Study: Police often use Tasers safely

SEATTLE – Tasers and similar stun guns, increasingly popular among law enforcement agencies nationwide, are generally safe for police to use, according a study paid for by the Justice Department. However, the study’s author cautioned that the weapons have the potential to injure or kill.

In the review of 962 reported cases of people jolted with electrical conducted energy weapons, a technical term for devices designed to deliver temporarily disabling bursts of electricity, 99.7 percent had no injuries or minor ones such as scrapes and bruises that did not require hospitalization.

The research, presented Monday in Seattle at a national research forum of the American College of Emergency Physicians, was touted as “the first large, independent study of injuries associated with Tasers” by the lead researcher, Dr. William P. Bozeman, an emergency medical specialist at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

“These findings support the safety of CEW use by law enforcement agencies,” the researchers wrote.

“This is the first time we’ve got an accounting of how likely it is that you’ll be seriously injured by one of these devices,” Bozeman said.

“That doesn’t mean it’s impossible,” Bozeman cautioned. “These are serious weapons. They absolutely have the potential to injure or kill people.”

Two subjects in the study died, but autopsies found neither death was related to use of a Taser.

Of the three who were admitted to hospitals, two had injuries from falling after receiving the 50,000-volt blasts, which continue for several seconds, and the third was hospitalized two days after being jolted with a condition of uncertain relationship to being jolted, according to the findings.

Minor injuries accounted for 22.5 percent of the cases, but that figure might be understated because some people with cuts, bumps or scratches might not have reported any injury, Bozeman said.

Taser critics say the devices are prone to misuse by police who fire them too readily at people who may be mentally ill, high on drugs or vulnerable because of medical conditions.

“Those statistics were surprising to me, considering the number of injuries, including to police officers, that have been reported,” said Lauren Regan, executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center in Eugene.

By July, Amnesty International USA had tallied 250 cases in six years in which people died after being stunned with Tasers, but the group didn’t track the individual causes of death.

Bozeman stressed that the findings have not been published in full or undergone formal peer review. Partial findings covering 597 cases were published earlier in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

The cases in the study were compiled by six law enforcement agencies ranging from small and rural to suburban to large urban forces such as Las Vegas, each with a defined policy on Taser use, injury reporting and a doctor who works with officers and anyone who is subdued with the devices.

The doctor was responsible for assuring that every Taser use was submitted to the research team without anything to identify people who had been jolted.

“There’s no question, really, that any of these injuries were missed,” Bozeman said.