This has the effect that you don’t know what is going to happen when you deploy a Taser. Which pretty much erases the distinction between “lethal force” and “less than lethal force”, creating the necessity that the same behavior gets two optional choices for response from the cops. Which is confusing as hell for them, confusing for the public and the criminal, and just plain muddies the waters when it comes to this stuff.

Frankly, in the whole mess, I think that the Taser is a marketing gimmick that really does nothing for the public good. At all–You really need to treat using the Taser as though it were going to kill the subject every time you use it, because that’s a non-trivial likelihood of outcome that goes right along with it. Once you’re in that situation, is there really anything to be gained by “saving the life” of the idiot who is subject to the Taser? Is it an overall “good” for society, that these sorts of people are now more likely to survive, to go on and commit more crimes?

Cop acquaintance of mine gave me his impression of the Taser in actual use, which was that he felt the damn things were encouraging the criminal element to go on to bigger and better crimes. Every Taser subject he was familiar with was someone he or another cop wound up shooting, later on, once their behavior escalated. As a long-term tool, he thought they were actually dangerous, because they convinced the subjects of their use that there were really no life-threatening or long-term consequences for resisting the cops–The next time around, they apparently thought “Well, I just got Tased, the last time…”, apparently unaware that the cop they were dealing with did not carry a Taser.

That cop acquaintance of mine thought that it was actually more humane to shoot the idiots, because they did not seem to have the same recidivism rate that the Taser subjects did. He mentioned that there was one particular jackass that created the need for being shot multiple times, went to the hospital and then jail, and who came out a much reformed individual–Each and every time he interacted with the cops after that shooting, he was all “Sir…” this, and “Ma’am…” that. And, the cops never had cause to shoot him, ever again. Apparently, you don’t get that sort of “Come to Jesus…” moment with a Taser.

Honestly, I think the benefit of the Taser is entirely illusory, and actually leads to more problems than it solves. They advertise the damn thing as some sort of half-way house between “Lethal Force” and doing nothing, but the reality is that when you deploy the Taser, there’s a non-trivial potential for killing even a healthy adult. My informant had one case where a fellow officer Tased a drunk and belligerent college student in a multi-level parking garage, and when the Taser jolt hit his ass, he went down and went down hard on a curb with his head. Said idiot wound up with one of those shearing effects in his brain that basically severed his spinal column from his brain stem. Took a couple of years, but he finally died. The cop who used the Taser thought it would have been kinder if he’d just shot the stupid bastard…

Kirk, kill them. Simple as that-

Come now. If you think killing people is a magic wand, who are you? And what have you done with Kirk? I’d rather we issued Air Tasers more and the ones you can just stand there thumbing the button to make a guy squirm less, but so far Air Tasers need at least a 12-gauge. Maybe offer the Taser company a sweet contract for something more handy?

Also: “repeated shocks are police torture”

Personally, I have my doubts about the whole TASER concept, from the tactical side of things.

The root problem is this: The damn thing is not a 100% solution to the issues that it’s meant to deal with. The barbs may not lodge properly, the subject may be wearing heavy clothes, and some people just don’t seem to be at all phased with the damn things, even when you’ve got proper deployment and all the rest appears to be working. Why that should be, I don’t know, but I’ve talked to enough cops that use these things in the real world to know that there’s no way I’d ever advocate using one as a replacement for a firearm.

The other set of problems is in how you use these things in an encounter. You have to have someone backstopping you, ready to deploy lethal force, in case things don’t go according to script. Along with that, you have the whole “dynamic confusion” that has happened on multiple occasions, where the cop draws his gun, thinks its his Taser, and shoots some dumbass when all he wanted to do was “shock him a little”.

The way they use these things? I’m not at all either enthusiastic or impressed. When you’re dealing with some nutter who’s trying to kill you in a dynamic situation, the Taser adds an additional layer of complexity/decision-making, and may actually do more harm than good. My take on it is that if someone is stupid enough to offer up violence to an officer of the law…? Kill them. Simple as that. Cop shows up at a scene, everyone ought to be conditioned such that violence ceases, and doesn’t even consider addressing violence on the cops. Period. If you do, automatic lethal force ought to be brought to bear. There’s no excuse for resisting or assaulting a legitimate officer of the law, and if there is, then that officer of the law shouldn’t be in that job, anymore.

The other thing is, with the uncertain states of health in the people you’re firing a Taser at, it’s something that ought to be treated as though you’re deploying lethal force anyway. The way people casually use these things is disturbing as shit, considering the problems you can cause. I’ve got a friend of mine who was screwing around in training with the Tasers his unit was issued, and he got shocked something like 16 times in the course of a couple of days. Not too long after that, he started having epileptic seizures, and wound up medically discharged from the service. Nobody ever came up with a reason for it, either–No family history of it, no other potential cause for it, aside from those afternoons of screwing around with the Tasers. When he told me “16 times…”, I was like “WTF? Once wasn’t enough for you…?”. I still don’t know what the hell that trainer was thinking, letting one guy be the training dummy for all the scenarios.

In short…? I’ve got my doubts about the entire concept. The imaginary ideal of a science-fictional “stunner” is probably never going to be realized, because anything that can reliably take down a human being’s nervous system is also going to be very likely to kill them. It’s just not in the cards, in terms of technology–I can’t see the mechanism, to be honest. Anything that can disrupt the voluntary nervous system is going to screw up the autonomic one, and that’s where you wind up killing people inadvertently.

Doesn’t help that the Taser folks sell the things as a hundred-percent safe and non-lethal, either.