by Dianna Vosburg
5/1/2015

The Holliston Police Department is planning to buy Conducted Electricity Weapons (CEWs). These weapons are commonly known as “tasers” because TASER International, Inc., the manufacturer, has a virtual monopoly on CEW production and sales. The eight tasers requested originally by the HPD cost just under $10,000. The Holliston police intend to buy tasers and provide training from their operating budget. They will not need to seek approval for a capital expenditure for tasers at the town meeting.

Chief Moore offered a thoughtful forum on tasers, which I attended in February, and I also participated in a Board of Selectmen meeting during which we held a long discussion on tasers. The Board of Selectmen approved the purchase of tasers after the discussion.

Through discussing tasers and working with Chief Moore, I have been very impressed with our local police. We have a professional and caring police force, obviously highly trained, responsive, and committed to the philosophy of community policing. When you need help, they will be there for you as they have been there for me. Those of us who question tasers are not anti-police. Yet however much I admire our police department and had begun to think that superior training and clear policies could make taser use acceptable, I still felt uneasy (especially about the prospect of tasers carried in our schools), and I decided to do some further research. Chief Moore, who politely disagrees with me on tasers, nevertheless fully supports my right to explore this issue in depth and share my opinions.

Tasers work by immobilizing people through disrupting nervous system signals sent to muscles, but they also cause excruciating pain. That was the source of my unease. What does it feel like to be tased? Some say it is worse than the agonizing pain of labor. It attenuates the subjective experience of time, making seconds last forever. “It feels like a jack hammer working your back.” It is excessive pain, like “being punched repeatedly by a heavy weight boxer.” It’s like “being hit endlessly by a 4x4.” It makes sense to pause and consider what this weapon means to police and citizens, especially in a national context of policing problems and human rights abuse. In 2014, the UN Committee Against Torture criticized the US for a lack of compliance with international anti-torture treaties. Included with excessive use of solitary confinement, military interrogations using torture (including electric shock), troubling police shootings, botched executions and so on, the UN committee denounced the widespread use of tasers by police against unarmed people.

Please understand, I’m not suggesting that our police officers are going to start running around zapping people for kicks. I have concerns about taser use in general in America, and about how TASER International aggressively and covertly markets these weapons. Tasers have been adopted rapidly and used with little regulation. I also have grave concerns about how the authoritarian use of pain and torture are increasingly seen as normal and appropriate in our culture. In her book, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, Elaine Scarry posits that the structure of torture serves to convert real pain into the fiction of power. In a broken world full of threats and rising discontent, a tempting response to disorder is to take up the weapons of oppression and discipline, which only makes things worse in the end.

Many think that tasers are no big deal. Much rhetoric in common usage still assumes that tasers are “safe” and “non-lethal,” yet over 600 people have been killed in encounters with tasers and many more injured between 2001 and the end of 2014. Some injuries include paralysis and severe head trauma from falls, and the taser barbs (like fishhooks) have been removed from eyes, genitals, faces, and even one from the frontal lobe of the brain. Several peer-reviewed studies in respected journals show that tasers can provoke heart arrhythmias and lead to cardiac arrest. TASER International has modified guidelines to specify that police should avoid tasing the chest area (in addition to a long list of other restrictions on use), and the company now states that tasers are "less-lethal" as opposed to "non-lethal."

Police have tasered children as young as six, the frail elderly, the disabled, pregnant women, hospital patients, homeless people, non-English speakers, and often those suffering from mental illness. Many instances of police tasering reflect excessive use of force. Police are too often using tasers as tools of pain compliance or for vindictive attacks. Note that the word torture means to inflict pain for punishment or coercion. The 8th Amendment of the US Constitution prohibits the use of “cruel and unusual punishment,” meaning punishment that causes suffering, pain, and humiliation. This is why we hand out prison sentences rather then use the rack, village stocks, or cat-o-nine-tails. Besides, we also possess the right to due process, the presumption of innocence, and the use of courts—not police—for trial and punishment.

News reports abound with dramatic stories of taser abuse, including the tasering—sometimes to the death—of people who are unarmed, handcuffed, or confined. In fact, 90% of those killed in association with taser deployment were unarmed and not considered a direct physical threat. Multiple lawsuits have been filed on behalf of those tasered, increasing liability concerns, including some lawsuits from police officers who have undergone tasering and sustained injuries during training.

National statistics indicate that the deployment of tasers does not automatically reduce the use of lethal force, which is the most common argument for their use. Instead, the use of tasers often rises exponentially. For example, in Miami, taser use increased dramatically while the use of lethal force also rose. The American Journal of Cardiology published a report in 2009, which concluded that, “…although considered by some a safer alternative to firearms, taser deployment was associated with a substantial increase in in-custody sudden deaths in the early deployment period, with no decrease in firearm deaths or serious officer injuries.” After equipping police with tasers in Arizona, the use of lethal force did not decline. At any rate, tasers are not meant to replace the use of lethal force in police policies, which is another widespread misconception. Tasers are adjuncts to batons, pepper spray, etc. and are on the same level of force. That is mainly because they are not always effective.

In 2012, a Michigan State University found that while injuries to officers declined by half after the deployment of tasers (note that the study above shows no decrease only for serious officer injuries that require ER treatment), injuries to citizens increased significantly from 29% to 41% of the time. This calls into question the widespread assumption that tasers reduce injuries for all parties.

