Tasers In Law Enforcement

There have been many complaints with Tasers arguing that the use of Tasers is being abused by law enforcement, resulting in cases of excessive force and wrongful death. The media has now gotten ahold of the controversy revolving around Tasers and is continuing to fuel the fire on both ends of the spectrum. There have been documented incidents where a Taser has been used by law enforcement wrongfully. For an example, there are records of a Police officer who Taser-shocked a 6 year old boy for holding a piece of broken glass from a picture frame in the child’s principles office at school. Weeks after that incident occurred, another officer Taser-shocked a 12-year-old girl who was running away from the officer, who had responded to a complaint of underage drinking and smoking. The

Not all law enforcement agencies issue them, but when an agency does issue them, that does not necessarily mean training is always involved before an individual carries a taser. The GAO did a study with several different departments nationwide, and each department all said “adequate taser training is critically important in helping to ensure the safe, effective and appropriate use of taser’s not only by law enforcement officials but also by other non-law enforcement individuals who may be permitted to use taser’s.” (GAO, May 2005). Also, when each of the departments were interviewed they said that training for each individual works the best when taser’s are consistent with one another (GAO, May 2005). How do we know how much each department utilizes in training? While some departments may not report how much training they give their officers, the GAO took it upon them to do a survey on seven different departments. Their report showed annual training for the taser, which ranged from 5 hours being the least amount of training, all the way up to 8 hours of yearly training (GAO, 2005). A study, which was funded by the U.S. Department