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EMERGING TECHNOLOGY 89 Dash, 2005). The issue was also raised in Paris when a 16-year-old student was hit in the eye and wounded, this time at short range, by a 44 x 83mm Verney-Carron Flash-Ball projectile during the October 2010 pension reform demonstrations (Le Figaro, 2010). These events highlight the pitfalls of using long-range impact weapons for crowd control without a strict, specific use-of-force policy and proper personnel training. Among other things, use-of-force doctrine should allow for clear distinctions between discriminate targeting and crowd control. A 2006 report by the UK Steering Group in consultation with the Association of Chief Police Officers clearly states that the new Attenuating Energy Projectile: has not been designed for use as a crowd control technology but has been designed for use as a less lethal option in situations where officers are faced with individual aggressors whether such aggressors are acting on their own or as part of a group (UKSG, 2006, p. 7). Distinguishing lethal from less-lethal in the field A common argument in academic and advocacy circles is that the wide availability of less-lethal weapons has led to the relaxed use of such weapons as well as to an erosion of proportionality in the use of force. The weapons are criticized as making the use of force more acceptable and, overall, more widespread. Since the early 1990s, progress has been made by the scientific community to provide independent biomedical research, and by less-lethal weapons manufacturers to improve quality control at the production level. Yet developments are hampered by a glaring lack of internationally agreed tests and standards (Paulissen, 2010). While it is clear that less-lethal weapons have important weaknesses, in considering their overall utility it is important to weigh the alternatives, including the use of firearms. Electric-shock weapons exemplify some of the uncertainties inherent in use-of-force decision-making. The police community generally endorses the proportionate use of TASERs to save lives, reduce injuries to officers and suspects, and ultimately contribute to a positive outcome (Hawk, 2010). In 2010, for instance, the San Francisco Police Department undertook an elaborate and comparative statistical analysis of annual officer-involved shootings to advocate, in the end, for the procurement of TASERs to reduce the use of firearms even further (Wyllie, 2010). In the minds of some practitioners, there is thus no question that TASERs have provided police with a much needed use-of-force option. Opponents of the use of TASERs point out that the alleged flexibility they offer can conflict with norms governing the proportionate use of force. General Provision 2 of the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials advocates the development and use of non-lethal incapacitating weapons (1) ‘with a view to increasingly restraining the application of means capable of causing death or injury to persons’, but also (2) ‘to decrease the need to use weapons of any kind’ (UN, 1990). It is not clear that either has happened. The recent generation of less-lethal weapons, and specifically TASERs, is not substituted for lethal weapons, but deployed in addition to them, with officers who already carry a sidearm (South Yorkshire Police, n.d.). 26 This approach is deeply rooted in police practice. In September 2007, the UK Home Secretary provided an exception by allowing non-firearms officers to use TASERs under a controversial pilot scheme; the initiative was refused by some of the country’s largest forces, including the Metropolitan Police (Whitehead, 2009). Other examples cast doubt as to whether less-lethal weapons have effectively reduced the police use of firearms. A recent audit of the Houston Police Department reported no significant reduction in the number of police shootings of civilians since the introduction of electric-shock weapons (Parker and Schoonover, 2008, p. 12). A 2010 report on The recent generation of less-lethal weapons does not replace lethal weapons but is deployed in addition to them.
90 SMALL ARMS SURVEY 2011 the use of TASER weapons by the Western Australia Police found that despite an overall 25 per cent increase in TASER use between 2007 and 2009, the use of firearms by police doubled during the same period (CCC, 2010, p. 13, para. 7). Secondly, academic, police, and media reports suggest that the increased availability of less-lethal weapons for routine police operations may have lowered the threshold for use-of-force against passive resisters, and widened the net of people against whom the police has used coercion, including minorities (Davison, 2009, p. 5; CNN, 2010; AI, 2008, p. 22). According to a 2010 company press kit, more than 15,500 law enforcement agencies in 40 countries have purchased at least 499,000 TASER devices since 1998 (TASER International, 2010). The company website states that more than 86 per cent of these agencies place the use of a TASER device at the level of pepper spray deployment. Yet police agencies have not come to any consensus with respect to where TASERs should be deployed within a use-of-force continuum. In Figure 3.1, the use of less-lethal weapons is just one step below firearms, meaning that it ranks as a responding officer’s final attempt to avoid the use of lethal force. Inversely, agency policy can place TASERs early in the use-of-force continuum, notably at active resistance level, in order to prevent the conflict from escalating into assault. However, if TASER deployment is placed too close to the beginning of the continuum, for example as an accessory to verbal action, their use may be seen as trivialized, with verbal exchanges quickly escalating to the use of physical force. Indeed, TASERs have Wearing crowd-control gear, police hold shotguns during a demonstration in Oakland, California, after Johannes Mehserle was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of Oscar Grant, July 2010. © Paul Sakuma/AP Photo
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