(back)

Do Tasers work?

By M.V. Moorhead

“Phasers on stun!” Capt. Kirk would yell on Star Trek, and right away you knew—he and his crew were tough, they meant business, they weren’t going to take any nonsense. But they also didn’t want to hurt anyone, if humanly possible.

The Chandler Police Department is sending the same message by incorporating Tasers into their repertory of tools.

Eighty-five percent of the city’s officers have now received a five-hour training course in the use of the non-lethal weapons, and are carrying them.

Your humble correspondent recently had a chance to sample the effectiveness of the Taser first-hand, and get a taste of how Capt. Kirk’s enemies must have felt.

The Taser shoots out two wires, which attach themselves to their target with barbed probes. It then delivers a shock of 50,000 volts to the central nervous system, temporarily incapacitating the target, without inflicting any lasting harm.

So, at any rate, says Sgt. James Halsted, a cheerleader for the device who hosted a recent demonstration for area media representatives in the Community Room at Chandler Police Department.

“It’s another tool that I have available to me,” says the 17-year veteran of the Chandler force. It’s most useful, he says, at those dangerous times when officers and suspects are at a middle distance from each other.

“We’re real good when we’re hands on,” says Halsted, “And we’re good when we’re far away. It’s that closing distance where we get hurt, and suspects get hurt.”

To demonstrate just how Taser can be effective at times like these, Halsted and his colleague, Officer Scholtz, fire the Taser at targets with metallic surfaces upon which bluish-white electricity then crackles and sparkles for a chilling five-minute duration. Halsted shows us some hair-raising police videos in which both suspects and police volunteers in training are shot with Tasers, and fall to the ground twitching and roaring with the pain.

Despite appearances, Halsted explains, there are no lasting after-effects.

“You have two small dots (from the barbs),” he says. “We put a Band-Aid on them. You have a boo-boo.”

He notes that each Taser has a dataport which stores the time and date of each activation, to hold officers accountable for the weapon’s use and to protect officers from unfounded allegations of misuse.

He cites an L.A. County Sheriff’s Department study which suggests that the use of Taser could result in potential liability savings of a quarter of a million dollars.

In their training, officers may volunteer for either the quarter-second zap—just one-20th the duration that a suspect would get—or what Halsted calls “the five-second ride.” Most of his colleagues opt for the former; he’s experienced the latter.

“I had to find out how it was going to effect me,” he says. “I’m a hard-headed type person...Was it a painful experience? ‘Absitively’. Did it have any lasting effects? No.” 

Then came the cool part of the morning. Halsted offered members of the media the opportunity to get their quarter-second zap. The result was rather like an East-Valley media version of MTV’s show “Jackass.”

The first volunteer got the two wires, which ran to the gun, alligator-clipped to his clothes.

Halsted’s associate Officer Scholtz counted down and pulled the trigger, and the man yelled an obscenity. His legs buckled. Next in line was a woman. I was asked to hold her arm, both to prevent her from falling and to prove that the current wouldn’t shock me just because I was touching her. She also yelled and slumped.

Then it was my turn. They attached a wire to my collar, and one to my pants. Halsted and another Chandler officer, Sgt. Franzen, held me on each side.

Officer Scholtz counted down to three, and suddenly I could feel that ferocious bolt of power travel through me, from my shoulder to my hip--it made me feel like Sylvester or Daffy in the Looney Toons when they’ve grabbed a live wire, as if you could see my skeleton lighting up.

I yelled “Oh, God!” It was terrible.

But afterward, as far as I could tell, I was no worse for the wear. Halsted said the reason for this media event is the same reason that the Taser gun is bright yellow plastic: police want the public to be aware of what the weapon is, and what it can do.

Well, then, allow me to do my part—if a cop ever tells you to cooperate or he's going to use a Taser on you, I suggest you comply.

Maybe Taser won’t kill you, but judging from my quarter-second, I’d say that it could make you wish you were dead.

(back)