Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Tasers in Nottingham

Disillusioned kid | 03.12.2007 21:47 | Repression | Technology

A man was Tasered by Notts police last week. Is this a portent of things to come?

Shocking
Shocking


On Tuesday November 27, Nottinghamshire Police used a Taser stun gun on a man in Beeston. Although it has attracted only limited interest, it could be an important development. Tasers have recently been introduced to the police arsenal in the UK, having been widely used by police in the US and Canada for some time. This happened with minimal public debate, despite increasing concerns about their use across North America. Currently restricted to armed response officers there are calls from both senior and rank and file police officers for their use to be greatly expanded. They certainly aren’t going to go away any time soon

According to the Evening Post, Notts police were called to reports of a man acting erratically outside the Natwest on High Road, Beeston at 11.30am. The Post also indicates that there was a suggestion the man might have been carrying a firearm, however it is now clear the man did not have a gun and there is little in the article to indicate on what basis such suspicions might have arisen. The various eyewitness reports certainly indicate erratic behaviour, but if anything make the presence of a gun seem unlikely. One account has the man shouting, “Call the police,” while another has him pushing people about threatening to “knock you out.” Hardly behaviour which would indicate he was armed. [ http://tinyurl.com/3c9fb3]

In the aftermath of the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes by armed police in London, it would be naïve to accept the police’s account of events without asking some probing questions. It is to be hoped that there is a thorough, independent investigation, but don’t hold your breath. Nor should you expect much to happen if it turns out the police were out of line. It emerged in November that a Leeds resident was tasered twice after suffering hypoglycaemic attack on a bus shortly after July 7, 2005 when police mistook him for a suicide bomber because he “looked Egyptian.” Despite an inquiry by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, neither the officers nor the West Yorkshire force have faced charges, while the two officers involved have thus far avoided any internal disciplinary action. [ http://tinyurl.com/38otun]

While the individual’s experience was no doubt painful, some proponents of Tasers would argue that he was actually lucky. Perhaps the main argument in support of Tasers is that they are preferable to the alternative of lethal force. Certainly it’s true that stunning somebody with 50,000 volts is not as likely to kill them as a good old-fashioned volley of hot lead, but there is nevertheless a long and growing list of people who have died after being tasered.

Silja Talvi argued in November 2006, “Although the company spins it otherwise, Taser-associated deaths are definitely on the rise. In 2001, Amnesty International documented three Taser-associated deaths. The number has steadily increased each year, peaking at 61 in 2005. So far almost 50 deaths have occurred in 2006, for an approximate total of 200 deaths in the last five years.” [ http://tinyurl.com/2sewbu] Indeed, in October of this year, Amnesty International called for a moratorium on Taser use after two people in Canada died after being stunned in the space of one week. [ http://tinyurl.com/289wt5] These are disturbing trends and should give pause for thought to anybody glibly dismissing the weapons as “non-lethal.”

It should be stressed that “Taser associated deaths” are not clear-cut instances of Tasers causing death, rather they represent the cases where people have died shortly after being shot with one of the devices. It would be possible to challenge the figures on this basis, but to do so does not detract from the very real questions they raise. Coroners are often wary of attributing deaths to the weapons and usually prefer to equivocate on reasons when there is any grounds for doubt. This is unlikely to be helped by the minimal scientific literature on the dangers stun-guns pose. In 2004, Amnesty noted that despite being widely deployed by police forces around the world “there has been no rigorous, independent and impartial study into the use and effects of tasers, particularly in the case of people suffering from heart disease, or under the influence of drugs.” [ http://tinyurl.com/74dds]

Study or not, there are real concerns that stun-guns may be even more lethal when used against people under the influence of drugs. Research at the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Science and Technology laboratory (Dstl) was unable to rule out an increased risk of heart failure following Taser use amongst such individuals. This, Nick Lewer and Neil Davison note, is particularly “significant given that, during the year-long trial in the UK, over 50% of Taser victims were under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Interim results of a US study of over 21,000 uses of various ‘less-lethal’ weapons, including the Taser, have showed that 23% of victims were under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol.” [ http://tinyurl.com/279njp]

The threat to life posed by the weapons is such that in 2005, Taser had to concede that they were not in fact “non-lethal.” The decision to drop the label in favour of the more equivocal term “less lethal” came following moves by the attorney general of Arizona, where Taser is based, to begin investigations into the company’s claims about safety studies it carried out on its products. They also made a number of other changes to the information they provide on the weapons, for instance dropping the phrase “leave no lasting after-effects” and replacing it with the claim that they “are more effective and safer than other use-of-force options”. [ http://tinyurl.com/yrwyf9]

Quite apart from the threat they pose to people’s lives, Taser usage in the US and Canada where they are already widely deployed has displayed a worrying “mission creep.” While rhetorically usually posited as an alternative to traditional firearms, the “non-lethal” or “less lethal” appellation associated with the weapons appears to lower the threshold on the use of violence. Police officers have, in short, used Tasers in any number of situations where they would never dream of using live ammunition.

An Amnesty International report in 2004 argued that “far from being used to avoid lethal force, many US police agencies are deploying Tasers as a routine force option to subdue non-compliant or disturbed individuals who do not pose a serious danger to themselves or others.” Indeed, a 2004 study by the Denver Post into the use of Tasers in Colorado found that in one county a third of the 112 people shot with Tasers had been handcuffed at the time. [ http://tinyurl.com/279njp] Whatever one thinks about the way police treat suspects today, it is hard to imagine them being able to shoot 37 people with traditional ammunition without generating considerable controversy.

In effect, Tasers enable to the police to lower the violence threshold, which predictably increases the instances in which violence is used. In August 2005, police in Pittsburgh used Tasers (in conjunction with police dogs) to disperse a crowd of anti-recruitment protesters. [ http://tinyurl.com/yvy9qh] This led to a review by the City Council on the weapon’s deployment by the police and drew criticism even from people who had previously advocated their use. [ http://tinyurl.com/yp7qtt]

There have been calls for extended use of Tasers by both the Police Federation, which represents rank and file police officers [ http://tinyurl.com/3877uu] and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). [ http://tinyurl.com/2jeoxq] Clearly the government will be bound by other constraints such as cost, but these bodies together with the law and order mob represent a powerful lobby. We can, in short, expect Tasers to become an increasingly common element of the police arsenal, with the inevitable increase in use. Whether that will lead to anybody’s death is difficult to say with certainty, but nobody concerned about the state’s use of violence can ignore the problem. They’re coming. What are we going to do about it?

Disillusioned kid
- Homepage: http://disillusionedkid.blogspot.com

Comments

Display the following 2 comments

  1. hmmm — Goose
  2. HM police tasered diabetics in coma & other man to death — JJ
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech