The Taser issue .....

Their use really does need to be the last resort and have a damn good reason, there have been several deaths in America after people are tasered and also silly situations where there are 4+ police officers and one unruly person, they go for the taser when they could have just restrained the person between them.
 
Amp34 said:
I'd also still question why we should consider equipping police with a weapon for self defence when a civilian equipping themselves with a weapon for self defence "just in case" would see them jailed. There's a big difference between police using a weapon in the line of duty and having a weapon to use just in case someone attacks them specifically.
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Because as a civilian, you have the option to avoid the conflict. Police officers do not. They have to go into conflict, and very often the conflict actively seeks them out.

Double crewing doesn't help that much either (although I personally believe that all officers should be double crewed too). Two unarmed and under-equipped officers isn't much better than one. It just means two officers have to stand back and wait for some with the right equipment to arrive.
 
phil675 said:
Their use really does need to be the last resort and have a damn good reason, there have been several deaths in America after people are tasered and also silly situations where there are 4+ police officers and one unruly person, they go for the taser when they could have just restrained the person between them.
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We've been using Taser in this country for over a decade now, in which time they've been linked to 10 deaths, despite tens of thousands of discharges. Note that linked does not mean caused. Far from it, I'm not aware of any having been conclusively found to have been caused by the Taser.

People believe that Taser is an evil thing that kills everyone who goes near it, but that's just because it suits the media. It was the same when CS Spray was brought in.
 
Amp34 said:
That's a different scenario though. Select police with tasers that can respond to an incident is different to arming every officer.
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Unfortunately though it doesn't quite work like that in reality. These 'specially trained taser officers' are just normal response officers who have been on the taser course. This leads to, at least in my experience, them usually being in Asda dealing with a shoplifter when their taser qual is called upon. Not a great help, then.
 
Amp34 said:
Then stop using Lee Rigby as an example. Just say a terrorist attack specifically against police.
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Lee Rigby type attack is the example though, other similar plots have been foiled... When people are using that as an example they're talking about a random killing of a police officer in the street, it doesn't necessarily infer that every detail of the attack is anticipated to be the same.
 
andi said:
Because as a civilian, you have the option to avoid the conflict. Police officers do not. They have to go into conflict, and very often the conflict actively seeks them out.

Double crewing doesn't help that much either (although I personally believe that all officers should be double crewed too). Two unarmed and under-equipped officers isn't much better than one. It just means two officers have to stand back and wait for some with the right equipment to arrive.
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Again, the angle was self defence against terrorists, not protection from going into conflict.

Two separate issues.

If one group is allowed to protect themselves from bogeymen then why can't the rest of us carry around a self defence weapon to protect us from the small chance someone may jump us while walking home?

Again, my argument is specifically about the statement the head of the police federation said, not the use of tasers in general.
 
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Burnsy2023 said:
We strike pads, not people in training.



Tasers in Hampshire are carried overtly on the duty belt like this:

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Ours carry them on a rig on the vest. It's completely covered when not in use.
 
Dis86 said:
Isn't this just the start of a whole escalation thing that we'd hoped to avoid?
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If I understand what you said correctly, the point is there's a massive gap in escalation as it is. There's physical restriction, there are disabling agents and then then it jumps straight to guns.

It fills a gap of which if used correctly is better than a bullet.
 
i would like to see mandatory body cams for all the police before tasers if it was a money thing.

one it would be great for evidence gathering and protecting honest police from accusations and two it would make it much easier to target corrupt/abusive officers.


there would have to be some strong penalties for turning them off though.

iirc America has cameras on their tazers yet they have a large number of cases where people have complained the use was excessive and suspiciously the camera had been switched off before use.


and before anyone says "oh but it would take so much space to store the video" the government has clearly proven it has the capacity and the will to spend vast sums of money storing insane volumes of internet traffic when they started tapping directly into the fiber lines.

And this would have a lot more benefit to the country than that has.
 
phil675 said:
Their use really does need to be the last resort and have a damn good reason, there have been several deaths in America after people are tasered and also silly situations where there are 4+ police officers and one unruly person, they go for the taser when they could have just restrained the person between them.
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Last resort? So do use of firearms come before taser in your list of resorts?
 
First time I went to mainland Britain I was surprised to see the cops didn't carry guns. They do here in NI so I had assumed it was the same elsewhere.
If I were an officer I'd rather have a taser than basically nothing, on the slim chance some nutter came at me and a little spray can isn't going to be much help.
 
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