Tasers are being misused by police worldwide strictly as methods of forcing compliance. Not as a means of "less than lethal force" to put an end to dangerous criminals actions, rather they are being misused as a means of forcing compliance to an officer's order to people whom are non-violent criminals. Don't precisely obey an officer? You get tasered. Cops have been using tasers and shocking people, not once or twice, but ten or fifteen times. Using tasers and having people die. Not one or two people, but many. According to Amnesty International it is 351 people.
The use of tasers should start being treated just like the discharge of a firearm. With all the rules and regulations that implies. Officer who misue tasers should be arrested and charged with a crime. http://www.amnestyusa.org/us-human-rights/taser-abuse/overview-of-tasers/page.do?id=1351087Overview of Tasers
Since June 2001, more than 351 individuals in the United States have died after being shocked by police Tasers. Safety research to date has not answered the question of what role Taser shocks may be playing in these deaths. Amnesty International is concerned that these potentially dangerous weapons are being used as tools of routine force -- rather than as an alternative to firearms.
Tasers too often interfere with a basic equation of policing: that force must be proportional to the threat. Because Tasers are often seen as completely safe and non-lethal, they are often used as a weapon of first rather than last resort. They have become less an alternative to deadly force than an alternative to less-intensive policing techniques. In the more than 351 cases Amnesty International has tracked where individuals died after being shocked, in only a small fraction --about 10 percent -- of the incidents was the individual carrying any kind of weapon.
Amnesty International has found that in most of the cases where individuals died after being shocked, they had been subjected to multiple and/or prolonged shocks (the standard shock with the most common model of the weapon is 5 seconds). The National Institute of Justice (NIJ), part of the U.S. Department of Justice, has similarly noted in its interim report on Tasers (June 2008) that many of the deaths are associated with prolonged or repeated discharges; it found research in this area to be limited, and called on law enforcement officers to exercise caution in using multiple activations.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/us-human-rights/taser-abuse/recommendations-to-law-enforcement-agencies-on-tasers/page.do?id=1351089Amnesty International’s Recommendations to Law Enforcement Agencies on Tasers.
Amnesty International calls on law enforcement agencies either to suspend using Tasers and similar devices, pending the results of thorough studies into their use and effects, or to limit their use to situations where officers would otherwise be justified in resorting to firearms where no lesser alternatives are available. For departments that continue to use the weapons, they should establish policies mandating that:
* Tasers should be use only in situations where the alternative would be use of deadly force. Examples would include: armed stand-offs, instances in which a police officer faces a life-threatening attack or injury, or threat of attack with a deadly weapon, or where the target presents an immediate threat of death or serious injury to him/herself or others. In such circumstances, Tasers should be used only where less extreme measures are ineffective or without a promise of achieving the intended result.
* Unarmed suspects should not be shot with a Taser for arguing or talking back, being discourteous, refusing to obey an order, resisting arrest or fleeing a minor crime scene, unless they pose an immediate threat of death or serious injury that cannot be controlled through less extreme measures.
* Federal, state and local agencies should ensure strict reporting by the departments concerned on all use or display of Tasers, with regular monitoring and data made public. Departments should download data recorded by officers' Tasers after every incident in which they are used. A summary of this data should be included in all use of force reports. Each display, "sparking" or shock administered by a Taser should be reported in use of force reports, as well as whether the Taser was used in dart-firing or stun gun mode and the reasons why a Taser was used. The number of trigger-pulls and duration of the shock should be reported in each instance, as well as the age, race and gender of each person who is shocked. Each department should provide a detailed break-down of its Taser use in regular, public reports.
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