3,000 Tasers ordered by state police; debate continues over devices

A terminally ill man threatening to kill himself with a shotgun in his New Philadelphia home. ZAP!

Police in Schuylkill County used pistol-like Tasers to apprehend these individuals on July 7, demonstrating in the process how these electronic-control devices, which have stirred up controversy across the country, have been making an impact locally.

“They’re a very effective tool,” Shenandoah Police Chief Matthew R. Nestor said.

Stephen A. Mackeravage, 36, of 317 E. Lloyd St., Shenandoah, knows just how effective a Taser can be.

On July 7, Shenandoah police used one to apprehend the man, who, according to police, was creating a disturbance in the borough.

“Your whole body locks up and you hit the ground. It felt like I’d been shot,” Mackeravage said Thursday from Berks County Prison, where he was incarcerated on July 13 for violating parole on charges of giving false identification to Hamburg borough police.

Mackeravage, who admitted he was inebriated at the time of the July 7 incident, said the stun gun’s darts hit him in the back. He fell. He said he hit the pavement and suffered inch-long cuts above and below his left eye and “road rash” on both arms and left shoulder.

He said, “I blacked out until I got to the hospital. When I came to, it hurt. I told the cop ‘Don’t ever do that again!’ That will knock the breath out of you and everything. If you’re hit with one, you’ll know it.”

Also on July 7, Schuylkill Haven police, responding to a call for backup, apprehended a 69-year-old terminally ill man threatening to kill himself with a shotgun in a home on Valley Road, New Philadelphia, said Schuylkill Haven police Sgt. Robert W. Phillips.

Police did not release the name of the man.

Minersville Mayor David J. Dutcavich said he was impressed by Schuylkill Haven’s response in this case.

“The alternative is to wait for an emergency response team from the state police, which can take several hours and the passage of time in a situation like that can be critical,” Dutcavich said.

Popular with police

Today, more than 11,000 law enforcement agencies deploy Tasers in 44 countries, including 480 law enforcement agencies in Pennsylvania, said Steve Tuttle, vice president of communications for Taser International Inc., Scottsdale, Ariz.

Of the 43 police departments in Schuylkill County, 10 use the devices.

“I didn’t think it was that many to be honest with you,” said Schuylkill Haven police Chief Jeff J. Walcott.

The departments include Butler Township, Cass/Foster Regional, Coaldale, Gilberton Regional, Mahanoy City, Rush Township, Saint Clair, Schuylkill Haven, Shenandoah and Tamaqua, according to local police and municipal officials contacted this week.

“It seems to be catching on through the region. And I believe the overall officer safety issue is the reason. It keeps the officers safe and keeps the people we’re arresting safe,” said Cass/Foster police Chief Jeff R. Bowers.

Police Capt. Ronald J. Moser said the City of Pottsville has ordered them.

In the past year, Saint Clair police provided Taser assistance to Pottsville twice, Saint Clair police Sgt. William M. Dempsey said. The device was used to subdue a suicidal person at the Trailways bus terminal at Route 61 and East Norwegian streets, and also used to help city police control a barking Rottweiler on Second Street, Dempsey said.

“An officer, or an average person, can only fire a Taser at an animal if they feel their life is in danger. That’s where the fine line is drawn,” said Barbara A. Umlauf, manager of Hillside SPCA, Pottsville.

Meanwhile, both state police barracks in Schuylkill County will eventually be using stun guns, said Sgt. Christopher Blugis, commander of state police at Frackville.

“That’s the department’s plan, but as to the timetable, I’m not sure. The training has to come first,” Blugis said Tuesday.

In April, Pennsylvania State Police, Harrisburg, ordered 3,000 X26 models from Taser International, according to their Web site.

“We had 35 successful deployments in the field since February 2006. By and large, the agency is confident in the effectiveness of the Taser X26 and the rank and file is very enthusiastic and anxious to deploy another use of force option,” Sgt. David E. Pallone, spokesman for the state police Bureau of Research and Development, said in an article on the Taser Web site.

Blugis is looking forward to getting these tools, which he said are more powerful than words and physical force, but not as harmful as bullets.

“It provides good separation from a subject who’s physically combative and not cooperative, yet not acting in a way that has caused the situation to elevate to a deadly force response,” Blugis said.

These tools can benefit police in a variety of situations, said Mahanoy City police Chief Mark Wiekrykas.

“In the case of suicidal persons, like the case in New Philly, if you threaten them with a gun, they might put you in a situation where you’re going to have to shoot them and they’re going to accomplish what we call ‘suicide by cop,’ a national phenomenon right now. And the Taser allows you, in some of those situations, to subdue that suicidal person and take them for treatment without having to take their life,” Wiekrykas said.

Phillips said a Taser can keep police from getting hurt in physical altercations.

