Editorial: Taser must be part of weaponry

After four years of fitful discussion the police are about to start a year's trial of the "Taser", an American stun gun already adopted by British police and others. Stun guns used to be a feature of action comics, where they were some sort of laser splash that froze an offender instantly and apparently painlessly. The reality is rather different.

Film of the Taser in use in the United States shows the target screaming, twitching and writhing on the ground for a few long seconds. We have it on the authority of Britain's second most senior policeman, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, Michael Todd, that to have a 50,000-volt charge through the body "hurts like hell". He volunteered to be a Taser target for the purposes of public information last year.

The device's twin metal barbs were fired into his back from 3m. When the charge was delivered through wires from the gun his face contorted, his back arched, his body convulsed and he screamed for five seconds. After 20 seconds he was able to speak again. He said: "I felt the full surge of the shock from my finger tips to my toes. I wanted to fall forward but was absolutely unable to move. It was incredibly painful."

Clearly this weapon is not to be treated lightly, but should it be forbidden to our police, as some criminal lawyers urged at a public meeting in Auckland this week? They have not given us convincing reasons. Dr Rodney Harrison, QC, says the Taser amounted to cruel torture. Marie Dyhrberg said the police had not explained why they need them. But the reason is clear. Police need them for the same reason they need batons, pepper spray and even firearms sometimes. We expect police to put themselves in danger when necessary on our behalf, and we ought to arm them with whatever they need. Ms Dyhrberg says New Zealanders are very cautious about arming the police, but that is not quite right, either. The police in this country are cautious about arming themselves, for the good reason that conspicuous side-arms would add to their risk in several ways.

But they can call on firearms when they need them and if they wanted to carry them routinely, it is likely New Zealanders would support them. Well, they do want Tasers, a less lethal option to a firearm, when they are threatened with violence. Who could argue that when an officer is confronted by an enraged person wielding a baseball bat or something similar, a Taser jolt would be far preferable to a pistol. The case of Steven Wallace in Waitara is still fresh in public memory. That young man might be alive today if the officer had been able to stop him with an electric shock.

The campaigners against a Taser trial do not trust the police to restrict its use to situations of dire emergency. They fear the device will become another convenient means of forcing compliance, as it appeared to be used in film from the US, and as pepper spray appeared to be used in an incident recently in this country. The temptation to use pepper spray on recalcitrant pests under arrest can readily be understood, if not condoned. But is it likely that police in this country would use a stun gun so casually?

Several people at the public meeting, who claimed to be victims of police mistreatment, fear Tasers would be a tool for officers to get what they wanted, regardless of whether they felt threatened.

But frontline police are armed more often than we know. If they were in the habit of using guns in that way, we would hear about it. A Taser looks enough like a gun that we can be confident it would not be pointed at anyone lightly.

The weapon is obviously not a realistic response to a firearm. It is designed for use where an officer or a member of the public is under threat of imminent harm from some lesser weapon. If our police find there are sufficient such threats to justify the expense, let them carry the Taser.