Tasers are coming to the New York City Police Department, prompted by a RAND Corporation study and such killings as Sean Bell, according to this New York Times editorial. 

In 2007, after a Queens man, Sean Bell, was killed by police fire, Mr. Kelly asked RAND to recommend ways to minimize police shooting. The study, released earlier this month, made several suggestions, including training police to avoid indiscriminate firing. The Taser proposal has attracted the most attention.

Well, it’s pretty obvious that training police to avoid indiscriminate firing isn’t going to work, so no point in wasting time with that.  Without being facetious, New York has a monster police force of over 37,000 officers.  Training notwithstanding, it’s naive to think that training alone will solve anything with that many chances for something to go wrong.

So Ray Kelly has turned to plan B, the Taser panacea.  Given the options, it’s not unexpected and, probably, not a bad move.  But this too is not sufficient standing alone.  You can’t just pass out tens of thousand of Tasers to a bunch of cops and say, “be careful out there.”

The gist of the editorial is that before the deployment of Tasers, rules of engagement must be in place.

If more Tasers are deployed in New York City, strict conditions would have to be imposed on who could use them and under what circumstances. They might make sense as a last-resort alternative to lethal force, but it would be folly to allow them to be used in more routine situations like crowd control or policing political demonstrations. Nor should they be seen as the full answer to the problem of police shootings.

The greatest fear about Tasers is that they will become the option of choice for the lazy, stupid or angry cop.  Sass a cop, get Tasered.  Move too slowly, get Tasered.  Bother a cop during a donut break, get Tasered.  We’ve watched this happen across the country (and in Canada), and it’s going to happen in New York as well. 

Frankly, it’s likely to happen with greater frequency in New York, given the numbers and attitudes.  Eventually, they will kill somebody.  It won’t be on purpose, but the person will be just as dead as if it was.  Then we’ll have another scandal, another protest, recriminations and a review of the department’s policies and practices.  Why not just jump to the front and put strict rules in place before someone dies?

Incidentally, I submitted an op-ed on this very subject to Newsday more than a week ago.  Don’t bother looking for it, as they decided not to run it.  Too bad they got skunked by the Times.  Perhaps the New York Times editorial board has a broader understanding of problems.  Perhaps Newsday just didn’t like my piece.  But then, it’s not like the Newsday editorial board wrote an editorial of their own, as the Times did.