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News & trends
December 2007 | Volume 43, Issue 12

Police and human rights groups are wary of pocket-size Taser

Allison Torres Burtka, Associate Editor

As debate continues about when and how police officers should use Tasers, the stun gun manufacturer has begun selling a new consumer version to the public.

The law enforcement version of the Taser is intended to serve as a less-lethal alternative to guns. But critics say Tasers can cause serious injury and death and are used too freely.

Police officers shocked in training have suffered compression fractures and other injuries, and suspects in police custody have been injured or have died after being shocked, giving rise to lawsuits against Scottsdale, Arizona-based Taser International, Inc., and law enforcement agencies. (Allison Torres Burtka, Electric Shock from Tasers Can Injure and Kill, TRIAL 16 (May 2005), www.justice.org/publications/trial/0505/news1.aspx.)

The company announced its first shipment of the consumer version, the C2, in July, for sale at sporting goods stores and Amazon.com at a base price of $299.99. The C2 differs from the law enforcement version in that it has a shorter range (15 feet, rather than 35 feet) but delivers a longer shock (30 seconds, compared with the law enforcement version’s 5-second shock). Both pack a 50,000-volt charge.

The company touts the C2’s “light, sleek, hand-held design that can fit in a pocket or purse.” It comes in four “designer colors,” including metallic pink and electric blue, with an optional laser sight. Taser’s C2 Web site displays a photo of a woman next to the message: “I will control my own destiny.” The advertisement continues: “In today’s world, maintaining self-confidence involves the need for self-protection. For independent, self-reliant women, the Taser C2 is an effective protection device that fits any lifestyle.”

Human rights and police groups worry about how consumers might use C2s against police officers and each other, without fully appreciating the device’s potential dangers.

Since June 2001, according to Amnesty International USA, 277 people have died in the United States after being shocked by a Taser. But the degree to which a Taser caused a death is difficult to determine. The organization has identified at least 20 deaths in which coroners found the Taser to be a causal or contributory factor and at least 6 where it was cited as a possible factor, said Jason Opeña Disterhoft, a spokesman for the organization’s USA Program.

The National Institute of Justice (part of the Department of Justice) is conducting several studies on stun guns, including how they affect a person’s cardiac, respiratory, and metabolic physiology. The findings of In-Custody Deaths Due to Use of Conducted Energy Devices, a two-year study to help understand whether stun guns can contribute to or cause death, are expected in 2008.

Taser’s product warnings say users should avoid shooting at the location of a preexisting injury, such as the back for people with back injuries, and the chest for people who have had heart attacks. Thewarnings also say, “Fractures to bones, including vertebrae, may occur.”

Wendy Balazik, media coordinator for the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), said, “We have concerns about Tasers becoming widely available to consumers and how this may affect the safety of police officers.”

Officers who use Tasers “are professionals trained in using force, and even given that, there are lots of outstanding issues,” said Amnesty’s Opeña Disterhoft. “In the hands of private citizens, there are fewer constraints on the use of force.” There is also the danger that someone carrying the C2 to use for self-defense could get it turned on him or her by an assailant, he said.

When the C2 is deployed, it shoots out pieces of confetti printed with the device’s serial number, to identify the owner and deter misuse, the company says.

Tasers are illegal in some states and municipalities. Where they are legal, purchasers must wait for a background check before activating their C2s. But owners may later sell or give them to others, and no training is required.

Disterhoft said Tasers should be regulated as firearms. “We’d certainly like better monitoring and regulation of these sales than is apparent so far,” he said.

Many police departments have created or revised guidelines for Taser use—specifying, for example, whether they should be used on people who are handcuffed, and whether and when to use repeated shocks. The IACP’s model Taser policy prohibits officers from using the Taser “in a punitive or coercive manner” and calls for them to shoot the device “the least number of times and no longer than necessary.”

John Dillingham, a Phoenix lawyer who represents police officers injured after being shocked by Tasers, explained that he has no objection to the use of Tasers when a gun would otherwise be appropriate. But “it’s a matter of people using it and thinking it’s entirely safe,” he said.

Taser maintains that it has not lost any products liability lawsuits. The company said in June that it was “successful in getting dismissals, summary judgment, or favorable jury verdicts in 51 lawsuits to date with more expected. The suspect injury or death lawsuits are frivolous. . . .”

But the company has settled at least 10 of the products liability cases it claims to have won, according to a Bloomberg News report. The article reported that some of Dillingham’s cases may be among those that were settled but that Taser reported as dismissed. (Margaret Cronin Fisk & John Steinman, Taser Settled 10 of 52 Cases It Said Were Dismissed, Bloomberg, Aug. 2, 2007.)

Dillingham said he couldn’t talk about those cases but noted, “Anybody who suggests that a lawsuit is dismissed with prejudice because it has no merit—when the reason for dismissal is a settlement—is misleading.”

Robert Haslam of Fort Worth, Texas, chair of AAJ’s Taser Litigation Group, agreed that Taser’s characterization of settlements as dismissals is misleading. “If that’s the way they approach settlements, what are they doing with bigger issues?”

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