Some 40 years ago I was a TV reporter. One small-town PD acquired a stun gun, a relative novelty at the time, and we did a story about it. The Chief hit me in the arm with it on camera. It about knocked me over. It certainly got my attention. My arm hurt for a week.
Never been tazed but spent over 40 years working around things that used electricity. Been shocked a number of times, twice required medical attention. If getting tazed is anything similar to being shocked, I would decline to offer.
Believe it or not (at least here) groin strikes are not trained defensive tactics. Knee strikes to the abs are but groin strikes aren’t. They can be applied under an “untrained but justified” situation or during a “dynamic application of a trained maneuver”, but in and of itself groin strikes aren’t trained. For one thing, combative male subjects tend to stand in a boxers stance, blading their body and making a groin strike difficult.
Tasers and OC spray are specific so officers don’t have to put hands on. This lowers the incidents of officer and subject injuries. I can spray or light someone up at 10 feet. Kind of hard to crack their jewels at that distance with a knee or foot.
As for effect, the Taser interrupts muscular control ability. Kind of hard to assault an officer when you can’t move. But once the device is turned off the effect pretty much ends. It doesn’t linger as much as a nut crack. OC tends to cause involuntary eye closure as well as pain. Hard to fight when you can’t see
The closest I came was a brief jolt from a neon sign transformer I bought at a garage sale. I was doing some recreational psychedelics in those days, and we were always looking for something that would look amazing while on a trip. I hooked up a pair of jumper cables to the sign leads and plugged in the transformer. The first few times, it worked spectacularly well, stretching fiery bolts between the cable ends. Then I happened to put one knee down. The eager electricity found a path of lesser resistance, jumping through a crack in the cable’s insulation to my right hand and burning a wee hole in my jeans from my left knee to the concrete floor. It took just an instant for my quadriceps to jump my knee off the floor, and it was over. After that, I didn’t want to play with the transformer again.
I don’t know if his prison is typical, but my son has had specific training in “fighting dirty”. Eye gouging, attention to the testicles, choke holds, everything is fair game.
That said, he is certified in “cell extraction” which is exactly what it sounds like. Occasionally someone doesn’t cooperate when told to come out of their cell. They have a well practiced approach to remioving someone from their cell. I am so happy to have never experienced prison.
Every state has it’s own standards on defensive tactics training. When I first became a LEO back in ‘82 choke holds were trained. Not anymore for a long time. Eye goges and groin strikes could fall under untrained but justified. We were never trained to do it.
I was a Sheriffs Deputy during my first career and briefly was assigned to a large jail. Extractions were an occasional thing, usually performed by the CERT team.
In NJ, at least, getting “exposed” to pepper spray is a requirement while being tased is not. The last I heard, the manufacturer of Tasers does not even require that instructors be tased. The point of pepper spraying recruits is to show that the effects can be fought through (more or less) should they be sprayed and they are required to do defend themselves and perform tasks after taking a hit. The point is not to show them how much it hurts so that they can empathize with people that they spray. Tasers, when they work, cannot be be fought through.