Tasers in schools new option, concern
Posted on Monday, February 6, 2006
School resource officers in two of the four largest school districts in Northwest Arkansas now carry Tasers to school every day.
Late last year, the Springdale and Rogers Police Departments joined the ranks of the estimated 1, 700 departments nationwide that outfit their school-based officers with the electro-shock weapon. Resource officers in Fayetteville also carry the weapons in schools occasionally, officials say.
Proponents of the technology say the Tasers give officers an additional option to control aggressive students who sometimes outweigh them, but others claim the weapons have no place in the nation’s schools.
Most larger school districts have at least one school resource officer who works for a local police department but is responsible for law enforcement within a school. Some officers are stationed at one school, while others split time between several locations.
In addition to enforcing the law and conducting criminal investigations in the schools, the officers spend time counseling students and making classroom presentations.
Officers in Northwest Arkansas schools typically police the high schools and junior highs and not the middle and elementary schools. They wear the standard department uniform and they carry a service pistol.
Now the school resource officers in Springdale and Rogers also carry Arizona-based Taser International’s X 26 model.
The weapon shoots twin barbs that lodge themselves in the body. The barbs are connected back to the handheld device by cabling, which is used to transfer 50, 000 volts into the target. The shock overrides motor nervous system impulses and instantly incapacitates even the most aggressive attackers, the manufacturer claims. “I’ve seen a couple guys hit with them... and I don’t want to have to be tased,” said Eric King, president of the Safe School Association, an organization that represents more than 150 school resource officers and school administrators across Arkansas. “It’s kind of like a real hard seizure they are having, and it just drops them to the ground.”
THE PROS Local police officers describe the Taser as simply “another tool in the tool-belt” to enforce law and order in schools where 17-year-olds come as large and as strong as grown men.
A Taser gives officers not only an alternative to the use of deadly force, they say, but also an option that will do less physical damage to the student than the baton, pepper spray or a physical takedown.
Rogers Police Chief Steve Helms said that as school violence increases — and his school resource officers have more contact with aggressive adults either on campus or at extracurricular events — he wants to do everything he can to help his officers do their jobs safely.
“I know Tasers have kind of gotten a bad rap, but these are police officers — they wear a uniform, they carry a gun to school every day, and this is another one of their tools,” said Lt. Ron Hritz, supervisor of the Springdale Police Department’s school resource officer program.
Officials with Taser International acknowledge their weapons are not risk-free. But a number of studies show the weapons are safer options than traditional nonlethal police weapons, they say. Taser International spokesman Steve Tuttle said the company’s products, which are used by more than 170, 000 law enforcement officers worldwide, have a 20-to-1 safety margin. “Meaning it would take a shock 20 times the power of the Taser to inflict [death ],” Tuttle said. “Acetaminophen has an 8 to 1 safety margin.”
THE CONS Nevertheless, the appearance of Tasers in schools has attracted a firestorm of criticism. Amnesty International produced a report in late 2004 that claims not enough research has been done to verify the safety of Tasers. Since 2001, the humanrights organization claims, more than 120 people have died in the United States and Canada after being shot with a Taser barb.
Edward Jackson, a spokesman for Amnesty International, said that research shows the weapons do not pose a long-term health threat to healthy adults. But he claims there is no evidence showing that they are safe to use on individuals on drugs, senior citizens or children.
The shock could do neurological damage to children whose brains are still developing, Jackson said, leaving permanent psychological scars.
“School administrators say, ‘The police say they are safe, so they must be,’ but the information given to the police is inaccurate and biased,” Jackson said. “It should be alarming to parents that there is this egregious lack of information about what these things could be doing to our children, but no one seems to care. “ These weapons were designed to be used on hardened criminals, not eighth-graders.”
FLORIDA Florida has become the center of the debate over Tasers in schools. The weapon’s public relations battle began in 2004 in Miami-Dade County, where a school resource officer shocked a 6-year-old who was cutting himself with a shard of glass. Supporters of the officer’s actions say that the boy was holding the glass to his neck when the officer shocked him.
Separate allegations surfaced that Florida officers tased children who already were handcuffed, on their backs or were running away.
Florida state Sen. Tony Hill, D-Jacksonville, is sponsoring a bill that would kick Tasers out of all Florida schools.
Some officers have developed an “I don’t want to get my uniform dirty” mentality, he said, and were turning to the Taser too easily.
“It was sort of like the new toy on the block,” he said.
A Miami-Dade grand jury issued a report Thursday saying police should not use the weapons to subdue small children.
Terrill Hill, an attorney in Palatka County, Fla., no relation to the state senator, said nine students were shot with Tasers in the county during a recent school year. Hill represents the families of four of these teenagers, three of whom are female. One of the students, a 14-yearold, was shocked while he was already handcuffed and being escorted by officers, Hill said. “The problem was that the Taser was being used as a discipline tool,” Hill said. “The school is supposed to be an environment of learning, not a hostile environment that has in essence created a police state.”
‘CONSERVATIVE USE’ Ken Trump, president of a national consulting firm that specializes in school security and emergency preparedness training, said that there is no black-and-white answer to the question of whether Tasers belong in schools. While the number of school resource officers carrying Tasers is clearly on the rise, Trump said, most are not outfitted with the weapons.
“Parents must understand, the vast majority of school resource officers are not walking through the hallways, zapping kids with Tasers for not having a hall pass,” he said. “However, the bottom line on a day-to-day basis, particularly in a school setting, the key words are ‘ conservative use. ’”
Bentonville Police Chief James Allen said the Taser has an appropriate place in law enforcement, but he doesn’t see a need to outfit his school resource officers with the weapons.
“I would think that it would be the last place that it’s needed,” he said. “And I don’t know that my community would support some of the Taser uses that I’ve read about.”
A key step before bringing Tasers into schools, Trump said, is for officials with the school district and the police department to draft a memorandum of understanding on the subject of Tasers.
Both sides need to lay out when it’s appropriate to use a Taser, whether officers are ever allowed to shock elementary children or special needs students, and how the community relations issue would be handled if a child was shocked.
Without such an agreement in place, the district and police department bear a significant risk of legal liability if the officers use their weapons on students, Trump said. School resource officers work for the police departments, not the school districts. And the superintendents in Springdale and Rogers were unaware that the school resource officers in their districts carried Tasers in the schools. Springdale Superintendent Jim Rollins said he doesn’t have any obvious objections. “Our experience with our [officers ] has been phenomenal. They are the highest level of professional people,” he said, “so I have an awful lot of confidence that whatever tool they use, they’ll use it appropriately.” Rogers Superintendent Janie Darr hasn’t made up her mind about how she feels about Tasers in her schools. “I don’t know,” she said. “I need to think through how I feel about that.”
To contact this reporter : jkrupa@arkansasonline. com
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