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Report on Town Hall Meeting on Tasers in Berkeley

Steve Martinot
Friday September 05, 2014 - 03:08:00 PM

There was a Town Hall meeting on Tasers last night (Sept. 4) here in Berkeley (at 1939 Addison St.) The meeting was called to provide information and discussion on this weapon. The Berkeley Police Department has asked the city for permission to obtain them. They had made this request a year ago, and been turned down by the city council. They are asking again. 

The panelists included a representative of the NAACP, the Palo Alto public defenders office, a Berkeley attorney, and a member of organizations that have been active against the use of Tasers. Their names are Barbara White, Aram James, Jim Chanin, and Jeremy Miller. The meeting was sponsered by a coalition of 14 local civic and social justice organizations. 

Here is a synopsis of the salient facts presented by this panel and the discussion that ensued. 

  • Tasers are not non-lethal. Since 2001, over 500 people have been killed by police use of Tasers.
  • Tasers are not a non-lethal substitute for guns. When confronted with an armed person, police use guns. Tasers are for use in situations in which the subject is unarmed.
  • Taser are thus a substitute for other non-lethal means of control, such a pepper spray, nightsticks (aka batons), and dogs.
  • With respect to these other means of control, a Taser are a much more lethal weapon, but easier to use.
  • More people have been killed, or permenantly damaged and disabled from the use of tasers than any of these other means of person-control.
  • The object of the Taser is to cause pain. Therefore, is it an instrument of torture. The purpose of torture, or to cause pain, is to force obedience, even to illegal commands.
  • Obedience by the people is not a power the government has a right to demand. The right to say "no," to object to and to protest what the government does (in the person of the police officer) is a right guaranteed the people by the Constitution. Weapons of obedience are therefore by nature unconstitutional. Weapons of torture are in violation of international law.
  • Disobedience on the part of a person stopped by the police is generally considered "violence" by the police, and dealt with as such. This most often amounts to a criminalization of constitutional behavior.
  • The acceptance of Tasers in the hands of government authorities signifies the acceptance of torture as normal. That means that we as a people live in a society that accepts torture as normal, and that therefore legitimizes torture as routine. This is an ethical question about who we have become.
  • Tasers deliver 50,000 volts in each shock. That is 25% of the voltage used in an electric chair, though the current is much lower. The Taser can deliver repeated shocks, which can cause cardiac arrest. One policeman, who allowed himself to be Tased in order to know what it felt like said it was the most painful thing he had ever experienced. The training manuals from “Taser International,” the company that makes them, warn police officers not to test them on themselves.
  • In-custody deaths increased three fold in California after police departments got Tasers. It is estimated that over 300 in-custody deaths over the last 10 years are due to Taser use.
  • The degree of violence on the part of police toward individuals they have stopped on the street, for whatever reason, has increased dramatically once police departments got Tasers (the actual degree is difficult to gauge since civilian review, and thus strict record-keeping, was gutted in California by the Copley Press vs. San Diego case).
  • Two suits have recently been settled in the millions of dollars for people who have suffered brain damage, and been permanently disabled, by the use of Tasers.
  • Taser deaths are not necessarily investigated by the DA; only firearms death are. Taser injuries in custody are not considered a medical event and thus no medical attention is given to the victim.
At the Town Hall, the people who spoke were generally in opposition to the use of Tasers and the prospect of giving them to the Berkeley Police Department. The general sentiment was that it behooves Berkeley to stand in opposition to the use of Tasers. 

The City Manager was asked to prepare a report on the use and abuse of tasers for the City Council. That report will be submitted to the City Council on Sept. 9 (next Tuesday). The issue must also be discussed in the Community Health Commission and the Police Review Commission. 

The panelists and sponsoring organizations at this Town Hall ask all in the city of Berkeley to join them in opposing giving Tasers to the Police Department.