Pursuit of shock tactics

THEY were hardly angels. Loaded with a youthful contempt for authority, each of them crossed police after dark, with dramatically different ends.

TWO teenagers out at night. A year apart in age, and living in separate cities, they were hardly angels. Street-wise and loaded with a youthful contempt for authority, each of them crossed police after dark, with dramatically different ends.

Tyler Cassidy, 15, later described by his mum as a "scared little boy", died in a hail of bullets after threatening police with knives at a Melbourne skate park in December.

The other, a slightly built, 16-year-old Brisbane girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was held down and tasered by police last April in an inner-city park after she defied an order to move on because she was waiting for an ambulance to treat her sick friend.

Both have since become the focus on each side of a heated debate as Australia's police forces rush to arm their front-line officers with the 50,000-volt electro-muscular disruption devices, popularly known by the market-leading American brand name, Taser.

A civil liberties stoush is erupting across the Western world as law enforcement agencies increasingly turn to stun guns as an alternative to lethal force, while evidence mounts that tasers, in fact, can kill.

A recent Amnesty International report claims the organisation's research revealed more than 300 people had died after being tasered in the US since the weapon was introduced in 2001. Over a similar period in Canada, tasers are said to be responsible for 20 deaths.

The findings have been dismissed by Taser.

However, even when not lethal, the devices have been contentious. The UN last year described them as an instrument of torture.

In Australia tasers have thus far mostly been restricted to the highly trained police tactical response units, but they are now set to become part of the everyday arsenal of general duties police in every state and territory.

Yet their proliferation has largely occurred by stealth, with little public or parliamentary scrutiny.

Last week, Queensland joined Western Australia - which in 2007 issued 1500 tasers to its front-line police - and began issuing the weapon to more general duties officers, more than 5000 of whom are expected to be equipped with one by the end of the year.

Controversially, the decision to extend their use beyond Queensland's tactical response units was made by the Bligh Government last January, halfway through a year-long trial at select city stations.

The results of the truncated trial are a closely guarded secret, but Queensland's Crime and Misconduct Commission, which is assessing the report, is understood to have sent it back to police brass for more work because of a perceived bias towards supporting the widespread rollout.

Despite the NSW Ombudsman recommending a two-year freeze on the rollout of tasers to general duty officers, the state's Police Minister Tony Kelly last month moved down the same path as Queensland, ordering a report on a similar trial to be handed over by the end of this month, nine months before it was due.

And in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania the pressure is building on governments to extend the use of tasers beyond specialist units.

Victoria Police - after the shooting death of Tyler Cassidy - are committed to making a decision by the end of the year.

The taser uses a high-voltage, low-power charge of electricity to immobilise or inflict pain on people. It can be used in two ways.

In probe mode, it shoots two metal darts on wires at the target, which can be farther than 10m. The darts, which can penetrate clothing 2.5cm thick, deliver a painful 50,000-volt shock that causes involuntary muscular contractions, which incapacitates a person until the charge is turned off.

In drive stun mode, the taser can be used much like a cattle prod: it inflicts acute pain on the body area with which it comes into contact.

Taser International, the Arizona-based company that manufactures the devices, has a simple message in selling its wares: "Protect life".

It argues tasers save lives because police use them instead of guns.

It is a message that has been embraced across the world, including by the Police Association of Victoria in the wake of the Cassidy shooting.

Association spokesman Senior Sergeant Greg Davies says he can't speculate as to what would have happened if police at the scene had been equipped with tasers.

"It is dangerous to second-guess what could have happened," he says. "But those boys should have had the option (of) being equipped with a taser as an alternative."

While Cassidy's death is being investigated by the Victoria coroner, there is little doubt the teenager was a danger to himself and police when he was confronted at the Northcote skate park.

According to reports at the time, police were called to the park after Cassidy was seen acting erratically.

Four officers arrived and tried to negotiate with the teenager, who was brandishing two knives. He was hit with two doses of capsicum spray as he repeatedly approached police.

The boy reportedly urged police to kill him or he would kill them, and again he moved towards police. A warning shot was fired.

But police reportedly ignored his demands to back off. Cassidy was then shot to death by three of the four officers.

Davies says studies across the world show that displaying a taser sometimes suffices to resolve a dangerous situation.

