IEEE Spectrum December, 2007 - 16

Last September, campus police officers
at the University of Florida scuffled with
Andrew Meyer, a student who had just
posed a long and angry series of questions
to Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) during a
forum at the school. As Meyer finished
speaking, officers surrounded him and
directed him out of the auditorium. Meyer
yelled, resisted them, and demanded to
know what he had done wrong. "You're
going to get Tased if you don't put your arms behind your
back," an officer said. Meyer continued to struggle and yelled,
"Don't Tase me, bro!" One of the officers fired his Taser Electronic
Control Device, and Meyer screamed, his voice breaking.
Within hours, the video record of the event in Gainesville
appeared on the Web and became an instant YouTube sensation.
The American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International
chimed in with support for Meyer, whose memorable "Don't Tase
me, bro!" cry leaped into American popular culture on T-shirts
and baby bibs. Newspapers across the United States questioned
whether the campus police were right to use the Taser, whether
it was cruel, and whether Meyer had deliberately provoked the
officers into stunning him.
The explosion of attention surrounding the incident reflects a
deep public ambivalence toward the electroshock weapon and its
use. Meyer's experience is but one of many high-profile cases in
which the use of a Taser to subdue a recalcitrant troublemaker may
not have been warranted. Last year, a student at the University
of California, Los Angeles, was shocked in Powell Library, an
event that generated a similar public outcry. The student, Mostafa
Tabatabainejad, was using the computer lab after hours and didn't
show officers his student ID card when asked to do so. His continued refusal to comply or leave the library led the campus police
officers to apply Taser shocks to him repeatedly. Reports after the
fact acknowledged police error-the officers had overreacted and
were too ready to deploy their high-tech gadget in a situation that
didn't call for violence.
The screams of people being shocked by a stun gun sound eerily
similar to the blood-curdling cries of torture victims, so incidents
that involve unarmed students raise hackles. But there's another
factor underlying the public distrust of Tasers: the possibility
that they can kill people.
In the period between 2001 and 2005, Amnesty International
reported, 150 people died in the aftermath of receiving shocks
from a Taser. In only a handful of the cases did medical examiners cite the shocks received as a cause of death. Even so, the
considerable uncertainty surrounding the physiological effects

26 IEEE Spectrum | December 2007 | NA

of a Taser shock, as well as ambiguity regarding when it should
be used, have bred an atmosphere of distrust and fear.
The electroshock gun used by police-the Taser X26, made by
Taser International of Scottsdale, Ariz.-fires barbed electrodes.
A shot releases two probes, and those probes must either both
make contact with their target, or one must strike the target and
the other the ground, to complete the electrical circuit. The electrodes are attached by long, thin wires to a waveform generator
that sends muscle-locking electric pulses into the target.
Situations where police have been able to successfully disarm suspects without causing permanent injury are the reason
these weapons have gained widespread use. In an October case
in the Czech Republic, for example, a kidnapped child was rescued by police who used Taser guns to immobilize her captors.
According to a 2006 report by the Police Executive Research
Forum, a law-enforcement policy organization in Washington,
D.C., more than 8000 police and sheriffs' offices across the
United States have adopted the devices, which are widely used
in Canada and the United Kingdom as well [see graph, "Don't
Tase Me, Old Chap!"]. Police departments in Australia, New
Zealand, and France started using the devices after Taser
International introduced an attachable video camera. The guns
also now release bits of identifying confetti with every shot,
and the time and duration of each trigger pull is recorded in
the gun's memory. According to Taser, its guns are now fired
more than 620 times a day and have been used a total of more
than 680 000 times worldwide.
Any new technology that is designed for violent encounters
should be carefully assessed. Unlike medical devices, Tasers
don't have to undergo testing and receive approval by agencies
such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, at least not in
the United States. Partly in response, several local and state legislatures have considered introducing laws restricting the stun
guns' adoption, and most police departments, if not all, have
instituted guidelines on the proper use of Tasers.
Analyses conducted by British and Canadian police research
centers and by the U.S. Air Force concluded that Tasers are
generally effective and do not pose a significant health risk to

100

Don't Tase Me, Old Chap!
Taser usage by London's Metropolitan
Police Authority, 2003-2007

Taser-armed officers:
■ Encountered weapons
■ Did not encounter weapons
■ Discharged taser

2003

Source: MPA

2004

2005

2006

2007*
* Up to 29 August 2007

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photogrAph: chrIStophEr furloNg/gEtty IMAgES;
All IlluStrAtIoNS: bryAN chrIStIE DESIgN

thE tASEr guN,
AN ElEctroShock
wEApoN uSED by
polIcE DEpArtMENtS worlDwIDE,
IS No StrANgEr
to bAD prESS.

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum December, 2007