“If you physically fight to take someone into custody, nine times out of 10, myself, the officer I’m with, the bad guy, we’ll all wind up going to the hospital with bruising, swelling, broken bones, being bit ... and possibly with some long-term injury. With this, everybody bounces right back up,” Phillips said.

Incidents like that encouraged Mahanoy Township, now part of the Gilberton Regional Police, to purchase one.

“We felt there were times when the officer could use a Taser instead of any other kind of force, like a gun,” said Sharon R. Chiao, chairwoman of the Mahanoy Township supervisors.

McAdoo borough is looking into them, concerned about their officers’ safety during traffic stops.

“It’s such a busy highway coming through here, Route 309, and you never know who you’re going to pull over and what they may have on them,” said McAdoo Mayor Stephan R. Holly.

But not all departments are enthusiastic about Tasers.

“We’re not taking them for liability reasons. If you have a very combative suspect and you taze them and they have a pacemaker or a health problem and they go into cardiac arrest, who’s liable? Then you’re looking at a lawsuit. A lot of times pepper spray is just as efficient. I don’t care who you are, it’s going to put you down,” said Ashland Borough Council President Michael A. Groody.

“They are a little expensive and we are a small borough and the incidence of use would be few and far between, if they did need them,” said Tremont Mayor Charles A. Huntinger.

Tom Swift’s legacy

This electro-shock weapon was invented by Jack Cover, a NASA scientist, in 1969. The word Taser is inspired by the title of Victor Appleton’s 1911 adventure story, “Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle,” according to Policeone.com. Taser is an acronym, created by the addition of an A and subtraction of the H in the book’s title.

In the story, available at Gutenberg.org, Swift’s gun looked like an ordinary rifle, except the barrel was long and the stock was accented with a number of wheels, levers, gears and gauges.

Swift said his weapon was powered by an electric current stored in a cylinder and fired a concentrated charge.

“Then how does it kill?” asked Swift’s friend Ned Newton.

“By means of a concentrated charge of electricity which is shot from the barrel with great force. You can’t see it, yet it is there. It’s just as if you concentrated a charge of electricity of five thousand volts into a small globule the size of a bullet,” Swift said.

The model commonly used today by police is the Taser International X26, Walcott said.

It looks like a child’s toy, a lightweight, imitation “Star Wars” blaster. However, these battery-powered zappers fire aluminum darts connected to insulated, steel, thread-like wires to administer 50,000-volt shocks.

The cartridges in Walcott’s had a 25-foot reach. But Taser International sells them with ranges between 15 and 35 feet, according to their Web site.

Walcott videotaped a December 2004 Taser training session with his officers. Participating was one of the chief’s martial arts students who’s not a police officer, James D. Bova, 26, of West Penn Township. And Bova volunteered to be shot by the Taser.

“Jim’s the kind of guy who will try anything once, I guess,” Walcott said.

When the darts stuck Bova’s chest, he tensed up. “Ow-ow-ow!” Bova said as officers lowered him to the canvas. He banged his left arm off the floor, as if trying to tell those around him to stop the pain.

“It was only five seconds, but it felt more like 30,” Bova said.

What he expected?

“Worse,” Bova said.

There’s another way an officer can use the Taser X26 to shock a perpetrator, Walcott said. The officer can remove the dart cartridge from the barrel, press the weapon against someone’s body and zap them directly with the Taser’s tiny, yet powerful, electric arc.

“That’s called a drive stun. That would give you pain, but not give you the inability to move,” Wolcott said.

Just pulling out the Taser and pointing it can have a “calming effect” on a suspect, Dempsey said.

“We’re required to make an announcement we have the weapon. The Taser has a guide rod laser, a red dot, which is initiated on the target. And when they hear the word ‘Taser,’ it has a calming effect,” Dempsey said.

Coaldale police Officer Robert W. Melloy said that’s already happened on his beat.

“The local people know what they are now and a lot of times when we have them, all they do is see it and they comply without us having to deploy anything,” Melloy said.

Police can keep track of how many times a Taser pistol is used. The units record the times, dates the units are used and the duration of every zap.

“We have that for court and liability purposes,” Wiekrykas said.

Police Tasers come equipped with a Central Information Display, a two-digit digital counter which indicates battery power level and shock duration. The average Taser jolt is five seconds, Walcott said.

Tasers can range in price from $799 to $1,499, according to the Web site for one retailer, GT Distributors Inc., Rossville, Ga.

Concerns

The Taser has created controversy across the nation in the past few years. According to online news reports, it’s a tool that can be abused.

On April 28 in Waxahachie, Texas, Waxahachie police, responding to a 9-1-1 hang-up call, burst into the home of Allen Nelms, 52, and shocked him before asking questions, according to the Fort Worth Weekly Web site.

