Use of tasers by US police departments increased by 10 times: Report
The percentage of US police departments that authorize their officers to use stun guns or tasers has sharply increased during the past decade, a new report by the US Justice Department says.
About one in three local police departments across the US reported using the incapacitating weapons, according to statistics released Tuesday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a research arm of the Justice Department.
The percentage of law enforcement departments authorizing the use of tasers increased from 60 percent in 2007 to 81 percent in 2013. In 2000, the figure was only 7 percent.
The use of taser guns increased more than tenfold between 2003 and 2013, the report said.
Taser shootings are rarely fatal, but civil liberties groups say the standards on when it is appropriate to use an electroshock weapon on someone resisting arrest are often inconsistent and vague.
A spokesman with Taser International Inc., the weapon’s manufacturer based in Scottsdale, Arizona, told Wall Street Journal in December that more than 17,000 law-enforcement agencies use its products.
The survey also showed that 94 percent of police departments allowed their officers to use pepper spray and 87 percent allowed the use of batons. Nearly 20 percent of departments allowed neck-restraint tactics, also known as a chokehold.
A white police officer in New York City was videotaped last July placing Eric Garner in a chokehold. Garner, a 43-year-old African-American, yelled "I can't breathe!" 11 times before he passed out and died.
The unnecessary use of heavy-handed tactics by police as well as the racial profiling of some minorities has become a major concern across the US in recent years.
AHT/AGB
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