An outcry of fittingly high voltage has greeted Priti Patel’s announcement that volunteer special constables are to be given the right to carry the same Taser stun guns as police officers.
Amnesty International led the criticism by describing the move as “dangerous” and a “worrying erosion of safeguards over Taser misuse” that will lead to more deaths and serious harm being caused by the weapon.
It’s certainly true that Tasers, which are designed to temporarily incapacitate a suspect by delivering a high voltage shock, are a powerful tool that are potentially lethal if used inappropriately.
The tragic case of the former footballer Dalian Atkinson, who was killed when he was unlawfully tasered for 33 seconds and then kicked in the head by police officer Benjamin Monk, who was jailed for manslaughter for the crime, provided one awful illustration of the risk, but there have been others less high profile too. A review by the Independent Office for Police Conduct published last year also highlighted problems, saying that it had found cases in which officers had used a Taser in a potentially unsafe situation without adequately considering the risk of injury to the person targeted based on their vulnerabilities.
Even when used properly, it’s obvious that being hit by a Taser is going to be a frightening experience and I certainly wouldn’t be offering, as the former Labour Cabinet minister Ed Balls once did on TV, to be on the receiving end of one of its high voltage darts.
But that’s part of the point. Tasers are meant to deter as well as disable and the Home Office points out that in nine out of ten situations when one is drawn the sight of it is enough to persuade a suspect to comply. It’s also a lifesaving weapon that can protect the public and officers themselves from potentially lethal danger. The survival of Met Pc Stuart Outten, who was badly wounded in a fearsome machete attack in Leyton in 2019 before managing to Taser his attacker to stop him inflicting more blows, is one example.
Another was when police tasered the mentally unstable teenager Zukharia Bulhan in Russell Square in 2016 after he went on knife rampage that was initially feared to be a terrorist attack. He killed American tourist Darlene Horton and injured five others but was continuing his attack and would probably have killed more if he had not been stopped by the impact of the Taser used on him.
It’s also logical that those civilians who are willing to volunteer to help protect the public alongside full-time officers should be given both the same protection and the same ability to protect others. Ms Patel promises too that special constables will have to receive the same training as officers before being equipped with the stun gun.
That means that in theory they’ll be as capable of using them as safely as the overwhelming majority of officers currently do. There remains, however, a legitimate question as to whether the more limited experience that specials will usually have of dealing with tense situations will affect when and if they decide to deploy their Taser.
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Close monitoring and scrutiny of what happens will be essential and If the evidence starts to show problems, then the Home Secretary might have to be ready to think again.
