A Taser with non-electrical training cartridges is used on Master Officer D.P. Rausch during a role-playing training session at Durham Technical Community College's Northern Durham Center Wednesday, August 19, 2009. After a year of use by police officers, the Taser has proved to be an effective alternative to the use of lethal force in some cases.
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DURHAM -- Equipping Durham police with Tasers has been a huge success, saving money and reducing injuries during the first year of use, according to a police lieutenant who has just completed a study of how the electric shock weapons have affected the department.
"The Tasers have done everything we expected them to do,'' Lt. John Shelton said. "The effects have been exactly what we expected them to be, if not more.''
Shelton said some people had worried that giving Tasers to police would encourage them to use them too often, but he said that hasn't been the case.
"There was a fear that when we deployed Tasers into the field that officers would be Taser-happy, where our uses of force would skyrocket," he said. This is what his figures show:
The number of times an officer used "force applications," which may include using force more than once on the same person, dropped steadily from fiscal year 2006 to 2008 -- from 175 to 119, but then rose to 197 during the most recent period when officers had Tasers in the field, in large part because the weapons were often misfired during the initial phase when officers were getting used to them.
However, figures for "force incidents," which is the number of arrests where force is used, has dropped steadily, from 152 in fiscal year 2006 to 95 this fiscal year.
"We didn't have a massive jump in uses of force, so it's not like officers are using the Taser against everybody," Shelton said.
Shelton said Durham police have used Tasers 118 times since the first 110 weapons were put into use last summer and 125 more were later added. But, again, he said that figure is misleading, because of the misfirings during those first weeks of use.
A big advantage of Tasers has been as a deterrent, he said, prompting many arrest suspects to comply with police orders instead of fighting.
In the first three months this year, police documented 97 cases of "voluntary compliances," in which an arrest suspect "drastically changed their behavior because the Taser was present," according to Shelton's study.
"That's a potential physical force encounter, a potential foot chase [that's avoided]," he said. "And any time you start going up the force continuum and the level of resistance, then you add to the potential risks of injury."
"It has an umbrella effect," Shelton said. "The fewer times we have to call for help and have somebody run [police car] lights and siren, the fewer potential car wrecks and injuries we have and the lower cost for Workers Compensation claims. There's a far-reaching effect."
The cost of Workers Compensation claims for all Durham police employees fell from $657,413 last fiscal year to just $187,202 in the current fiscal year, he said. "That's almost a half a million dollar savings," he said.
As for police foot chases, they're down from 112 in fiscal year 2007-08 to 85 this fiscal year, he said.
"These voluntary compliances are suspects who may be thinking about running or resisting or fighting, but change their mind because a Taser is there," Shelton said.
Shelton also said there were four incidents this year where an officer "had justified use of lethal force" but used the Taser instead, preventing a suspect from being shot or possibly killed.
The department has 235 Tasers for a force of 512, but with the program's success, the goal is eventually to provide one for every officer.
"We have achieved our goals with the Taser, and I think we're all pleasantly surprised at how well the program is doing," Shelton said.
