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June 20, 2008
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St. Louis cops plan wider use of TASERs
Related articles: NYC police adding more TASERs, New study: TASERs "as safe as weapons can be," not "instruments of death" By Jeremy Johler
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch ST. LOUIS — The city police department said Wednesday that it planned to expand its arsenal of TASERs with the goal of putting one of the electroshock weapons in almost every marked car. The Police Board unanimously approved Chief Joe Mokwa's request to spend $95,000 to nearly double the department's TASER total, to 151. Many departments have embraced TASERs as a way to control combative or fleeing suspects without shooting them. The St. Louis County police provides TASERs to 264 of its uniformed officers, and plans to have all 407 carrying them soon. City police have used them sparingly. Mokwa told the board that the department needed better tracking of its TASER usage. TASERs are designed to incapacitate a person by firing two barbed darts that carry 50,000 volts of electricity through wires tethered to the gun. They are used by nearly 13,000 law enforcement and military agencies worldwide. Critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have for years called TASERs unsafe. Some have expressed concern that officers are using TASERs in cases where they could have used less force. There have been at least six deaths involving the use of TASERs in the St. Louis area in the past four years. On May 6, James S. Wilson, 22, of Alton, died after he was shocked by a St. Charles County sheriff's deputy outside a convenience store in West Alton. Sheriff Tom Neer said the deputy did "what he had to do" when he found Wilson punching a woman. When the deputy ordered him several times to stop and lie down, Neer said, Wilson verbally threatened and lunged at the deputy, forcing him to fire the TASER. Wilson lost consciousness and died. Wilson's family members challenged the sheriff's findings and said they would pursue an independent investigation. TASER International, of Scottsdale, Ariz., has until recently prevailed in suits claiming product liability or wrongful death. Seventy cases in a row were either dismissed or decided in TASER's favor. But on June 6, a federal jury in northern California ordered TASER to pay $6.2 million to the family of a man who died in 2005 after Salinas officers hit him multiple times with TASERs. A report by St. Louis police Assistant Chief Stephen Pollihan pointed to endorsements of TASER by two influential police organizations — the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Police Executive Research Forum. Rank-and-file officers like TASERs, too, according to Pollihan's report. A department poll of 441 officers indicated that four out of five would prefer to carry one. The devices are to be distributed among the nine patrol districts and to three special units — housing, mobile reserve and anti-crime — whose officers most often face combative suspects, the department said. "Clearly, the TASER has shown its usefulness as an effective weapon," Pollihan wrote. But they won't go into use until the department develops a process for tracking which officers have them and how those officers are using them, Mokwa said. Copyright 2008 The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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