that doesn’t require any effort, doesn’t leave any marks, has the purpotrator at a safe distance and usually leaves the victim free to walk after a minute really is inviting abuse - unless you’ve got decent safe-guards. And I’m not sure those safe-guards are there at all.