Nelms had suffered a diabetic seizure that morning and his fiancée, who had health problems of her own that made her words hard to understand, called 9-1-1, Fort Worth Weekly stated.

The American Civil Liberties Union claimed this week Tasers were partially responsible for the death of 160 people in the United States and Canada, including Lee Marvin Kimmel, 38, of Reading, in May 2005, and Kris Lieberman, 32, Bushkill Township, in June 2004.

Valerie A. Burch, staff attorney for the ACLU Central Region Office, Harrisburg, said information about those deaths can be found at www.raidh.org.

Police shocked Kimmel while he was breaking into a municipal building. He was wearing only socks and a T-shirt at the time. His heart stopped and he was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, according to the information Burch provided.

Police found Lieberman naked in a cornfield, crawling around and talking to himself. Officers said Lieberman lunged at them. They shocked him with a stun gun three times until he lost consciousness. Officers tried to revive him but he was pronounced dead a short time later. A medical examiner reported that Lieberman had high levels of cocaine in his system, according to raidh.org.

In response to the ACLU’s claims, Tuttle said, “Until all the facts surrounding these tragic incidents are known, it is inappropriate to jump to any conclusions on the cause of death. We are prepared to help the investigation of these unfortunate incidents.”

And Wolcott said, “To my knowledge there haven’t been any courts who have ruled about Tasers being the primary cause of any death. We’re going to continue to use them and we’ve used them with success.”

Taser International has had 52 consecutive wrongful death or injury lawsuits dismissed and has not lost any product liability lawsuit, Tuttle said.

“We’re very concerned about the use of Tasers because they’re being used in situations where lethal or other serious force would not otherwise have been used,” Burch said.

Yet average people are buying them for self-defense and approximately 136,000 citizens in the United States own Taser electronic control devices, Tuttle said.

Regulations

Burch was surprised to find the lack of federal and state regulations regarding stun guns on the books, while researching the matter Friday.

The only state law she found concerning use of a Taser in Pennsylvania is Title 18, Section 908.1. It states a person may own and use an electric incapacitation device for self defense purposes.

“I don’t think Tasers should be in the hands of everyone. Like guns, I think they should have permits,” Gilberton Mayor Mary Lou Hannon said Friday.

Burch said there are currently no state or federal laws regulating municipal police and their use of stun guns.

“Municipal police should have policies which clearly state when officers are authorized to use Tasers and when they are not,” Burch said.

A stun-gun incident which occurred in Aspen, Colo., in June 2006 led police there to adopt a Taser policy this past June, according to the Post Independent Web site.

In June 2006, an officer suspected a 63-year-old homeless woman of stealing a sweater from a thrift store’s drop box and hit the woman with the stun gun, the article stated.

“Aspen police never had a policy regarding when it’s appropriate to use a stun gun. Police Chief Loren Ryerson said at the time that the department’s use-of-force policy covered Taser use, though it did not mention it directly,” the Post Independent’s article stated.

Municipal police structure their use-of-force policies by taking tips from agencies like the Police Executive Research Forum, Washington, D.C., according to Burch and Wolcott.

Incorporated in 1977, PERF is a national membership organization of progressive police executives from the largest city, county and state law enforcement agencies, according to the PERF Web site.

PERF addressed Tasers in its Conducted Energy Device Policy and Training Guidelines for Consideration, which states, “CEDs (Conducted Energy Devices) should not generally be used against pregnant women, elderly persons, young children and visibly frail persons unless exigent circumstances exist.”

Walcott said Schuylkill Haven police base their use-of-force policy on recommendations from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Glynco, Ga.

The policy outlines five types of response, each increasing in intensity. Use of a Taser would fit into Level III, Wolcott said.

“When the subject becomes actively resistant, the officer/agent uses physical control tactics of sufficient force to overcome active resistance and remains vigilant for more aggressive behavior from the subject,” the borough’s use-of-force training manual states.

Other Level III control tactics include come-along holds, pressure points application, joint locks, relative positioning strategies, take downs and pepper spray, according to the manual.

Prison inmate Mackeravage said pepper spray is not in league with the Taser.

“Pepper spray burns, but you can wash it out. With a Taser, you get electrocuted half to death and you’re busted up for a couple of weeks afterwards. How can that compare to pepper spray?” Mackeravage said.

Walcott said he’s been sprayed with pepper spray and has been shot with Taser and agreed “the effects of the Taser are more severe.”

However, Walcott said the Taser is still a Level III response, saying, “It’s an effective means of gaining control, but it’s not lethal. It’s warranted if a suspect is actively resisting me.”

Mackeravage believes Tasers should be banned.

“I can see them using them if somebody attacks them,” Mackeravage said, “but what do they need them for if they have their guns? I think it’s cruel and unusual punishment and another form of police brutality.”

Source:www.republicanherald.com