Lawrence, KS - taser use quadrupled, half of that increase ill-advised

It's a good news / bad news taser report from Lawrence, Kansas.

...In 2010, Lawrence police officers used their Tasers on suspects eight times. That’s up from two times in 2009. The department found all eight incidents to be justified and within the department’s policy, but Chief Tarik Khatib said three of the instances perhaps could have been avoided by using a different philosophy. Khatib ordered additional Taser training (*) for all police officers to review the department’s philosophy that Tasers are best used to prevent a physical attack on an officer or other person rather than simply as a tool to apprehend someone who is resisting arrest. “We found all of them to be legal and within our policy, but we thought perhaps other methods could have been used in three of these cases,” Khatib said. ... [LINK]

(*) Duh!!  It's called Use of Force (lawful force) training. They don't need more "Taser training"; they probably need less of any so-called training that can be in any way traced back to the scuz-ball company that would love to sell you more and more taser cartridges each year (and to hell with the resultant civil rights violations).

The police in Lawrence are obviously not using tasers as replacements for guns. Keep that in mind in case anyone drags out that old lie to justify tasers. They wouldn't be shooting their guns, let along killing citizens, eight times per year in a town of 88,000. Not even 1% of that rate. Which proves the old point that tasers are unfortunately used about one-hundred times as often as police would ever have used their guns. Which in turn proves that they haven't understood the information from Taser International dated 1 May 2010 about how potentially deadly tasers can randomly be.

Taser (over)use in Lawrence has quadrupled in a year (two to eight). And half of the increase (6) was unnecessary. By their standards. Under their belief system. The good news is that Chief Khatib sees the problem (even if he simultaneously denies that there's an actual problem), and is implementing corrective action.

They had better tighten it up or else they'll be heading down the same road as so many other jurisdictions where loose policy results in a clear excess of evil.