Taser news

Colerain Township Police Chief Dan Meloy said he began to look at alternatives to standard issue tasers when he had the opportunity to be one of an elite group of departments piloting a new alternative, he jumped on it. Colerain Township has been training with a new – and some say safer – alternative to Tasers-- a select pilot project of a new non-lethal weapon, the Mark 63 Trident.

Manufactured by Virginia-based Aegis, the device is several weapons rolled into one, incorporating high intensity light, pepper spray and a stun gun.

Meloy said training for use of the Mark 63 Trident was easy and its design, which incorporates a number of non-lethal options, allows an officer to escalate the amount of force needed easily when required. “This reduces the number of decisions an officer has to make, and the Trident makes it easier for an officer to change his tactics in the middle of a situation,” Meloy told the Community Press. “With the Trident, it’s all there in the officer’s hand.”

The Press’ article also noted that “larger departments such as Cincinnati Police and sheriff’s offices in Hamilton and Butler counties continue using tasers. Officials have credited them with helping to reduce fatal police incidents, but Cincinnati defense attorney Mike Allen predicts the recent death of a student at the University of Cincinnati after being shot with a taser may cause more police agencies to drop its use.

An LLRX article recently noted that “Tasers have been around for decades, the device first having been developed in 1967. Law enforcement agencies began adopting the devices extensively in the 1990s as they searched for a less-lethal alternative to firearms as a means of subduing violent or escaping persons, as well as a means of reducing injuries sustained by officers when attempting to physically control suspects. Indeed, in the incident that sparked the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Los Angeles Police Department officers used Tasers to subdue Rodney King during a traffic stop. During the subsequent criminal trial of the officers, their attorney argued that the fact that King tried to get up after having 50,000 volts of electricity shot into his body gave the officers reasonable cause to believe that King was high on PCP and therefore dangerous; prosecutors argued that the videotape of the incident clearly showed that King was in pain from the electrical shock and was not in any position or condition to be any danger to officers.

“According to the National Institute of Justice, part of the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs, as of June 2008, approximately 11,500 law enforcement agencies had acquired CEDs, or conducted energy devices, for use as a ‘less-lethal’ weapon.”