San Francisco Chronicle
SAN FRANCISCO — One-third of shootings by San Francisco police over a five-year period might have been avoided had officers been equipped with less-lethal options such as TASERs, a police study suggests.
Unlike many departments, San Francisco police officers are not equipped with TASERs, stun guns that disrupt a target’s muscle control. Chief George Gascón, who ordered the study shortly after coming on the job in late July, says the city should consider adopting the devices.
Critics of TASERs, however, say they are not the nonlethal weapons the maker advertises. They point to hundreds of deaths associated with the devices since their use began spreading in law enforcement in the late 1990s.
The word “TASER” is not included in the 185-page study of officer-involved shootings, written by Assistant Chief Morris Tabak and released this week. But Gascón made it clear in an interview Friday that it supported the case for giving officers stun guns.
“One of the things we are saying in this analysis is that if we had another tool in the tool bag, i.e., a TASER, some of these shootings could have been avoided,” Gascón said.
15 shootings studied
Police officials will discuss the study Feb. 3 before the Police Commission, which would have to approve any request for the department to adopt TASERs.
The study focuses on the 15 shootings by San Francisco police officers from 2005 through August 2009 involving serious injury or death. Eight of the targets were killed, and seven were wounded.
In all but one of the confrontations, Tabak said, the suspects were too close for police to use nonlethal bean-bag rounds, which are fired from a shotgun.
None of the shootings violated department policy on use of force, the report said. But a number of them, Tabak concluded, could have ended differently if officers had “a viable alternative to the use of deadly force.”
The study rules out using less-lethal alternatives to guns if a suspect has a firearm, which was the case in seven of the shootings.
Five key cases
In five of the other eight shootings, the study suggests, officers needed something to incapacitate a suspect not armed with a gun “in order to stop the immediate threat.” The suspects had knives or had charged the officers.
In the remaining three cases, TASERs wouldn’t have helped because the officers shot someone in a moving car. The department is changing its rules both to ban such shootings and to allow officers to use police cruisers to block suspects - something they are directed not to do now.
Among the shootings reviewed by the report was a 2006 incident in which a mentally troubled 25-year-old man, Asa Sullivan, was shot to death in a darkened attic after he “refused to show his hands,” the study says. At the time, police said the two officers who shot him mistook an eyeglasses case in his hand for a gun.
The study ruled out the use of nonlethal force in the incident because of the potential Sullivan was armed. But the attorney who sued the city on behalf of the family, John Burris, said he welcomed the study’s findings.
“TASERs can be appropriate and could certainly save lives, if they are appropriately used,” said Burris, whose suit is still pending. “It’s important that they SFPD are talking about it.”
Mentally ill suspects
The study found that a suspect’s mental illness was an issue in four other shootings besides Sullivan’s death, and said the Police Department had yet to comply fully with a lawsuit settlement that required all officers to undergo a week of training on how to handle such cases.
Mesha Monge-Irizarry reached the settlement with the city after suing over the 2001 police shooting death of her mentally troubled son, Idriss Stelley. She said Friday that TASERs are not the answer, pointing to one study that found police use of the weapons has resulted in the deaths of more than 250 people.
TASERs ‘can kill,’ mom says
“TASERs actually can defibrillate the heart,” Monge-Irizarry said. “TASERs, in people who are fragile, who have pre-existing conditions, can kill because of the sudden change in hormone levels. That can lead to heart attacks.”
The answer is to have mental health professionals respond to situations involving troubled suspects in lieu of police, she said.
Police Commission President Joe Marshall said he looked forward to reading the report in detail.
“It is something that the chief and the commission felt there was a need to do an in-depth study on,” Marshall said. “We always want to get better.”
Copyright 2010 San Francisco Chronicle