What a choice: be tasered or be shot?

BY MATT LAWREY

Here is a question: would you rather be tasered or shot?

Most of you right now will be thinking "tasered", but I'm not so sure.

I reckon you could dine out on tales of being shot for a lot longer than you could if you were zapped with 50,000 volts.

The idea of being winged by a bullet and hitting the deck seems a lot classier to me than the convulsing, screaming and wetting of pants that accompanies getting tasered.

Guns may be evil but they look cool and can sound amazing, whereas Tasers are bright yellow, appear to have been named and designed by some Star Trek freak, and sound like a short-circuiting toaster.

Then there are those electrified barbs and coils that spring out of them like Satan's Slinky, and can you imagine getting the boys together and going out to the Cable Bay firing range to shoot Tasers? Me neither.

They'd have to come out with a black pump-action model before anyone I know would even consider it.

On second thoughts, I don't want to die, so now that I've thought about it, yeah, you're right – I would definitely rather be tasered than shot.

It seems to me a few Nelsonians have been considering the getting shot-versus-tasered question lately.

Once upon a time the news that local police were training with such a weapon would have resulted in howls of protest.

Yet since this paper reported that fact a few weeks ago, I haven't seen a single letter to the editor on the issue.

There have been letters complaining about the sound the Summit rescue chopper makes when it's saving lives but none on Nelson police soon being allowed to administer powerful electric shocks to people.

I have an instinctive knee-jerk opposition to most things that increase the coercive powers of the State but with the use of Tasers I am prepared to make an exception.

This is largely because of the deaths of Stephen Bellingham in Christchurch in 2007 and Steven Wallace in Waitara in 2000.

In both cases, the men went on rampages and, while wielding various implements, made the mistake of advancing on armed police.

They paid for those mistakes with their lives and I can't help thinking they might still be alive if the officers who shot them had had access to Tasers.

I also wonder how much better those officers' lives could have been in the years since.

Then there is the story that former top Wellington detective Ross Levy told The Dominion Post last month.

During the trial of the Taser in Wellington in 2007, Levy was in a group of officers called to a domestic incident in Naenae.

They arrived to find a seven-week-old baby with its stomach cut open in the living room and two other children, aged 3 years and 18-months-old, stab wounds while being held hostage by their father in a bedroom.

As police approached, the man held a carving knife to one of his children's throats.

Levy told The Dominion Post they could not set a dog on him because of the children, and could not risk using pepper spray.

"When he was tasered he fell to the ground. Deploying the Taser in that situation we saved those kids' lives. The only other option was to shoot him. By tasering we saved his life as well because he would have been shot," he said.

All three children survived and their father went to jail.

The only thing that really worries me about Tasers is what happens when they are no longer in the media spotlight and their use becomes the norm.

Until now the police will have been on their very best behaviour with the weapons to make sure they pass their trial and win favour with politicians and the public.

So far, so good, but it only takes a few minutes on You Tube to find plenty of examples of US cops using Tasers in appalling acts of casual brutality.

It's not pretty but it is worth a look to see just where arming the police with Tasers can lead.

For the sake of our society, and the reputation of our police, such abuses of power cannot be allowed to happen here.

- © Fairfax NZ News