What I’ve seen on TV is that tasers bring criminals down effectively, so why aren’t police departments using them more often? Are they effective, or is there a reason for the lack of usage?
-Thomas Ruggiero
They’re weapons. Guns and batons also stop criminals but there are only very limited circumstances which call for them to be used.
It’s very situation dependent. Taser barbs only shoot something like 15 feet (and a stun gun is meant for someone that you’re standing next to). A taser is meant to immobilize someone that isn’t following orders, is acting in a way that the officer feels is they can’t place them under arrest without getting hurt and I’m sure a bunch of other things on a department approved checklist. OTOH, if the person is already ready has a gun in their hand or has a gun aimed at the officer, we’ve moved beyond non-lethal force.
IOW (wag) if the cop is about to die, they’re going to shoot, not trust a taser. If the suspect pulls out a gun or knife, the cop will use their gun. Tasers are for people that are high/drunk/resisting etc.
I’m not sure what TV shows you’re watching, but if you watch something like Cops you’ll see that Tasers, while they do tend to bring people down pretty quickly (most of the time), as I said, they [the officers] don’t use them if there are guns or knives in play.
To elaborate, when using a Taser, there’s no guarantee as to when (or even if) it’ll actually take the person down. So if it’s something time-sensitive, like they’re aiming a gun or charging you with a knife, it’s not really worth the chance.
Also, just because it’s less lethal than a gun, by design & overall data, doesn’t mean that the person on other end won’t be killed by it. So they are often used only as a last resort, just in less lethal situations.
Come on over, we’ll light you up if it’ll make you happy! 
*
Where are you getting your statistics?. Tasers are used almost 1,000 times a day. That’s over 10X more people annually doing the Crappie Flop than get killed in motor vehicle accidents in the U.S…
Every time a police officer uses a Taser, baton, or pepper spray it’s not going to make the news you know. It almost never does, actually. So where did you come to the thinking that not enough people are getting jouled?
Or is the OP trying to suggest that instead of using firearms police should use Tasers instead?
*Just kidding. Trust me, you do not want to take a hit from that sonovabitch! It sucks!
Tasers kill.
Simple fact. The taser is less fatal than a gun, but death is a real possibility.
Some police are assholes on a power trip (is there any polite way to say that?). They continue to tase a person, even when they are down on the ground and outnumbered. A number of taser fatalities are due to a person being repeatedly tased, five or six times, even when already subdued.
Consider the “Don’t tase me bro” situation, too. Here was a guy being tased for refusing to give up a microphone during a question and answer session with John Kerry - by a security guard, not even an actual police officer.
“Won’t do what I say right away? Pull a weapon.” The problem with police, whether they shoot black people or tase everyone indiscriminately, is that they are too quick to jump to the force option rather than talking a person down. The use of force should be a last resort, and fatal force should be a resort when the officers’ lives or other people’s lives are in danger; but instead it seems to be a first reaction in so many cases that don’t end well for the person on the other end. It works because generally they do this with impunity. It doesn’t matter whether they beat the crap out of someone like Rodney King or slam someone to death in Baltimore with aggressive driving, there seems to be no end of juries to acquit them.
Robert Dziekański Taser incident: Killing of Robert Dziekański - Wikipedia
(to 2007)
The manufacturer of Tasers had a habit of threatening lawsuits to any coroner who appeared prepared to blame the taser for the victim’s death. IIRC the Braidwood inquiry and Dziekański’s inquest were held up for several weeks while the manufacturer attempted to suppress the finding of taser death.
Paid apologists for Taser (fun fact - TASER = “Tom A Swift Electric Rifle”) have concocted a bogus concept, “excited delirium” to attempt to explain why so many tased victims die.
I think the point is that the taser is not a harmless “sit down and shut up” toy. It can be lethal. It should not be used just because, for example, someone won’t give over the microphone or won’t hang up their cellphone and get out of the car.
It doesn’t even work. Another good reason to not use it.
basically, some police know it hurts like hell and take advantage of that to simply administer a pain dose as an object lesson on a subject already down, that, if it were a painful beating, would be completely illegal.
Maybe true but you could say the same thing about a baton. Illegal use of force has to dealt with on an individual basis when it happens, not by restricting the tools available to everyone else because of the actions of a few shitbags.
It looks like they’re real cops.
More specifically it’s Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle, otherwise md appears to be correct.