Another study claiming that taser deployment does reduce injuries for all parties came from a well-respected and influential think tank, the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF). This PERF study was widely used to push public acceptance of tasers. Their own website said that they receive funding from "industry." PERF has known close financial ties to Lockheed Martin (surveillance technology) also Motorola (police radios). We don’t know if they receive funding from TASER International. We don’t know because PERF is not a government agency and does not have to conform to FOI requests and, with 501(c)(3) non-profit tax-exempt status, can shield the identity of its donors. Of course we all want officers to be as safe as possible, but we should have access to studies that we know are unbiased to examine the true change in rate of injuries to whom, so that we can evaluate tasers on basis of fact.

TASER International funds many studies on tasers. A meta-study in the American Heart Journal (2011) that looked into funding bias found that of 23 studies funded by TASER International, 22 concluded that tasers were safe. That’s 96%. In contrast, about 50% of the studies that were not funded by TASER International found that tasers were harmful. In fact, a study with any affiliation with TASER International had nearly 18 times the odds of concluding that tasers are safe. Advisors to federally funded studies on taser safety have also been paid consultants with TASER International. Dr. Lee, one of the authors of this study, said, "When you read articles that are very favorable to the device, invariably you will see that one of authors is affiliated with the company making Tasers or sitting on the board." TASER International will also sue medical examiners to remove tasers as a cause of death. This intimidates other medical examiners and may well skew the statistics on taser-related deaths to be more favorable to their business interests.

As well as funding research, TASER International cultivates direct business ties to some police associations and officers. In 2012, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) accepted a $300,000 donation from TASER International for its philanthropic foundation. The IACP is highly influential. It lobbies, submits legislation, testifies before Congress, and promotes police technology. TASER International also pays active duty police officers (directly or in stock options) to serve as instructors and trainers, which it states is crucial to "market penetration." TASER International pays for hotel stays and transportation for police chiefs who present for the company at promotional conferences, and also hires former police chiefs as consultants (sometimes very soon after their cities sign contracts with TASER International). In 2013, two Department of Justice consultants hired by the city of Albuquerque to advise on police technology were also being paid by TASER International. The Albuquerque Chief of Police subsequently retired...and went to work consulting for TASER International. Ethics reviews are pending in several cities over these financial ties to police. Of course, I am not suggesting that our small police department has any of these direct ties to TASER International, but rather pointing out how the company shows pattern of untoward influence over policing decisions as well as research nationwide, and that calls both research conclusions and widespread adoption of tasers into question over obvious conflicts-of-interest.

I especially object to covert marketing. TASER International pays a marketing firm, Praetorian Group, to market their products through the PoliceOne.com website that is a "project of" Praetorian Group. (The word praetorian originally referred to a member of a bodyguard troop for a Roman commander. It now means “defender of the existing order.”) PoliceOne has 650,000 registered members and receives three million unique visitors to the site per month. PoliceOne columnists write expert opinion on policing—including taser use and issues—without disclosing ties to Praetorian Group or TASER International. It’s no surprise that articles on this website are very often pro-taser use. From the Praetorian Group website (www.praetoriandigital.com/services/):

We produce a wide range of sponsored content in multiple formats for our clients’ specific needs. Choose from our roster of industry experts or provide your own to write articles, produce a video product demonstration, or host a custom webinar. We manage every aspect of the project from concept development to promotion to execution and after action reporting.

Steve Tuttle, the VP of Communications for TASER International, makes a special statement of appreciation for the PoliceOne marketing scheme: “Since 2002, PoliceOne has proven itself as a valuable partner for effective and consistent communication to their more than 500,000 verified law enforcement members who represent the law enforcement community in thousands of departments worldwide. More importantly, PoliceOne has been exceptional in adapting and tailoring to the unique communication and marketing needs of TASER International.” Steve Tuttle was very involved in the effort to make police use of Tasers legal in Massachusetts. He also worked to prevent legislative moratoriums on tasers in several states.

TASER International was a member of the American Legislative Exchange (ALEC) until ALEC shut down its Public Safety and Elections task force due to public outcry over ALEC-driven Stand Your Ground laws written to benefit another member, the NRA. Many people are unfamiliar with this group: ALEC takes corporate donations and in return influences state legislators, and even writes legislation directly in favor of their corporate donor's profit interests. Often this profit interest is in conflict with public interest, hence the money-laundering nature of these front groups to shield donor identity. This may explain why so many states have passed legislation in favor of tasers. TASER International uses other influence peddling such as campaign contributions, lobbying, and the revolving door to protect and grow business profits.

TASER International is developing new, enhanced taser technology, including drone tasers, a shotgun taser that can be fired from 100 feet called MAUL, and a crowd-control taser called SHOCKWAVE. I can't help but think about their use against non-violent political protesters, and what that implies.

The picture that emerges is one of aggressive and covert marketing, biased research, rife conflicts-of-interest, and corruption. Tasers are oversold, their downsides underplayed and underreported, and marketing interests have outpaced objective public education and debate.

Perhaps the $1.5 billion spent on these weapons would be better invested in public services, especially mental health services. At any rate, we need more independent research, untainted by corporate dollars and corporate advisors, so that local communities can make objective decisions about tasers. If the police still feel that tasers are necessary, we can then develop stronger policies for their use that match the real risks posed by tasers. In that case, I feel that tasers should be used only as a last-resort alternative to lethal force.

It seems to me that an issue like purchasing tasers should come up for a discussion and a vote at a Town Meeting, at least, before they are deployed in our community.