Police departments say use of Tasers has been a success

Last September, Suffolk Police Officer Duffie McLamb deployed a Taser on a mentally disturbed patient who was struggling after being pulled from the third floor hospital window he’d just tried to jump out of.

McLamb’s efforts earned the officer a lifesaving award.

In Norfolk last month, a cop shocked Pamela Brown – known as the Hula Hoop Lady of Granby Street – three times with a Taser as he tried to arrest her.

That officer, who was criticized by some for being too quick to use the Taser, was placed on administrative duty pending a review of the case. The incidents show the two sides of Tasers: the controversial weapon and the device that can deter crime and save lives.

In South Hampton Roads, two police departments, Suffolk and Norfolk, widely outfit police officers with Tasers. Suffolk got them in June 2007, Norfolk in February.

Suffolk officers have deployed them 88 times this year, a figure that includes drawing a Taser, but not activating it.

In the first seven weeks the Tasers were used in Norfolk, 20 people were struck with Tasers, and 48 others decided to cooperate with police before getting shocked. Updated figures in that city weren’t immediately available Friday, and Norfolk police didn’t respond this week to questions from The Pilot about the status of the officer who struck Brown, a woman who suffered a brain injury from an accident in 1977 that still affects her. .

Amnesty International USA, a human rights group, has called on police departments to deploy them only in incidents where they would resort to guns – or to stop using them altogether. The effects of Tasers haven’t been fully researched, the group argues, especially on children, the disabled, people with mental illness and pregnant women. The group reports on its Web site that more than 320 people have died after being shocked with Tasers.

An interim report released in June from the National Institute of Justice states that “conducted energy devices” or CEDs are relatively safe for so-called normal and healthy adults.

But they “can produce secondary or indirect effects that may result in death,” it said, and there isn’t enough information so far to determine whether they are safe for the group of people Amnesty has expressed concern for.

Taser training and policies vary in Norfolk and Suffolk’s police departments.

In Norfolk, officers get 8 hours of classroom and hands-on training, said Officer Chris Amos, a department spokesman.

Suffolk officers get twice that. They must also go through an 8-hour refresher course each year, said Dean Smith, a police department captain who reviews each Taser incident. Policy allows Taser deployment when suspects are actively resisting arrest or fleeing arrest, he said. Officers aren’t required to carry them.

But having them is strongly encouraged, Smith said. “More and more officers are wanting to get them.”

In August, the Norfolk police issued a 12-page policy on the purpose and use of CEDs.

That city’s policy limits their use to “when necessary to overcome actual or threatened physical resistance encountered ... where it is reasonably believed that the use of a less obtrusive method would allow the individual to escape or would expose the officer or others to physical injury.”

Still, Norfolk’s policy says the decision for use must be “based on the totality of the circumstances in a given situation” including failing to subdue a person by other conventional tactics. Unless threatened with death or serious injury, no more than three jolts should be administered, it says.

The policy also says that, other “than in exigent circumstances,” the CED shouldn’t be used on people who are “physically vulnerable due to age or medical conditions” and those who put up “only non-threatening verbal or passive resistance.”

Capt. Smith of Suffolk said fewer officers have been injured in his department after the Tasers went into use. “We haven’t had any complaints of abuse,” he said.

Suffolk police used batons – which historically result in accusations of abuse – 11 times in 2007, Smith said. That has dropped to six so far this year, a reduction he credits to CEDs.

“We are happy as a department and as a city with the effectiveness the Tasers have had,” Smith said.

Kristin Davis, (757) 222-5555, kristin.davis@pilotonline.com