Law enforcement officers can often inevitably use excessive force when dealing with suspected fugitives. As they are only human beings, the police can often hurt or kill someone when they are in the line of duty. Using excessive force is tantamount to police brutality that is frowned upon by society, since the people being arrested might just be innocent people. Even if they are criminals, these fugitives still have human rights and cops do not have to execute them, even if these suspects appear to have hostile actions. With case in point, the police should use other methods of restraining the suspect, without fatally hurting them like shooting them to death using real guns. This is why tasers are a form of safe, effective and non-lethal weaponry for law enforcement and the use of such weapons should be supported with proper training.
There is always a negative impact of police executing suspected criminals, without properly trying them in court, just because they had suspicious actions. It is understood that the police is just taking measures to protect themselves because a 2006 survey revealed that 48 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed in the line of duty (U.S. Department of Justice, 2007). Also a study indicated that “police officers are killed feloniously at work at a higher rate than all occupations except the group comprised of taxi drivers and chauffeurs” (Fridell & Pate, 2001, p. 636). Despite the need of these deadly guns are understandable, police brutality can still emanate as Scheneider and Amar (2003) reported that the “New York Police Department statistics show a 34.8% increase in civilians shot dead in 1994”. Also, “over the same period, the figures show a 53.3% increase in civilians who died in police custody-from 15 to 23-and an increase in the number of civilians injured from officers’ firearms discharged during the same period”. This cause the Amnesty International to raise concern over these incidents because “nearly all of the victims in the cases of deaths in custody (including shootings)…were members of racial minorities.” Another landmark book by Kristian Williams (2004) entitled Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America recounted that the Boston Globe has covered six local stories about police shooting civilians for a span of six months. Although there were routine investigations, the outcome is always the same: they reasoned that the suspect somehow “asked for it”, as “he was reaching for something, he was bending down in his car, he was coming at the officers, there was an exchange of shots” and many more reasons. What is unfortunate is that there are usually no witnesses besides other cops and the police are always exonerated.
Police officers are granted a power few people ever have—the legal and moral right to use force during the performance of their duties, even if it means taking a life.
Law enforcement officers are authorized to use force in specified circumstances, are trained in the use of force, and typically face numerous circumstances during their careers when use of force is appropriate—for example, in making some arrests, restraining unruly combatants, or controlling a disruptive demonstration. (Use of Force by Police, 1999).
Although the use of force is a main characteristic of policing, the inappropriate use is often a central problem in police misconduct allegations. It has been argued that “the history of policing has been characterized by a dynamic search for the means by which to optimize the use of legitimate force: utilizing it as necessary to maintain order, but not to the extent that it is excessive and abusive” (Fridell & Pate, 1997, p. 217). While the use of force by police officers often receives mixed reviews from the public, current opinion tends to be against its use. The community do not like to hear about police officers being assaulted or killed. Also, they do not like hearing about officers who use excessive force against citizens. They believe that risking personal assault is part of the officer’s job, as is the training that limits excessive use of force. In this case, nonlethal excessive force should be essential for the law enforcement to master in order that they do not go beyond the bounds of fatally hurting or killing a suspect.
One of the most effective forms of nonlethal weapons that police use today to restrain a suspect is the taser, which is a handheld weapon, resembling a gun, which discharges electricity into its target in order to immobilize him/her. Also called as a stun gun, other tasers in the market include the Stinger stun gun and the remote activated custody control (RACC) belt. Vilke and Chan (2007) informed that the most common model used today is the Taser X26, “a device resembling a handgun intended to be used on subjects up to 21 feet away”. They explained that “the energy output of the device is 26 watts total, 1.76 joules per pulse, at 1.62 milliamps, and 50,000 volts” and “it utilizes an automatic timing mechanism to apply the electric charge for 5 seconds”.
Iljames (2005) informed that taser was invented in the 1960s by NASA scientist Jack Cover, as he “responded to President Johnson’s Blue Ribbon call by experimenting with electricity”. This is where he “discovered that when short-duration, high-energy DC electric pulses were applied to humans, immediate incapacitation without negative side effects almost always occurred”. He named this device as “TASER, after the 1920s fictional book, Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle. As its inventor, Cover “spent several years testing the futuristic device and introduced it to the public in the 1976 Clint Eastwood film The Enforcer” (Iljames 2005, p. 306). In the 1990s, Taser has become the most popular incapacitating neuromuscular device on the market with an estimated 10 percent of all police officers in this country currently carrying the device (Hamilton, 2005). According to Taser International ®, these devices are widely used because these have been “purchased by over 9,000 police departments in the USA and abroad”. The manufacturer informed “that the device helps officers avoid the use of deadly force while lowering the risk of injury to users”. Its effectiveness is guaranteed because “it has been reported that the device has been used on over 150,000 volunteers during training sessions and on over 100,000 subjects by law enforcement officers in actual field confrontations, though the true total number of uses is unknown” (Taser International, 2006).
