Carlisle, PA - Taser a Success

Here's one that almost got by us. And this is in our own back yard! The Carlisle PA Sentinal July 22 article quotes the Carlisle Police Department who said that after several years of use, the Taser gun can be termed a success.

Staff writer Heather Stauffer quotes Lt. Mike Dzezinski who said, "By the end of 2007, Carlisle recorded more than 140 Taser deployments, ranging from times when officers obtained compliance merely by displaying the laser sight and warning people to incidents in which they actually fired the probes." He continues,

“We’ve had deployments on everything from fleeing felons to public drunk arrestees who wanted to fight,” Dzezinski said. “The biggest benefit of the Taser is it gives us a gap between us and the bad guy.”

This comes on the heels of a Pennsylvania State Police announcement that it considered troopers first six months of Taser use a success. Before equipping 3,000 troopers with Tasers at the beginning of this year, state police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller said, state police conducted a two-year study. The results they are seeing reinforce the belief that “the Taser provides an excellent option to the use of deadly force,” Miller said.

That Tasers deliver 50,000 volts has been widely reported, Dzezinski said, but many people don’t realize the amperage of the weapon is what really matters.

“The amperage is very, very low in the Taser,” Dzezinski said, placing it at 0.0036 amps, “actually lower than the socket of a Christmas tree bulb.”

The majority of Carlisle officers have taken voluntary Taser exposures to understand what people experience when they fire the probes, Dzezinski said.

Tasers Rate High In Safety

A study sited in a recent newspaper examines the use of Taser stun guns in Calgary, Canada.

Sherri Zickefoose of the Calgary Herald writes that the new study finds batons are batons are causing the greatest rate of injury when used by police during arrests.

The two-year Calgary study, the first use-of-force examination of its kind in Canada, also found pepper spray was the safest tool employed by police to subdue suspects who were resisting arrest.

The Canadian Police Research Centre report examines 562 cases in which Calgary police used Tasers, pepper spray, batons, unarmed techniques and choke holds -- against people resisting arrest.

The 14-page study found Tasers "scored high" in safety for both suspects and officers in Calgary. Though they were used in nearly half of all cases involving suspects resisting arrest, one per cent ended up hospitalized and 87 per cent sustained either minor injuries or no injuries, according to the report.

Batons, on the other hand, used in roughly five per cent of arrests that required force, caused the greatest rate of higher-level injury. More than 39 per cent of subjects were injured. More than three per cent were hospitalized and nearly 26 per cent required outpatient treatment.

"The commonly held belief" that Tasers carry "a significant risk of injury or death . . . is not supported by the data," according to the report, researched by Dr. Christine Hall and Calgary use-of-force expert Staff Sgt. Chris Butler. The stun guns are "less injurious than either the baton or empty-hand physical control."

U.S. agencies are also participating in the larger study, Butler said, because American and Canadian police encounters are surprisingly similar. More Canadian fatality inquiries are highlighting the need for consistent use of force tracking, he said.