Stun Guns Popular Among Parents and School Boards, Manufacturer Says
By Alanna Mitchell, The Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada)
Alongside the monkey bars, lockers and lunch rooms, several hundred school districts in the United States now feature police officers patrolling the corridors armed with tasers, high-voltage stun guns.
Those schools include elementary, junior high and high schools, said Steve Tuttle, director of communications for Taser International Inc., which is based in Arizona.
The devices are in regular use in school districts covered by at least 587 U.S. police departments and on about 186 university campuses, according to a poll Mr. Tuttle conducted last week.
“Parents are very positive about it,” Mr. Tuttle said.
While tasers are used in 63 police departments across Canada and have been shipped here since August, 1999, they do not appear to be routine in Canadian schools, he said.
Will the taser end up as a regular feature of Canadian schools?
“I will pray every night that it doesn’t,” said Terry Price, president of the Canadian Teachers’ Federation. “And I’m not religious.”
She said the federation has a policy banning physical and corporal punishment for any student, including the use of any sort of weapon. The taser, she said, “is a violent attack on someone’s body. It’s uncalled-for in school.”
She said Canada’s teachers advocate non-violent resolution of conflicts.
Tasers, (the name is an acronym for Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle, after a 1938 storybook that inspired the inventor), deliver a high-voltage electric current shot through slim, straightened fishhooks attached to long lead wires.
The guns work from as far as 21 feet away but also from close up. The fishhooks sometimes pierce the skin, but are mainly designed to attach to clothing.
The electrical current, jumped up by 50,000 volts, is capable of passing through two inches of clothing, including leather jackets. The pulse of electricity interrupts the body’s central nervous system, temporarily cutting off the ability of the muscles to function.
Five seconds later, once the current cuts off, the body returns to normal, Mr. Tuttle said.
“It’s like a light switch,” he said. “That’s the beauty of the system.”
Chemical spray, he noted, has effects that linger for half an hour and can affect people other than those for whom it is intended.
Mr. Tuttle said that many medical studies and academic trials have shown that the taser is safe. He added, though, that it is “very uncomfortable” to be shot with a taser. He said that for him, it felt like having your funny bone banged 17 times a second for five seconds.
“It’s disconcerting because you can’t control your body,” he said.
He said his firm conducts demonstrations for school boards in the United States and that parents are keen on the devices because they don’t leave a physical scar in the way that being hit with a baton does.
Sergeant Greg O’Halloran, spokesman of the Olathe Police Department in Kansas near Kansas City, said all seven junior highs and four high schools in his area are staffed with a full-time police officer armed with a taser and a gun. The elementary schools are patrolled by two taser-armed officers.
The school board is so enthusiastic that it pays half the salary of each of the 13 taser-armed officers who work in the schools, he said. Each officer is trained for a full day in the use of the stun gun and is “tased” as well, Sgt. O’Halloran said.
“I’ve been in law enforcement for 23 years, and I think this is one of the most effective tools I’ve come across,” he said.
Police in Canada are not so sure. Last month, Canada’s chiefs of police ordered a review of the weapons because six Canadians died after being “tased.” It is not clear whether the weapons had any effect on the deaths. Nor is it clear whether they were involved in the deaths of at least 50 Americans after being stunned.
On the other hand, the weapons, billed as a non-lethal alternative to guns, were approved for limited use last week in England after an intensive trial.
Mr. Tuttle said police forces in Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea were anxiously awaiting the decision in England before figuring out whether to approve the devices.