Vilke and Chan (2007) explained that tasers work by “incapacitating volitional control of the body”. They explained that “weapons create intense involuntary contractions of skeletal muscle, causing subjects to lose the ability to directly control the actions of their voluntary muscles”. Furthermore, tasers “directly stimulate motor nerve and muscle tissue, overriding central nervous system control and causing incapacitation regardless of the subject’s mental focus, training, size, or drug intoxication state”. People who experienced being tasered “report painful shock-like sensations and the feeling that all of their muscles are contracting at once”. During the electric discharge, “subjects are unable to voluntarily perform motor tasks”, but they still “remain conscious with full memory recall”. The temporary shock “terminates as soon as the electrical discharge is halted”. Immediately after the taser shock, subjects are usually able to perform at their physical baseline. Vilke and Chan (2007) assured that “there is no known permanent lasting effect on the muscular system aside from any injuries that may result from an associated fall”.
Despite the effectiveness of tasers as nonlethal weaponry for law enforcement, it does not go unscathed with numerous criticisms from various people. Burtka (2007) gained information from the Amnesty International (AI) USA that “277 people have died in the United States after being shocked by a taser” in June 2001. However, “the degree to which a Taser caused a death is difficult to determine” and AI also “identified at least 20 deaths in which coroners found the Taser to be a causal or contributory factor and at least 6 where it was cited as a possible factor”. However, a scientific study conducted by Kornblum and Reddy (1991) that looked into the deaths of 16 people who were allegedly tasered revealed that all of these cases were men who were into heavy drug use and that their behaviour were a bizarre or unusual that got them into police attention. They ruled out that the most convincing cause of death would be drug overdose in the majority of cases, not due to the electric shocks applied by tasers.
However, tasers should not be used without training and this is why AI is pursuing this device to be regulated as firearms. For this reason, Burtka (2007) asserted the fact that many police departments have created or revised guidelines for taser use–specifying, for example, whether they should be used on people who are handcuffed, and whether and when to use repeated shocks. The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) model of Taser policy prohibits officers from using the Taser “in a punitive or coercive manner” and calls for them to shoot the device “the least number of times and no longer than necessary”.
Tasers are law enforcement tools that can be used as alternative to using brute force that might harm suspects more than they intend to. Although its safety to use on people with neuro-physiological disorders are still in question, tasers can be effective in restraining suspects that might have ill motives against the police arresting them. Regardless of its effectiveness, training for its use will continue to be an important way to avoid the limitations of this non-lethal weaponry. Over the years, the role of the police officer has gone from that of an untrained responder with a limited education to a multifaceted, better trained and educated individual. Some might even refer to today’s police officers as social workers with firearms. Regardless of the exact description, the fact remains that police officers and policing are an integral part of our society. They will have to use an amount of force to be able to do their job. This force need not to be deadly and tasers can attain easily, given the proper training and knowledge of the policies for its use. In the future, the technological revolution can evolve these tasers to be safer than what it is today.
Works Cited
Burtka, Allison Torres. Police and human rights groups are wary of pocket-size taser. Trial 43.12 (2007): 72-75.
Fridell, Lorrie A., and Pate, Anony M. The other side of deadly force: Felonious killings of law enforcement officers. In R. G. Dunham & G. P. Alpert (Eds.), Critical Issues in Policing (4th ed.). Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2001.
Ijames, Steve. Nonlethal Weapons. In Larry E. Sullivan, M. R. Haberfeld, Marie Simonetti Rosen, and Dorothy Moses Schulz (Eds.). Encyclopedia of Law Enforcement. Vol. 1: State and Local. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Reference, 2005.
Kornblum, Ronald N. and Reddy, Sarah K. Effects of the Taser in fatalities involving police confrontation, Journal of Forensic Science,36.2 (1991): 434-48.
Schneider, Cathy, and Amar, Paul E. The Rise of Crime, Disorder and Authoritarian Policing: An Introductory Essay, NACLA Report on the Americas. 37.2 (2003): 12.
U.S. Department of Justice. Officers Feloniously Killed, 2007. Web.
U.S. Department of Justice. Use of Force by Police. Washington, DC : U.S. Department of Justice, 1999.
Vilke, Gary M. and Chan, Theodore C. Less lethal technology: medical issues, Policing. 30.3 (2007): 341
Williams, Kristian. Our Enemies In Blue: Police And Power In America. Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2004.