Tasers - Current Event 6

Sheriff Anderson of Tarrant County has decided to forego the use of tasers in his department. I think that his decision to do his own research was much more than most in his position would have done. Now there are arguments on both sides for using or not using tasers. I think that Anderson's choice is probably one I would have made. I do understand that tasers have helped in situations where the end result might have been much worse had the officers used a different way of immobilizing the offender, but the study that Anderson conducted showed that if the officer did not have the knowledge of whether or not the suspect was on drugs or was physically impaired that the "less lethal" approach of the taser might acutally cause the death of that individual. The article also mentions the adrenaline rush that comes with the chase. One officer held the trigger down too long and it was said in the autopsy report that the suspect's death was a homicide. The purpose of the taser is to give a 5 second jolt to temporarily immobilize the suspect in order to apprehend him or her, but if the taser has no way to shut off after that 5 seconds then there is the risk of the jolt lasting much too long and causing a terrible accident. I'm not saying that tasers are a bad idea, I think that they can be helpful, but I think that the makers of this product should put more research into them and figure out a way so as to not cause an accidental death by the use of them on the person being apprehended.


I found this article on the star-telegram website.