Curbing excessive use of force is a good thing. Why do many people think the fix is to provide merely a different weapon of choice? Photograph: Alexey Furman/EPA
Would Michael Brown still be alive if cops were trained to reach for their stun gun, rather than their gun-guns?
Maybe, in the case of Michael Brown.
But, as evidenced by the recent deaths of Israel Hernandez in Miami Beach, Florida, and Dominique Franklin Jr in Sauk Village, Illinois, stun guns are no guarantee that the overreaction of a law enforcement officer won’t result in the death of an innocent civilian.
On Friday, a report on the United States by the UN Committee against Torture offered clear evidence that Tasers are as lethal as firearms. In the cases of Hernandez and Franklin, both men were unarmed and tasered in circumstances where there was no real or immediate threat to the life of – or risk of serious injury to – the officer. The committee’s evaluation of the use by US law enforcement officials of stun guns – commonly referred to by the brand name Taser – calls on the authorities to “revise the regulations governing the use of such weapons with a view to establishing a high threshold for their use ... and subject to the principles of necessity and proportionality.”
In other words, the reputed non-lethality of stun guns is absolutely no reason for them to be drawn under vastly different circumstances than an officer would draw his gun.
In its annual report, Amnesty International found that, between 2001 and 2013, there were 540 deaths from police using stun guns. The weapons were also linked as a contributing factor in more than 60 other deaths, including the death of 17-year-old Darryl Turner, who died in March 2008 after being tasered in the chest for more than 40 seconds at the North Charlotte grocery store where he worked as a cashier. He suffered cardiac arrest and died at the scene. The subsequent litigation brought by Turner’s parents concluded that Taser International, which manufactures the weapon, failed to warn law enforcement officials of the risk of firing Tasers near an individual’s heart. The conclusions of the case were supported by May 2012 research from the American Heart Association. The report provided the first scientific evidence that Tasers (and other stun guns) can cause cardiac arrest and death.
It is a myth that stun guns are less lethal weapons capable of “saving lives” – and they do nothing to combat US law enforcement’s use of excessive force or racially discriminatory policing. In August, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination urged police departments in the United States to stop using excessive force, and also found that black Americans were disproportionately the victims of police brutality.
In response to public concerns, officials in the United Kingdom are currently taking a critical look at British officers’ use of force.
Theresa May, the UK home secretary, ordered a national review in October after statistics suggested that a disproportionate percentage of victims of police Tasering “are from black or minority backgrounds”. The review is part of a wider transparency programme for the British police, which aims to curb the excessive use of force through increased scrutiny and training.
In the UK, there have been a number of deaths linked to stun-gun use, but none have been held to be caused by the weapon. May has asked Home Office officials and the national policing lead on Tasers to conduct an in-depth review of the publication of Taser data and the use of force by police officers, and those new measures are likely to see a reduction in the use of stun guns in the coming years. They ultimately help prevent any Taser-related deaths.
Rather than putting more weapons in more officers’ hands, the US ought to be considering a similar review. Curbing the excessive use of force is a good thing; it’s unclear why so many people think the way to do that is to provide alternate weapons for cops instead.
We need to change the way that black Americans are policed (and overpoliced), but we can’t until federal, state and local officials – indeed, officials across the world – acknowledge and take responsibility for the fact that police brutality routinely causes preventable deaths. It might be a shock to the system, but at least it won’t be a deadly one.
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We need to change the way that black Americans are policed (and overpoliced), but we can’t until federal, state and local officials – indeed, officials across the world – acknowledge and take responsibility for the fact that police brutality routinely causes preventable deaths. It might be a shock to the system, but at least it won’t be a deadly one.
