By Zach Lowe
Staff Writer
March 12, 2007
STAMFORD - The police department has asked for 50 more Tasers, saying the stun guns have cut injuries to officers and suspects since police began using them in July.
Tasers are crucial law enforcement tools, police and city officials said, despite concerns from human rights groups about the safety of using them on cardiac patients, drug addicts and other suspects.
The stun guns, which cost about $1,000 each and are used by more than 9,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide, deliver a five-second shock, according to Taser International of Arizona, the most popular stun gun manufacturer.
Police in Norwalk and Greenwich have been using Tasers since 2004.
Stun guns can be fired at suspects from up to 20 feet away, Taser officials have said.
That allows police to subdue combative or uncooperative suspects without wrestling them, said Lt. Sean Cooney, a department spokesman. Many suspects surrender when they see the bright yellow Tasers, Cooney said.
"They are intimidated by them," he said. "Word has gotten around about the discomfort one feels."
Officers have fired Tasers about 30 times since July, including once in January when a man wielding a hammer in a Bedford Street apartment building charged an officer, Cooney said. Without the Taser, that officer might have been justified in firing his gun or grappling with the suspect and risking an injury, he said.
Police officers were injured 29 times while making arrests or chasing suspects since July, down from 36 such injuries during the same period in 2005-06 and 56 in 2004-05, city records show.
Officials credit much of the drop to the introduction of Tasers.
"I strongly believe there is a link between the Tasers and the reduction in injury claims," said Ann Marie Mones, the city's risk manager. "I am a strong proponent of the police receiving more Tasers."
Police in jurisdictions across the country, including Seattle, Phoenix and Austin, Texas, have credited Tasers with dropping injury rates among officers by as much as 80 percent, according to records from police departments in those cities and published reports.
But human rights groups, including Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union, say stun guns might cause heart problems in cardiac patients or suspects on cocaine.
Amnesty International has published reports linking the use of Tasers to more than 100 deaths nationwide since 2001 and has asked all police to stop using them.
Taser International disputes that report, saying Tasers are safe.
An investigation by the Arizona Republic newspaper found Tasers were named as a secondary cause of death in about 15 autopsy reports around the country. All but one report identified drug abuse as the main cause of death, said Jay Kehoe, a former lieutenant for the Glastonbury Police Department who is now a senior manager at Taser.
A January 2005 study of Tasers in "Pacing and Clinical Electrophysiology," a journal of the International Cardiac Pacing and Electrophysiology Society, found the chance of a Taser shot disrupting a suspect's heart rhythm to be "extremely low."
Still, human rights groups, including the Connecticut chapter of the ACLU, want strict regulations on how police use stun guns, said Roger Vann, the executive director.
Previous ACLU reports have called for a maximum of one shot per suspect and a possible ban on shots against pregnant women, children and the elderly.
Vann said he wants more research about the possible effects on cardiac patients and suspects with high levels of cocaine or methamphetamines in their blood systems.
Cooney said the department has no written guidelines for Taser use. Officers are required to report any time they fire the Taser and call EMS to check the suspect, he said.
There has been at least one controversial Taser use in Stamford since July. In January, police stunned a "mentally disturbed" man twice after he fought officers and tried to bite them, police have said. Cooney said the incident was "an extreme circumstance" and defended the department's use of force.
Copyright © 2007, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc.