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News :: Crime & Police |
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Concerned Champaign Residents Question Need for Tasers, Chief of Police and City Manager Defend Position at Community Meeting |
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by Kimberlie Kranich
Email: kakranich (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified!) |
16 Mar 2004
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Champaign Chief of Police RT Finney, City Manager Steve Carter and three police officers tried to convince a crowd of 50 concerned citizens at a community meeting Monday night that the police need Taser electroshock guns to reduce the threat of injuries to officers and suspects. The crowd wasn’t convinced of the need for Tasers and expressed concerns that Tasers would be used against them. |
Tasers can propel a fishhook dart up to 21-feet away. When attached to a victim, the dart delivers a 50,000-volt current for five seconds that is supposed to temporarily immobilize the victim. Tasers are capable of being fired multiple times. The voltage cannot be reduced to account for victim size. Officers who use Tasers are subjected to being shot by a Taser dart during training, but rarely for the full five seconds, according to the three officers present at the meeting.
The question on many people’s minds was, why does Champaign police need them?
According to City Manager Steve Carter, “Our police officers are confronted more often than we’d like to admit with folks who are mentally ill or people who are suicidal or domestic situations where there is a threat of violence… We have some bad people who live in town who sometimes are in a position to hurt other people. And if we can find some way to reduce the threat of injury why then we need to take a look at that and I think that’s what the police department has done.”
According to both Carter and Police Chief Finney, only two percent of people who are arrested by Champaign police resist arrest. According to Finney, Champaign Police pull their weapons about 30 times a year. In the past three years, police officers have fired their gun only once.
So why the need for another tool?
“The answer is injuries,” Finney said. “Injuries not only to citizens but injuries to the Champaign police officers. Champaign police officers have been injured by offenders who have resisted or battered is over $317,000 worth of claims (in the past three years). Over $100,00 each year officers have been injured in these type of resisting situations in these two percent.”
Chief Finney had no numbers on the amount of injuries to citizens involved in altercations with police. He said medical privacy laws prevent him from gathering those numbers.
When asked how many injuries were represented in the $100,00 worth of yearly claims, Finney said 61. Neither Finney nor Carter were able to break this number down any further such as number of officers injured each year, type of injury, and whether the injury was related to an arrest or was an accident.
The crowd wasn’t satisfied with the answers given regarding the need for Tasers.
“Their not pulling their weapons. They’re not even using the pepper spray,” Cleveland Jefferson stated during the meeting. “You’ve used pepper spray 20 to 25 times (a year) according to the Chief. So why do you need Tasers? People in the African American community are afraid that they are going to be used on them because that’s where most of the stops are made, most of the harassment occurs. And when you talk about that little chip that’s going to be monitored after they are fired, it’s being monitored by the folks that we’re afraid of. Police officers. Police officers monitoring police officers is not the best thing in the world.”
Others at the meeting questioned the safety of Tasers. According to the Chief, no deaths have been attributed to Taser usage. According to Amnesty International, there have been 40 Taser related deaths in the United States. Many of these deaths involved suspects high on cocaine and other drugs. In other cases, according to the Amnesty information, pregnant women have suffered miscarriages after being show with a Taser.
More than 4,000 police departments across the county us Tasers. According to the Chief, Danville has had them for four years and Rantoul just purchased them.
Audience member Carol George said “ The feeling in the room is unfortunately and consistently an us against them type of feeling. The police are in a very vicariously position. The 2% you have to deal with that is a difficult situation. But the 98% of us who …..it makes it very difficult for us to receive this type of information and saying that in a community where the majority of those citizens are not violent people, are not criminals and are not conducting themselves in criminal activity, it makes it very difficult to justify such an addition to your already full arsenal.
“We need to investigate the feeling of the community of being militarized rather than protected. Adding something that makes fear come upon the people does not build relationships.”
The decision over Tasers ultimately rests with the nine members of the Champaign City Council who will vote to approve or reject the purchase of 25 Taser guns at a cost of $30,000 at their March 23 study session meeting. |
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