Head to Head does Taser guns

This week’s topic: That Police Taser guns are necessary to uphold law and order

Andrew Woodhouse
NSW Police shoot to kill.

It’s hard-wired into their training, but can any civilised society afford this mock-military, ‘make-my-day’ bravado?

Tasers aren’t necessary to uphold law and order. If they’re so effective, why haven’t we seen decreasing crime rates directly as a result? And police have ample powers and methods to uphold laws using negotiation strategies, physical force, move-on laws, arrest, handcuffs, baton-bashing, capsicum spray, mobile phones to summon tactical response groups with tear gas, shields and a $700,000 water cannon, still unused, pumping out 12,000 litres of water and enough to blow you at 50 paces.

And don’t  they have god-like powers of life and death, their Glock gun? Police are stasi-secretive and wouldn’t tell me its capabilities. My two-second internet search confirms this NATO force-approved, Glock 22, ultra-light, 650 gram, tefil-impregnated, hand-held killer fires 15 snub-nosed, .40 calibre bullets semi-automatically, even underwater, using a triple safety mechanism and a single-position-feed, staggered-column magazine!  Police are empowered.

Frankly, our cops are a cop-out if they can’t get achieve some semblance of law and order with all this kit.

Tasers kill. They’re directly linked to 350 deaths say Amnesty International. Taser USA International’s statements  of denial are as credible as saying smoking is good for you.

Ever tried holding onto a live 50,000-volt electric fence? DO NOT try this at home. A TASER, named after the 1911 jungle story about Thomas A Swift and his Electric Rifle, electrocutes muscles and neurons. We all have heart muscles and neuron-packed brains. So anyone with heart or neurological sensitivities will be more adversely affected, read killed, if shot once. For others shot more than once, death draws nearer. There is no known test proving that those with high blood pressure or mental illness are safe from deadly Tasers.

Our NSW Police Force, showing the brain-power of a sock puppet, say they need more compliance weapons but refuse to release their Taser use manual.  I say police need more on-street judgement. Killing first means the dead don’t talk. Police cannot then readily justify their non-compliance claims. And one death is one too many.

So now we’re in a Czech-mate, with Kafka-esque consequences. Kafka’s noir novel, The Trial, describes the legal death of someone who never knew why he died. When the state kills its own citizens, civilisation evaporates. I am calling for CALM, a Campaign Against Legalised Murder.

Peter Whitehead
Once upon a time you had to be a bloke of significant height to become a walloper. Ex-footballers were favoured for difficult beats and situations were sorted swiftly without recourse to the courts. Those days [and dark nights] of hands-on policing are gone. Now every punter and his doxy carry a camera and are aware of civil liberties. Lawyers are busier now.

Policing has evolved. Womenfolk and the vertically challenged are welcome additions to the modern Old Bill. Skills learnt in scrums are no longer essential for effecting behavioural modifications in misbehaving members of the public.

Acting Deputy Police Commissioner Tony Harrison prefers “police to use what is commonly referred to as verbal judo – simplistically, using the mouth and talking a situation through to get a successful resolution”. Overlook the too pertinent use of ‘simplistically’ and note what follows – “We can then work through a number of options and the options may include the use of a baton, the use of OC spray, the use of a Taser and ultimately the use of a firearm if the circumstances require that.

Options – welcome to the third millennium. In the bad old days, Wanted posters exhorted DEAD OR ALIVE. Now there is a spectrum of harm minimisation for the sensitive new age officer to consider for the après-post-modern offender.

This is where Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle provides a very modern choice*. The Taser was developed in the ’70s to make use of “neuromuscular incapacity technology” as a non-lethal alternative to guns.  Al fresco electric shock treatment is so hippy hippy shake compared to the .44 Magnum. The Taser website – “Who says safety can’t be stylish?” – promotes a range of colours and styles including leopard skin.

Our cops use the ‘Drive Stun’ capacity of the weapon to cause pain without significantly affecting the central nervous system. Of course those nervous Nellies at Amnesty International carp that when used as ‘pain compliance’ tools “the capacity to inflict multiple and prolonged shocks, renders the weapons inherently open to abuse”.

Which brings us to the nub of the matter: it is not the weapon but its user’s temperament, training and intent that count. Tasers have been misused to kill. So have bare hands.

What is necessary to uphold law and order is a police force devoted to keeping the peace as best they possibly may.