Gilroy
– Police used Tasers 19 times since adding the stun guns to
their tool belts in July, and while the 50,000-volt weapons are
highly effective, they are not always the final answer when dealing
with volatile suspects, Assistant Chief Lanny Brown said.
By Lori Stuenkel
Gilroy – Police used Tasers 19 times since adding the stun guns to their tool belts in July, and while the 50,000-volt weapons are highly effective, they are not always the final answer when dealing with volatile suspects, Assistant Chief Lanny Brown said.
“It doesn’t always diffuse the situation,” Brown said at a City Council and GPD retreat Friday. “We’re learning that the event isn’t always over because you used the Taser.”
For example, someone under the influence of certain drugs will not always comply after the five-second incapacitating shock. The Tasers also can be less effective if a full shock is not delivered because the stun gun is misfired.
The safety of non-lethal Tasers has been called into question in recent months, as more departments supply officers with them. Some recent deaths following stun gun shocks have been attributed to medication or illegal drug use.
Gilroy police tracked the number of times Tasers were used since officers started carrying them in July. Two nearby police departments – San Jose and Salinas – already purchased Tasers for their officers.
“Our feeling in tracking this is, at the front end, we’d get a rapid upswing of use,” as those departments did, Brown said.
Gilroy police have deployed Tasers 19 times so far, with the most uses – seven – happening in August. Officers used Tasers three times in July, six times in September, once in October, and once so far this month.
In two of those 19 uses, the stun guns were drawn but not fired, Brown said. In those cases, the suspects were refusing to comply with police, until the Tasers were drawn, when they stopped resisting.
Another two of the deployments were actually misses. The same officer missed both Taser shots, and will undergo additional training, Brown said.
The majority of the deployments were successful: Officers subdued suspects twice through direct contact with Tasers, and 13 times through dart deployment. The Taser X26 model used by the GPD can deliver a shock when placed directly against a person’s body, or through two probes that can be fired up to a distance of 21 feet.
“We’re apparently lowering instances of officer injuries and citizen injuries,” Brown said. “Word truly gets out on the streets that you don’t want to get hit with this.”
Tasers briefly incapacitate a person by using electrical energy to effect the signaling mechanisms the body uses to communicate, according to Taser International, the company that manufactures the stun guns. The five-second shock causes a person to instantly lose control of his or her muscles, and fall to the ground.
Gilroy police are using the stun guns on “the bad ones,” Brown said, like the first man shocked in July, who was under the influence of stimulants and abusing a family member.
“We don’t have to put officers in direct contact with people who are ‘amped up,’ we don’t have to go right into the fight,” Brown said.
The safety of the weapons has become more of an issue across the country. Taser International maintains the X26 has a power output 1/20 of the potentially dangerous level. It also is safe for people with pacemakers, the manufacturer says, who can withstand pulses of defibrillators hundreds of times stronger than Taser pulses.
But recent instances of police in other areas using Tasers on children was on Councilman Roland Velasco’s mind Friday.
“I’m comfortable with leaving it up to the officer’s discretion, but I wanted to understand why you weren’t making a policy,” he said.
Most recently, a Miami police officer used a Taser to subdue a 12-year-old girl as she fled toward traffic two weeks ago. An officer there also used a Taser on a 6-year-old boy last month because he was threatening to injure himself with a shard of glass.
Police in Fremont earlier this month used Tasers on a 17-year-old high school student.
GPD will not write a policy relating to use on children, but officers are expected to use department guidelines and training when using such force, Brown said. He couldn’t rule out the possibility that a Taser could be used on a juvenile under extreme circumstances.
“(Officers are) learning things to know how to use them and they’re understanding the thinking behind it,” he said.
Tasers are considered by police to be a mid-level use of force, or an alternative to using batons or pepper spray – from a larger distance and with fewer side-effects.
“I think we have a realistic respect for how and when to use them,” Brown said.
Anyone shocked with a Taser is taken to the hospital for a medical screening, per department policy, Brown said.
