Tasers, like guns, shatter lives

We first wrote about Tasers when the Guilderland Police Department started using the stun guns in 2003. Over the last dozen years, we’ve included in our weekly reporting of local arrests each time a Taser was used.

Our opinion has not changed: Tasers should be used only as a last resort — when an officer, victim, or suspect is seriously, physically threatened. Period.

A Taser gun, also called an electro-muscular disruption weapon, shocks a person with 26 watts of electricity, or over 50,000 volts. The gun fires two prongs that create an electric current in the target’s body, overriding that person’s motor and sensory systems, incapacitating him.

Ten years ago, the New York Civil Liberties Union raised a ruckus after a 15-year-old boy was tased at Crossgates Mall by Guilderland Police after, police said, he was violent and belligerent, punching and swinging at officers.  “Tasers are very dangerous, life-threatening weapons and they shouldn’t be used unless they’re a significant threat to the safety of a police officer,” said Melanie Trimble, executive director of the NYCLU’s Capital Region chapter, at the time.

We’re focusing on Tasers again this week because of a letter we received from Sara Dimmitt. She shared with us a video taken by a friend of her brother (available on our website).  The video, corroborated by a tape from the Albany County Sheriff’s Office taken from the dashboard of a deputy’s patrol car, documents a traffic stop involving Sara Dimmitt’s brother, Christopher Dimmitt. Dimmitt, the driver, verbally refuses to comply with a deputy’s orders, and his passenger friend, Corey Hughes, goads the officer when the young men are threatened with tasing.

The deputy making the stop, Philip Milano, holds a Taser in his hands, pointing it at Christopher Dimmitt during a verbal exchange that lasts several minutes, as Milano waits for backup. As soon as a second deputy arrives on the scene, Milano pulls the trigger, and Dimmitt collapses to the ground.

While it is true that Dimmitt was not cooperative and did not comply with Milano’s order to get in the car, he was not violent, nor did he pose a physical threat to anyone — not to the officer, not to himself, not to anyone else.

Since back-up had arrived, it seems it would have been possible to get Dimmitt to comply without incapacitating him. The officer never approached Dimmitt and Hughes in an effort to handcuff them. Dimmitt had his arms, bent at the elbows, raised to about shoulder level, and Hughes had his hands on the top of his head, when Dimmitt was tased.

A Taser can kill. Amnesty International says, between 2001 and 2012, at least 540 people in the United States died after being shocked with Tasers. These are not all police shootings. Since Tasers use electricity rather than bullets, they are not regulated as firearms, and no license is needed to buy one.  Anyone can go online and purchase a Taser gun for a few hundred dollars.

Police make the argument that Tasers are safer than guns and protect officers from harm without permanently hurting suspects. But an officer firing a Taser has no way of knowing if the suspect he is shooting will die.

People with heart conditions are particularly vulnerable. Dr. Douglas F. Zipes wrote in the American Heart Association’s journal, Circulation, that the electric current from the Taser probes, especially in the chest, can take over the control of heart rhythms, sometimes leading to ventricular fibrillation, cardiac arrest, and death. Zipes also says intoxication can increase the chance of a Taser producing cardiac arrest; many of the suspects tased by police are drunk.

“Because under certain circumstances Tasers can kill, law enforcement should use the weapon judiciously, with the same respect as a firearm, and if possible avoid shooting the chest and repeated, or long, trigger pulls,” Zipes told our reporter Elizabeth Floyd Mair.

We support Zipes in his call for a mandated national database of the physiological effects of Taser use.

Tasers can also cause brain-related injuries, like seizures, according to a study done at Toronto Western Hospital and the University of Toronto. The study looks at the case of a police officer who was accidentally hit by two Taser probes meant for a suspect. He collapsed, lost consciousness, and stopped breathing, then his arms and legs jerked for about a minute as he foamed at the mouth. Once conscious, the officer was confused, and a later neurological exam showed traumatic brain injury.

Others who were tased have sustained brain injuries after hitting their heads when they collapse.

Melanie Trimble put it succinctly, telling Floyd Mair this week, “We believe that the conditions under which a police officer should be using a Taser is just short of where he would use a gun. Now, if somebody refuses to get to the ground, is he willing to kill that person?”

Police offers in the area we cover — Guilderland, New Scotland, and the Hilltowns — rarely, if ever, fire their guns.  Good for them. Like the quintessential London bobby who carries a billy club but not a gun, good policing means knowing your beat and preventing rather than escalating violence.

The Norwegian government this summer released statistics showing police in Norway often don’t carry guns and those who do rarely draw their guns: In 2014, Norwegian police threatened to use their weapons 42 times but only two shots were fired, wounding no one. The Washington Post, which wrote about the report, calculated that, in the United States, more than 400 people have been shot and killed by police already this year.

Granted, the United States has many more people and police officers than Norway but, still, the numbers raise an important question: Are guns needed here in our towns to enforce the laws?

We’re realistic enough to know that our police officers are not going to give up their guns, nor are they likely to give up their stun guns.

But we are calling for the tightening of local departments’ rules on the use of Tasers. The Altamont and Guilderland police both immediately shared their policies with us; we’re still waiting to see the Taser policy from the sheriff’s office. We’ve filed a Freedom of Information Law request since the policy is a matter of public record.

The Altamont Police chief, Todd Pucci, said his department has only tased twice in its history— once when a person with mental problems was kicking and punching an officer and another time when a suspect threatened a police officer with a three-pronged garden tool after throwing a chair.

The Guilderland policy says a Taser may be used “at the officer’s discretion” under four circumstances. Two of those are reasonable: “When necessary to defend himself/herself or others,” and “when lower levels of force are deemed ineffective.” The other two are off the mark: “To effect an arrest” and “to prevent the commission of a public offense.”

However, this list of circumstances is preceded by the statement, “A Taser may be used to control a dangerous or violent subject when it is reasonable to do so.” And the list is followed by a description of “improper use of force,” which it says means force that is “excessive, unnecessary or unreasonable.” Captain Cox of the Guilderland Police Department assured The Enterprise that Guilderland uses tasers only when a subject is violently resisting, and not when they are simply refusing to obey commands.

We consulted our blotters columns over the last decade to see what Taser use by Guilderland Police was legitimate and found several examples where the use was questionable. (On average, the Guilderland Police use, or threaten to use, Tasers about a dozen times a year.)

 A November 2014 arrest of a 35-year-old man fleeing his vehicle after a traffic stop, for example, was problematic: The arrest report said he fled the vehicle, at which point the officer ordered him to stop or be tased. “The officer deployed the taser,” the report said, and one probe struck the man, who continued to run, and was eventually brought to the ground by the officer; he had a bag of white powder in his hand and was charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance.

This fits the Guilderland policy of using a Taser to “effect an arrest.” But what if the man had died? And how effective was the Taser anyway, if only one probe hit the man? The police knew who the fleeing man was from his car’s license plate and could have caught up with him later, without endangering anyone.

We’re not faulting the Guilderland officer here; he followed the rules. But we believe those rules should be changed, to narrow the use of a potentially lethal weapon to situations where someone — an officer, a victim, or a suspect — is in danger.

Otherwise, a good cop could end up with blood on his hands.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer

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