"Late last year, Britain's Home Office, which just authorised the purchase of 10,000 more tasers, released statistics that in 80per cent of cases, just pulling the weapon out of the holster was enough to bring a situation under control," he says. "The mere fact they knew they were going to be tasered was enough to make people comply."

Davies says Victoria Police brass have "dragged their feet" in taking the decision to extend taser use despite two recommendations to do so by the Victorian coroner in the past few years.

In Queensland, state coroner Michael Barnes last year ruled the lives of four young mental health patients shot dead by police in armed sieges could have been saved if officers had been armed with tasers. Police Minister Judy Spence had already ordered the rollout months before Barnes issued his findings and unsuccessfully called for the trial to continue.

But for Queensland Police deputy commissioner Kathy Rynders, the findings are still valid in defending the decision to have 5000 officers equipped with tasers by the end of the year. "The taser minimises the risk of injury to police and the individuals they are dealing with," she says.

"We have been looking at these devices for a long time, since 2003, and clearly this gives us another option to drawing a weapon."

Rynders says when tasers are pulled out of their holster, 41percent of the time the situation is readily resolved.

"We are finding that showing a person that we will use the weapon is enough to defuse the situation and they comply."

During the Queensland trial, the weapon was mostly used in the drive stun mode. It is this capability - where the gun is pressed against a person to inflict localised pain - that has angered many civil liberties lawyers.

Queensland Civil Liberties president Michael Cope says the drive stun mode of tasers should be removed. "Probe mode is used to incapacitate a person from a distance, who may be holding a knife, whereas the other capability basically delivers localised pain from close quarters," he says. "If they police are that close, why do they need a taser? There is no mark left and it is open to misuse."

Cope and other Queensland lawyers cite the case of the 16-year-old girl, whom police tasered in drive stun mode when she defied an order to move on.

The Crime and Misconduct Commission and the police ethical standards unit launched an investigation into the April incident, which drew a strong rebuke from a magistrate in the Brisbane Children's Court.

The unarmed teenager, who weighed 50kg, was being held down by two security officers when a policeman deployed a drive stun blast to her thigh, in an apparent breach of guidelines banning the use of a taser on a juvenile unless there is imminent risk of injury.

Magistrate Pam Dowse slammed the police officer for overreacting to the teenager's refusal to leave her unconscious friend, a girl, before the ambulance arrived.

"It didn't seem to be a crisis requiring such a stern response," she said.

Last week, Queensland Police announced the officers involved in the incident would escape disciplinary action because no formal complaint had been made.

The teenager's family is preparing legal action against the police but has faced obstacles, such as the authorities' refusal to release CCTV footage of the incident. Leading Brisbane lawyer Scott McDougall says the incident is an example of "taser creep", a phenomenon that US and Canadian civil liberties groups claim has led to misuse of the device in those countries.

"There has been found to be a creep in the tendency for tasers to be used in circumstances (for which) they are not intended," he says.

"So, at the moment, under the Queensland Police guidelines, officers are able to justify using a taser against anyone offering anything other than passive resistance. It lends itself to misuse by undisciplined officers."

Queensland lawyers briefed last week by police say the drive stun mode is, in effect, represents an elevation in the force's "pain policy" to garner compliance.

But Rynders dismisses the claim. "It is not elevation, it is just another tool in the use of force model we use," she says. "In training, we emphasise that the use of the drive stun mode is not the first option, that they have to make an assessment of the situation.

"But it doesn't have to be the last option, because sometimes there is not enough time to move through the options."

She says Queensland Police have introduced rigorous accountability measures, including mandatory reporting and an independent review of each incident in which a taser is removed from a holster.

"We are comfortable that we now have the right policies, a multi-layered framework, to enable us to give our officers another option."

McDougall says the drive stun mode runs the risk of escalating an incident, leading to greater physical restraint and then injury or death. "It is these subsequent restraints that are behind so many of the deaths overseas," he says.

Taser's sole distributor in Australia, George Hateley, says reports of deaths blamed on the device are wildly exaggerated.

"If you look closely at the coroner's findings in these cases, you will find that tasers are not found to have contributed to the actual death," he says.

"While a taser was used in the incident, the deaths are drug-related or through the stress on the body through excited delirium."

But Hateley says that in the wrong hands, a taser can be dangerous.

"If police are given a new high-performance car they still have to abide by their internal standard operational procedures, and if they don't, they can kill," he says.

"These devices cannot kill, but they can be misused in the wrong hands."