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opinion dimond
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Used Properly, Police Tasers Can Be Life-Saving Tools
By Diane Dimond
Of the Journal
I participated in a TV program recently in which we pundits were shown disturbing videos of peace officers using Taser guns against people who didn’t look as though they deserved a 50,000-volt jolt for their behavior. We were then asked to comment on what we saw.
There were two videos, in particular, that really disturbed me. One showed a man stopped for a routine traffic violation who didn’t produce his license quickly enough and was Tasered. He fell into the path of oncoming traffic. The other was a courtroom video of a middle-aged man acting as his own attorney. When the judge nterrupted his soliloquy to ask a question the man muttered, “This is bull ---t!” And in a blink of an eye a bailiff stepped forward and Tasered him. As he fell like a limp rag doll, he struck his head and began to moan and bleed uncontrollably.
I immediately thought to myself, “Misuse of authority …”
A quick Internet check reveals many Taser horror stories.
That’s the ugly side of the Taser story. For the other side, I called Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White since New Mexico was recently listed on the annual Crime State Ranking Report as the third most dangerous and Albuquerque made the top of the FBI list for assaults against police officers. White insists Tasers save the lives of both criminal suspects and officers.
“More and more thugs are not going quietly,” said White. Every day his men face hardened criminals, drug addicts, psychotics and others with mental illness and those who seek suicide-by-cop. Every year he makes it a point to purchase as many Tasers as his budget allows.
“The use of Tasers has changed the outcome of many situations,” he told me. We never want to take a life. It’s a great tool — I don’t care what anyone says.”
He knows of what he speaks. In his former life as a TV reporter the Sheriff agreed to be shot with a Taser while cameras rolled. So, what did it feel like?
“Like being electrocuted,” he said with a shudder in his voice. “You make a sound from the depths of your guts that you’ve never heard before. I can vividly remember (thinking) ‘I would do anything anyone asked me right now just to make it not happen again.’ ”
But is that cruel and unusual punishment? Amnesty International says yes and has called on America and some 40 other countries to stop using Tasers.
There are 18,000 law enforcement departments across the country, and according to Taser maker’s statistics, a full 12,000 of them have bought these modernized stun guns. Four thousand departments have outfitted every officer with a Taser gun. They cost about $600 each, roughly the same price as an officer’s firearm.
I’ve spoken to law enforcement sources from California to New York and states in between and not one person would trade in their Taser. They stress that any officer who is issued one also gets extensive training now, which may not have occurred in the past, and which may account for some of the abuses we see caught on videotape.
Detective Vic Alvarez, a 29-year veteran of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department in California, says he got the training and as a result he learned that just showing a suspect the weapon is enough.
“I have never discharged my Taser … but my partner has on three occasions. It was very effective in subduing the suspect. If we had not had a Taser we probably would have gone hand-to-hand either with a baton or pepper spray.”
Experts say either of those self-defense tactics exposes the officer. “In the case of pepper spray, remember,” one told me, “the cop often gets just as much of the spray as the suspect!”
Sheriff White makes no excuses for those who have misused Tasers. “We all should be outraged when we see people in law enforcement abusing their position,” he said. “But, there are hundreds of thousands of cases out there that don’t get any attention because the situation was de-escalated with a Taser.”
That is the other side of the Taser story. The people we entrust to protect us say these weapons save lives.
I say those who want them banned are leaving a threatened officer no choice but to react with deadly force. And that would be a shame.
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