This week the tasing of a University of Florida student at a speech by John Kerry was a big story. (You can view the incident here and here.) While looking for these I found several other examples of taser use. This video shows the tasing of a UCLA student in a campus computer cluster last November. This video shows a handcuffed woman being tasered while in the holding area of local police force in Ohio.
I don't know about you, but I found these hard to watch. Sure, the UF student was a bit of a snot and had been warned; the UCLA student refused to stand up and also had been warned; and the Ohio woman was uncooperative, but are these sufficient reasons to shock the hell out of someone?
Without question, police should be allowed to use a taser in some situations. Whenever the use of deadly force is justified and a taser would be just as successful as a gun to secure the safety of the officer and the public, the police should be given the option of a taser. Having a taser in this circumstance is pareto superior to not having a taser. That is, nobody is worse off. The tasee avoids getting shot (and likely killed) for something that, in retrospect (if he is alive enough to be reflective), he probably wouldn't decide to do again, given the outcome. Likewise, the police are at minimum, no worse off, but in all likelihood, if there is a psychological cost to killing someone or participating in an accidental shooting, the police actually benefit significantly from having a taser available. Of course, when deadly force is justified and a taser isn't adequate to protect the officer or the public, then fire away.
The report concludes that "the UCLAPD policy stands alone in its legitimization of the Taser as a pain compliance device against passive resistors," and recommends that this be corrected. Among other jurisdictions, taser use is generally limited to violent or actively aggressive suspects. In addition, UCLAPD had the most permissive policy toward tasing handcuffed subjects. This scenario is uncontemplated by many other policies and explicitly prohibited by the vast majority of the rest.
But why not tase passive resistors? Well, because passive resistors are an inconvenience rather than a danger. I know cops have a hard and dangerous job. I'm all for anything that will make the police safer. Tasers, in some situations, can serve such a function. Any time a dangerous subject is dangerous, but not dangerous enough to kill, we make cops a little safer whenever we give them a tool to use like a nightstick or taser.
However, when we allow police to use a nightstick or taser on someone who is not dangerous, only to achieve compliance, like the three cases I linked to above, we're only making a cop's job easier at the expense of pain and risk of death to the subject. Given the cost, I'm OK with cops being inconvenienced.
Also, lets not forget that using more force than you need to can actually be dangerous to the police themselves. The cops in Ohio didn't have much to worry about because they were in their own holding area. The cops at UF had a little more to be worried about. You can hear the students respond negatively once the tasing begins. At UCLA, the students were well behaved, but curious, through the first two tasings. However, during tasings three and four it takes more cops to control the crowd than it would to carry the student out in the first place.
Of course, if you had to pick a crowd based on harmlessness and compliance with authority, a bunch of college kids is about the best you could do. Could you imagine if the UCLA or UF police had done what they did among a bunch of soccer hooligans??
Nevermind, you don't have to imagine. This ends badly.
So, unless someone is an actual danger, lets keep the tasers in their holsters.
BONUS: A quick shout-out to intellectual property. While Taser is the brand name of the products made by Taser International, it has also become a generic term for the species of product itself. Consequently, there is no trademark protection for its use. Taser could have used a good IP attorney to protect their good name. They should give me a call in a year or two. :)
