Police access to Tasers next year

Hundreds of Taser electronic stun guns will be available for police officers around the country within a year.

Police have ordered 730 more Tasers after officers in Auckland and Wellington tried out 44 guns in a year-long pilot programme.

They will all be tested by the end of January and delivered to districts in February next year.

More than 3500 frontline staff will be trained to use them.

In the latest issue of police magazine Ten One, officers said user training would begin in March next year and finish in August.

Police from throughout New Zealand, including the Chatham Islands, would then have access to Tasers.

The stun weapons have built-in cameras and voice recorders which police said would minimise incidents of misuse which had plagued some police forces overseas.

During the trial period, Tasers were used 78 times, including in one incident outside the trial areas - in Hamilton when an officer with a Taser was sent to an incident on the banks of the Waikato River.

But the weapons were fired only six times, and police say that meant in 90 per cent of the 78 incidents, stun gun "de-escalated violent incidents without resorting to physical force, thereby avoiding the risk of injury to both staff and offenders".

- NZPA