Police Association boss makes plea for tasers

As the deadline approaches for police to report the evaluation of their Taser trial to Commissioner Howard Broad, Police Association president Greg O'Connor has made a plea for the adoption of the "less than lethal" device.

Opponents to police being issued with Tasers were ignoring the realities of modern policing in New Zealand, Mr O'Connor said today.

Police are to report to Mr Broad by Friday on how their 12-month Taser stun guns trial went, and he will make the final decision on their future use.

Last month a United Nations report described them as a "form of torture".

The UN Committee Against Torture said it was worried by the use of Tasers.

It said the 50,000-volt stun guns caused "extreme pain, constituted a form of torture, and. . .in certain cases could also cause death".

New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties chairman Michael Bott said the UN report reflected a backlash against stun guns.

They could be lethal if used on a person with a pacemaker or on certain types of medication, he said.

"The UN is urging caution on this, but the police are rushing into it. We need to pause and take a breath."

And lawyer Marie Dyhrberg, from the Campaign Against The Taser group, said the UN committee's findings should be taken seriously by police.

But Mr O'Connor said that unfortunately New Zealand police were being called upon to respond to more and more volatile and violent situations where lives were at risk. Police officers were also facing record numbers of violent assaults.

"We must be able to respond to these threats safely and effectively, without being forced to use firearms, which are almost always lethal," he said.

"The successful New Zealand trial clearly showed that Tasers would give us the less-than-lethal option we need. Failure to issue them would almost certainly mean more tragic and avoidable deaths in future."

Mr O'Connor said Taser opponents needed to be very careful about trying to apply "overseas-generated hysteria" to the New Zealand situation.

"Our police are not armed, unlike their counterparts in North America. So Tasers would obviously occupy a different role in our use-of-force spectrum."

The rules and training around use of force were also quite different for New Zealand police.

"Yes, Tasers cause pain and can cause injuries, primarily when an offender falls to the ground when incapacitated," he said.

"But they have not been definitively proved to be the cause of death in any of the very tiny proportion of occasions where a person has died within a period of time following being tasered.

"Compare that safety record with the chances of survival for offenders who have to be shot, not to mention the numerous innocent lives undoubtedly saved through its use."

Mr O'Connor dismissed as scaremongering suggestions that Tasers were torture devices that would promote abuse of prisoners.

"It's a question of conduct: does anyone seriously think that Tasering a violent offender who is threatening someone else's life, instead of shooting them, amounts to torture?" he said.

Abuse and assault were matters of individual conduct in which any number of items could be used, Mr O'Connor said. Tasers were actually less likely to be misused in this way than almost any other weapon.

"Critics seem ignorant of the fact that Tasers automatically record in a memory chip the date, time, and duration of any use of the device, making it very easy to prove or disprove allegations of misuse, and hold officers appropriately accountable," Mr O'Connor said.

"That is not so easily done with any other device in use."

The stun guns were introduced on September 1 last year for use in parts of greater Auckland and Wellington for a year-long trial.

In November last year Mr Broad told a parliamentary select committee that frontline police reported the Tasers had been a valuable addition to their crime fighting arsenal and officers were keen to see them widely deployed.