“Many people with disabilities, be they developmental disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, or mental health problems, look at the taser with great fear,” said Ruben, a former public defender in Rutland. “It is a torture device for many people.”
“More has to be done to ensure that law enforcement officers are not using tasers on people with disabilities in inappropriate circumstances,” Ruben said.
The devices, also known as stun guns and “electronic control devices,” typically deliver about 1,200 volts of electricity via two barbed fish hooks, which penetrate a quarter of an inch underneath human skin. The shock paralyzes muscles and causes intense pain for five seconds, a standard duration “cycle” used by police.
Currently, the Vermont State Police’s taser policy only permits their use on subjects who are “actively resisting” state troopers. The weapons “are not to be used in a punitive or coercive manner, and shall not be used to awaken, escort, or gain compliance from passively resistant subjects,” reads the policy.
Troopers must also avoid aiming at a subject’s head, neck, groin, or breasts, and must consider if a fall after the shock could seriously harm the person. They must take special care when confronted by vulnerable people, like children, pregnant women, the elderly, and those with mental illnesses.
But at the public forum, convened to discuss state policy on tasers in the wake of Macadam Mason’s death last year, Ruben said these safeguards were sometimes flouted or ignored. He cited cases in which a 16-year-old was tased in a psychiatric unit; a homeless Barre woman was tased for refusing to leave a convenience store; and a young developmentally disabled man was tased in his bathroom when he refused to co-operate with law enforcement.
VPR’s John Dillon reported on this pattern last year, reviewing dozens of cases where police used force to subdue a situation involving a subject in a mental crisis. He turned to Ruben to help vet the cases.
Ruben knows of at least 10 such recent cases, where he said tasers were unsuitably deployed, of about 25 in total involving people with disabilities. Attorney General Bill Sorrell, the state’s top law enforcement officer, said these only made up a small minority of “the hundreds and hundreds of times tasers have been deployed in the state.”
Throughout the forum, Sorrell defended the controlled and considered use of tasers. In past years his office has twice been critical of incidents where local police arguably used excessive force. Sorrell and Gov. Peter Shumlin also rejected calls for a statewide moratorium on tasers last year, a demand reiterated on Monday by some of the forum’s roughly 20 audience members.
After the three hour forum, which took testimony from taser experts, police officers, and members of the public, Sorrell said: “There are clearly instances where tasers save injuries, not only to police but to individuals. But like anything else, any kind of weapon, they’re subject to abuse or misuse.”
Sorrell pointed to a Burlington attack last weekend where a 31-year-old man who’d tripped on hallucinogenic drugs for four days reportedly bit two people in the face, as a case of justified taser use. The Burlington Free Press reported on the story on Sunday.
The attorney general supports taser use and has rarely criticized officers for stun gun misuse. In Sorrell’s 2008 report on tasers he took Brattleboro police to task for abusing the weapon in two separate instances.
In one case, a young patient at the Brattleboro Retreat, a mental health hospital, barricaded himself in his own room in July 2007. Although Sorrell deemed that the tasing in this case was appropriate, he said it lasted for twice as long as necessary, 10 seconds instead of the usual five.
In the other case, two protestors chained to a barrel protesting a new commercial development were tased in July 2007, so police could take them into custody. The two protestors eventually sued five police officers for excessive force claims, but lost in the courts.
Sorrell doesn’t know if Brattleboro officers were disciplined or fired after those reviews, which were requested by then-Gov. Jim Douglas. The Brattleboro Police Department didn’t immediately return a request for comment, to clarify what happened to those officers.
Thetford Democrat and Mason’s neighbor Rep. Jim Masland introduced legislation last month that pushes for a statewide taser training and deployment policy. Discussion in the House Government Operations committee is ongoing.
Since March 2011, tasers have been fired at least 70 times in Vermont, according to Sgt. Hugh O’Donnell, a taser instructor for the state police. State troopers, typically armed with pepper spray, tasers, batons, and guns, are told to use tasers and spray for actively resisting subjects, batons for those trying to assault an officer, and guns only in situations where lethal force is reasonable.
At the forum, O’Donnell demonstrated a taser firing on a two-dimensional cardboard man padded with tin foil, showing the audience firsthand how the weapon works.
Some Vermonters felt sympathy for police officers who must judge quickly, in dangerous and stressful enviroments, whether taser use is appropriate.
“I know firsthand if I’m walking down the street carrying my taser, and somebody starts fighting or trying to rob me, I will tase them. I’m not going to be thinking, in that high pressure situation, I wonder if they have a heart problem, I wonder if they’re crazy,” said Merill, a private citizen who owns two tasers and who didn’t state his last name.
Other audience members felt equally strongly, in contrast, about the dangers of the weapon. They called for measures like increased oversight, an independent citizen review panel, a moratorium, or an outright permanent ban.
For police, too, the taser experience varies across different towns, since each local department sets their own taser policies. The devices are used by 39 police departments across the state.
Former Burlington deputy police chief Walter Decker said tasers there had saved the police department thousands of dollars in reduced worker compensation claims, since cops suffered less injuries on the job.
He added that citizen complaints about excessive force diminished after the introduction of tasers. Compared to protracted fist fights on staircases, said Decker, an abrupt and incapacitating taser shock neatly resolves most tussles.
But in Montpelier, the City Council rejected a request from the Montpelier police chief and the city manager for permission to deploy tasers. After examining tasers at length, a citizen committee recommended against the weapons, deeming them unnecessary and potentially dangerous.
Jeffrey Dworkin, a Montpelier attorney and psychotherapist who studied tasers for that committee, said that contrary to Decker’s assertions, tasers don’t result in less use of guns by cops, and at least for Montpelier’s police, were not needed for their street patrols.
Other topics addressed by the forum included mounting cameras on police uniforms to capture taser deployments; whether the ‘active resistance’ standard should be changed to allow taser use only in the face of imminent harm; and whether ordinary citizens might soon start buying tasers en masse.
The House Government Operations committee takes testimony on tasers this Wednesday.
Watch a 2008 video of attorney general Sorrell being tased here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMDJvyBbx1I. Panelists at the forum were Allen Gilbert of the ACLU-Vermont, Ed Paquin of Disability Rights Vermont, Sorrell, state Sen. Alice Nitka, D-Windsor, and Rep. Bill Lippert, D-Hinesburg.
Read the attorney general’s comprehensive 2008 report on tasers and testimony which Ruben submitted to House Government operations earlier in February.
