Deadly police shootings across the country are forcing some big city police departments to take a new look at whether stun guns — typically called Tasers — could reduce the number of fatal encounters between officers and the public.
Last month, for example, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced plans to buy hundreds of additional Tasers for his city's police department and ensure every officer is trained to use them by June. The plans followed heated protests after a dashboard video showed an officer shooting a fleeing teen 16 times in a 2014 confrontation.
But equipping all police officers with Tasers is expensive, and the evidence that the devices reduce the number of officer-involved shootings is mixed: A 2010 expansion of Tasers in Chicago failed to produce a dip in police shootings. In addition, Tasers themselves also have proved to be deadly at times.
Though law enforcement analysts concede that Tasers are not a perfect solution, some say it is inevitable that alternatives to deadly force will get a longer look within major departments, including Minneapolis and St. Paul.
"They are going to have to budget for that," said Jeff Garland, a defense tactics instructor at Hennepin Technical College who spent 31 years in law enforcement. "If they don't look at alternatives, the other alternative is like in Ferguson, Cleveland and Baltimore: You're going to be paying a heck of a lot more money with wrongful-death suits."
Cost a factor
In Minneapolis — itself dealing with ongoing unrest after police in November shot Jamar Clark, an unarmed black man they say was reaching for an officer's gun — just 60 percent of the department's patrol officers are equipped with one of the 300 devices available, according to spokesman John Elder.
"Cost is certainly a factor," said Elder, adding that the devices can run up to $1,500 per officer.
In St. Paul, where most officers have carried Tasers since 2010, occasions in which officers shot a firearm at suspects averaged more than five a year from 2012 to 2014, resulting in six deaths. Sgt. Mike Ernster, a St. Paul Police spokesman, said the department trained every officer to use Tasers in 2008 and began issuing them to every new police academy cadet in 2010.