From Turley, Memphis has rejected a request by Police Chief Elena Danishevskaya to arm her police officers with Tasers. From the Voice News :
At their most recent meeting the council revisited the controversial topic and, after airing opposing opinions, once again shunned the electroshock weapons – capable of immobilizing subjects via a 50,000-volt discharge – as an option for the city’s officers.Interestingly, the most compelling factor that militated against arming the Memphis police with Tasers appeared to be liability. Newspaper stories and lawsuits struck fear in the hearts of the city council, and left them believing that having their cops tazing wasn’t worth the risk.
“My feeling, still, is that Tasers for this department is not for us,” Mayor Charles Garber said.
“I just think that it is too risky. How many times have you had, in the last two years, any kind of problem?” Mayor Garber inquired of Danishevskaya who answered that on two occasions Tasers could have been effective – the first involving a suspect who reportedly had a gun, and the second a suicidal subject who was brandishing a knife.
But Mayor Garber’s question really hit the nail on the head. In two years, Chief Danishevskaya came up with only two incidents where the use of a Taser would have been truly appropriate. Anybody want to bet that if Memphis police officers carried Tasers over that same two year period, they would have used them a few thousand times?
That’s the point. Next to donuts, nothing has made a cops’ job better than the Taser.
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I’m very, very suspicious of the first supposed incident, and, for that matter, of the second. I don’t know any cop who is going to deal with the possibility of anybody having a gun with a Taser. When a cop shouts “gun!” to his/her partners, it’s the shooty things that come out of holsters, not the zappy ones. (If there’s no reason to believe that somebody having a gun is an immediate safety issue, then they don’t need to do anything dramatic at all.)
And a knife? Cops are trained around the Tueller Drill. I guess it’s possible that one might go for the electrozapper instead of the gun if there’s a barrier in between, but that’s not the way to bet.
My strong guess is that it’s more like: the other boys and girls with badges get these toys, and we should, too.