It’s Electric!

Shoot a man with a Taser, and you disable him for five seconds. Teach the Cambridge Police Department (CPD) to use Tasers, and we’re going to have a problem on our hands for a long time.

The CPD’s plan to arm some of its officers with Tasers is a waste of taxpayer funds, and, more importantly, a threat to public safety. While officers contend that the 50,000-volt stun guns are necessary in order to subdue drug users and the mentally ill, who apparently have preternaturally high pain tolerances, the weapons simply do not make sense in Cambridge.

Carrying Tasers encourages the police to use painful force in situations when nonviolent methods would probably be sufficient. Becasue Tasers are not nearly as dangerous as guns—or at least are not perceived to be—police will be less likely to think twice before firing. And since police use of guns is extremely low in Cambridge, Tasers aren’t replacing deadly force.

Indiscriminate Taser use by police is a frightening possibility. Being Tasered might be preferable to being shot, but it is certainly no picnic. The weapon that would find itself in the hands of the CPD shoots four barbs that embed themselves up to 0.3 inches into a victims’ skin and deliver a 50,000-volt electrical shock. Cambridge Police Lieutenant Stephen A. Ahern, who was willingly Tasered at a public demonstration, told the Cambridge Chronicle afterward that, “It was the longest five seconds of my life. The electrical current feels like the pulse of a jackhammer.” Though the weapons are classified as “non-lethal,” there is some doubt about this claim—according to the human rights group Amnesty International, over 150 people have been killed by Tasers since June 2001.

The CPD plans to implement a review process to oversee use of the weapons, and each Taser will be mounted with a video camera to record its use. Nonetheless, it is unclear exactly where the police will draw the line in terms of appropriate usage. In one particularly disturbing and widely circulated video, a UCLA student screams as he is Tasered repeatedly by campus police officers. His crime: he forgot to bring his ID to the library and was reluctant to leave. While this type of abuse may not be commonplace, distributing Tasers to Cambridge police who have little use for them opens the door for a whole new set of similar incidents.

The proposal still requires the approval of the City Manager, the Executive Office of Public Safety, and the Cambridge City Council before it can go into action. Hopefully, one of these bodies will nip the plan in the bud and keep Cambridge residents safe from 50,000-volt jolts.