The Mixed Effects of Tasers in Civilian-Police Encounters

In the early 2000s, police departments across the U.S. began deploying Tasers—devices that deliver an electric current to incapacitate targets—as an alternative use-of-force against civilians. The Taser was considered a non-lethal alternative to firearms and promised increased safety for officers in situations that normally require more physical contact. While outcomes for officer safety appear to be consistently positive, the impact on Taser victims is more complex.

The Chicago Police Department (CPD) first began issuing Tasers to sergeants in 2004. In 2010, a change in policy expanded the use of Tasers by issuing them to patrol officers as well. Bocar Ba and Jeffrey Grogger, researchers from the University of Chicago, explored how this policy change affected Taser use as a substitute for other types of force. They analyzed data on police encounters from 2005 to 2015 to compare the changes in the number of use-of-force incidents, the racial distribution of subjects of use-of-force incidents, and injury rates of officers and civilians both before and after Tasers were issued. They also evaluated changes in the use of Tasers after all sergeants and patrol officers acquired training on the potentially harmful effects of Taser use and officer liability for injuries.

The authors used data from CPD Tactical Response Reports: a record of incidents in which officers encountered subjects who they considered active resisters or assailants. Incidents that involve cooperative or passively resistant subjects do not require a report unless the subject reports an injury. The classifications of whether incidents involve violent or passive subjects are assigned based on the level of force the officer used against the subject, not the subject’s level of resistance. For example, when an officer uses his firearm against a subject, the subject is classified as an assailant because the officer deployed his firearm, not because the subject’s actions threatened physical harm. In the data set, 85 percent of incidents involved active resisters or assailants, with the remainder involving cases in which cooperative or passively resistant subjects reported injury after an interaction with an officer.

In their analysis, the authors find no evidence of patrol officers substituting away from greater types of force, such as pain-inducing physical force or force with a firearm, following the expanded deployment of Tasers in 2010. Instead, they found that the introduction of Tasers resulted in officers substituting away from lesser non-physical force, which poses a higher risk for officers but results in less civilian injuries; tasing from afar reduces an officer’s risk of personal injury. After retraining in 2012, officers continued substituting away from lesser kinds of force, but also began substituting away from using major physical force in favor of Tasers, with the exception of firearms. In essence, any incident that could not be resolved peacefully or with a gun was resolved with a Taser, a phenomenon some researchers have dubbed “lazy cop syndrome.”

Their results for changes in injury rates were consistent with past studies. The introduction of Tasers reduced the likelihood of officer injury, but had no effect on the rate of civilian injury, neither before nor after retraining. Because the civilian injury rate is the number of reported injuries divided by the number of use-of-force incidents, the introduction of Tasers could have increased both the number of civilian injuries and the total use-of-force incidents, leaving the injury rate unchanged, The authors also found that Tasers neither exacerbated nor ameliorated the overrepresentation of minority subjects in use-of-force incidents.

The study’s results suggest that police use of Tasers—along with proper training—may decrease the overall use-of-force, but both injuries to civilians and firearm deployment remain unchanged. Because Tasers impose a health and safety risk on civilians, they should not be the default means in police confrontations, particularly in encounters that require only minor force. Officers’ time and resources may be better spent in alternative forms of de-escalation training, such as stress inoculation and outcome-focused training, to resolve confrontational situations, preserving both the safety of officers and civilians alike.

Article source:  Ba, Bocar and Grogger, Jeffrey. “The Introduction of Tasers and Police Use of Force: Evidence from the Chicago Police Department.” National Bureau of Economic Research,  No. w24202 (2018).

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