I have three main problems with Tasers: 1) they’re used too readily, 2) the pain they cause isn’t geared toward the compliance I want, and 3) people die.
[...] If I followed departmental policy, I could have maced about 3 people a shift. Instead, I maced one person in 14 months. Mace has a natural check and balance: it goes everywhere. No officer quick with the mace will be popular in the department for long.
Physical force can often be done without too much pain. And the pain caused is directly proportional to your resistance. For instance, I need you to put your hands behind your back. I use force. Force isn't the same as pain. It might hurt if you fight it. But as soon as you stop resisting, any pain is over.
Officers use Tasers quicker than they otherwise would apply hands-on force. "Comply or I Taze you." You don't comply so I Taze. Clean and legal. But wrong because it's not necessary.
We're talking about pain compliance... hurting somebody. Tasers cause pain as punishment. That's not right. We shouldn’t pretend that causing pain is clean process. It never is.
Force is part of the police job. No suspect puts handcuffs on himself.
Without a Taser, I just say "Comply." You don't. So I keep talking to you, cajoling you, ordering you, threatening you. But the point is I'll work harder trying to convince you to comply if my only alternative is hands-on force. Officers *should* be reluctant to use force. You don't want to use physical force because there is some danger... and also you break a sweat--something you always want to avoid while wearing body armor. Departmental regulation be damned! It’s too easy to press a button.
When I do use hands-on force, at least my force is geared toward getting you to do what I want (like getting your arms behind your back so I can cuff you). With a Taser, it's just about disabling pain. That's torture. And consider this, it's not easy to follow instructions after being in the greatest pain of your life. So you get tazed again.
Peter Moskos On Police Use Of Force
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You spent just over one year on the streets and wrote a book. A great book to read although much more of a kiss and tell than anything with sociological significance. You didn't offer any solutions other than legalizing drugs -sort of like you went in thinking that, then wrote your book around it. You brought up really interesting points like how quickly rank and file officers see the command structure in a bad light and how the command structure thinks of senior officers as more a bad influence than as teachers for the young officers. It would have been great to see some solutions proposed in these areas and many others you spoke of.
With 14 months on the streets you barely qualify as a new guy and you certainly aren't qualified as a use of force expert. The pain caused by the taser is a byproduct. The incapacitation is what the taser was designed to do and it just also happens to hurt. It is certainly not a perfect tool and it does get over used by some officers but it is hard to argue with the number of reduced injuries on officers and suspects for any department that deploys tasers.
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