In New York State, cops are routinely misusing Tasers, zapping suspects who are laready handcuffed, zapping people in the chest, zapping people who aren’t menacing or carrying any weapon … pretty much, it seems, zapping away at will.
This is the problem with so-called non-lethal weapons, and it’s why I get worried when SFPD Chief Greg Suhr talks about how he’d love to have the little zappers in his armory. See, in theory, you can stun someone who has, say, a box cutter — which is, yeah, a lethal weapon, in theory, but maybe the person holding it didn’t have to die. So Suhr thinks if the officer had a stun gun, she could have zapped him and he’d still be alive. (Actually, I wasn’t there, but I would think a professional law-enforcement officer with a nightstick and even basic self-defense training might have been able to keep the box-cutter guy at bay until backup arrived.)
I get it, the cops would rather not have to kill people — but it turns out, at least according the the NY ACLU, that once there’s another less-lethal alternative, it just gets used in a lot of situations where there was no need to shoot anyone with anything. Turns out, according the the ACLU, that if you give a cop a Taser and say it’s a weapon that won’t kill anyone, there’s less reason to use discretion.
So Tasers in SF are on hold for a while, but Suhr ought to take heed: If he wants Tasers, their use should be limited to the same situations where firearms are authorized, that is, to protect the life of an officer or another person — and not, for example, to subdue someone who’s resisting arrest.