(2007-12-28) 2007's final count of Maryland deaths associated with electric shock by police is still being tallied, but appears up from the prior year. As much a concern as the rising body count is the trend in how a Taser is used, and that's what makes this a concern to civil rights advocates.
A Taser shock interferes with voluntary muscle control, which is what made it suitable for its initial role as a tool of defense. Even if an aggressor is medicated or deranged, and hence less likely to respond to pain, the shock from a Taser will stop the target right now . Police quickly expanded its use from a defensive tool to a compliance tool: instead of just using it to stop an immediate threat, they use threat of multiple zaps to make a target submit and follow orders. This where it starts to become problematic. Many people, having just been stunned, are unable to process commands for no other reason than just having been shocked. This invites more zaps.
Compliance is the issue. Some commands are obviously well-intentioned: “drop the weapon!” Others less so, as we recently saw on a now-famous internet video of a Utah officer zapping a motorist for not immediately signing a speeding citation at a traffic stop. Over the years, local police have lost use of other ‘compliance' tools that came to be abused. (Ask Prince George's County Police why they can't carry heavy duty Maglites, for example. Officers are limited to “nerf lights” that can illuminate but not serve as a practical weapon.) Impact weapons leave bruising on a subject, but Tasers leave little evidence of use, and so are well-tolerated by officials who largely discount reports of abuse. ‘Boys will be boys.' Tasers represent the ultimate stand-off weapon for an officer who demands obedience.
Maryland trends towards increased use. According to published reports, when high school security in Frederick was escorting a girl to the principal's office last month, they zapped her brother who they said was interfering. He lived (but there is no word whether his actions warranted a criminal charge.) Others in Frederick weren't so lucky. One of the recent Taser-related deaths ocurred at the hands of a county deputy sheriff not far from the school incident.
Abuses aside, are Tasers safe? Obviously not always, as the deaths underscore, and much remains to be studied. As reported recently, a local scholar noted: “The Taser may be an excellent tool, but ... all the research about the safety of Tasers has been vendor-driven.” In other words, what we know about Tasers is told by people who sell it to us. (We've been here before. All that anyone in Maryland knew about “ballistic fingerprinting”, before taxpayers spent millions on it, was determined by Forensic Technology, Inc – the company selling it. That system has never solved a Maryland crime.) We note in passing that the UN condemns the Taser model X26 as a torture device.
The December issue of Spectrum , publication of the largest professional association for electrical engineers, reports open questions remain about Taser safety, and that the first independent research has yet to be done into the Taser's effects in typical usage scenarios. “A Taser shock leaves almost no visible scarring or bruising, as a clubbing or beating typically would. Could the absence of physical scars lift a psychological restraint on officer behavior? … [This] may lead police to inflict an unwarranted amount of pain on individuals who commit only minor crimes.”
Today's Taser is a compliance mechanism, and if civil rights advocates have an issue, it is not with the tool but the policies with which we are commanded to comply. Increasingly, at least in Maryland's urban centers, these policies are ridiculous social experiments, run by police officials who are eager to curry favor with anti-gun politicians. The real problem is in these policies, which teach rank and file police that abusing citizen rights is okay. Nobody should be surprised if police occasionally – increasingly – apply these lessons with an electric shock.
We have no business giving coercion tools to agents of the state who are increasingly tasked with using them on us. If officers feel they have legitimate personal safety needs that could be met by a Taser, then let them make the case in Annapolis … after their leadership stops pandering for political favors by testifying for new restrictions on rights.