I have not used the Taser even a percentage of the times I’ve OC’d resisting/violent subjects. But when I have I was damn glad I had the option. During those times had I used hands on or a baton either I, the subject, or both of us could have been injured far worse than the effects of the Taser on them. And these were truly violent subjects, not some punk lipping off on a microphone.
If there is a problem with abuse the answer is not to get rid of the tool.
This the second time in just as many posts that you’ve alluded to that Strawman.
Nobody in this thread is advocating getting rid of or restricting access to Tasers.
The question is “why aren’t Tasers used more often”. At least part of the answer is that they’re not guaranteed to not kill the person on the other end and that they’re not guaranteed to work on the person on the other end.
Ergo, they’re saved for a last resort in a situation that doesn’t require a gun–a situation that, in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t arise that often (1,000 times/day really isn’t that much; you said yourself that you haven’t even used it 1% of the time).
This is nonsense. I don’t know any officer that doesn’t use a Taser when justified for the reasons you just posted.
There are mixed reasons for that, therefore the statistic as it pertains to me is skewed. #1, I’ve been on the job since '82. Tasers weren’t available to me for the majority of my career. #2, even when they became more common not all of us were issued them. It was an expense item that took years for agencies to afford for everyone.
I’ve had situations in the past where I’ve OC’d someone and still ended up fighting with them. Had I become injured or exhausted and the subject did not stop their assault, I would have been justified in using lethal force.
Today, in those same situations I am far more likely to draw a Taser than a baton or OC spray.
The OP needs to clarify why he thinks the Taser should be used more.
Using an iPhone for posting threads isn’t enjoyable. (That, and I can’t connect to the internet normally from my dorm).
The TV show I was watching was COPS, by the way.
On topic, Tasers are supposed to be safer than guns. When a person is shot with a gun, he/she will bleed to death and eventually die in the process (as long as the shot wasn’t at a vital area, otherwise he/she is dead instantly), whereas a taser immobilizes an individual (if a cop was using it once), without actually causing a situation where a person could die. Now I could understand when a perp has a gun, that a taser would be highly ineffective, and that shooting the perp would be more acceptable in that situation, but a knife attack shouldn’t involve a gun.
Case in point, the Laquan McDonald incident with the Chicago PD- the perp had a knife and that it should have been better to just tase the guy instead of shooting him dead. (16 shots was also unnecessary, to say the least- but that’s another story.) Another case comes from Japan- some guy started stabbing disabled individuals in a hospital and wasn’t stopped in the process. Obviously security should have been more strict, but even with that, the suspect should have been taken down with something.
Cite?
This isn’t true.
This isn’t true.
Yep. This is the first time I’ve ever heard someone complain that police should use tasers more often. Usually when you hear about tasers, it’s because police get trigger happy with them. They hear that tasers are nonlethal or less-lethal and then they take it as a license to taze anybody for any reason, because it is perceived as being consequence-free. Spoiler alert: It’s not.
Tasers often don’t work. Loose clothing, thick clothing bad luck will render them ineffective. Knives always work.
ultimate11, you need a reality check.
As an absolute statement this is wrong on two counts. Tasers sometimes fail to immobilize the recipient, and tasers sometimes do cause death with one application.
That’s a mighty fine opinion you have there, from the safety of your couch watching TV or reading news stories. Out in the real world, where police may be confronted by a knife wielder who can easily and quickly deal them a fatal blow, using a gun to stop him may be the only reliable defense.
Since you can’t get your facts straight and seem to feel entitled to make pronouncements on what others should do in a life and death matter of which you apparently have no practical knowledge, please don’t be surprised if we disregard what you say as wishful thinking. I certainly don’t see any reason to take your statements seriously.
In real life most people do what the police say - don’t give them much trouble. (Unlike what seems to happen all the time on TV.)
Interesting.
Upon retrospect, this was probably the worst forum thread I made in posting on message boards. Personally I’ve been sick and tired of hearing crime reports in my former hometown (former because I haven’t lived their since November of 2001) that it just sickens me. Add a dash of reports on police brutality (which probably motivated me to create this thread), and now everything just doesn’t feel safe at least. I don’t want to derail my own thread, but I just felt that I just have to explain my motives for making this thread.
Now I wonder if a taser is just a useless device?
Nah, don’t be so hard on yourself.