Taser Request By Roosevelt Island Public Safety Department Withdrawn But Modified To Arm Only Supervisors At This Time - RIOC Directors Seeking More Answers Before Making Any Decision

 Image of Taser From Gothamist

During last  night's Roosevelt Island Operating Corp (RIOC) Operations Committee meeting (audio web cast of full meeting is here), RIOC Public Safety Director Keith Guerra withdrew his request for arming Public Safety Officers with Tasers but modified his request seeking only to arm Public Safety Supervisors instead at this time.

RIOC Directors present at the meeting continued to express the strong desire for additional information regarding the need for Public Safety Officers to be armed with Tasers, procedures on the use of Tasers and the safety of Tasers. RIOC Public Safety and staff continue to present only one side of the Taser issue failing to address questions such as these posed in a Gothamist article about a 2011 New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) Study on the use of Tasers:

... according to a new report [pdf] from the NYCLU, "police officers are using Tasers in inappropriate, irresponsible and downright deadly manner." As the saying goes: shoot 50,000 volts of electricity into somebody's chest first, ask questions later.

Studying 851 Taser incidents from eight police department across the state (including the NYPD), 60% of those cases did not meet the expert-recommended standards that restrict the use of a Taser to "situations where officers can document active aggression or a risk of physical injury." 40% of the incidents involved "at-risk subjects" like the elderly, children, the visibly infirm, or those who were seriously intoxicated or mentally ill.

It also appears that Taser's aren't colorblind: 58% of all Taser incidents in the state involved black or Latino suspects. And in 75% of the occurrences, no warning was reported. In half of the surveyed jurisdictions, no verbal warning is required before an officer uses his Taser gun....

The NYCLU study on Police use of Tasers may or may not be correct and the use of Tasers by Roosevelt Island Public Safety Department may or may not be appropriate. However, RIOC should certainly objectively and fairly examine the issues raised in the NYCLU study and others as they consider whether to permit Public Safety Department personnel to be armed with Taser weapons. So far, there is no evidence that this has been done.

Also, it would be beneficial to know if RIOC Directors and Public Safety Director Guerra believe that the recent Florida Taser incident of a man jaywalking and then resisting arrest is an appropriate use of the weapon.

Here's the Taser discussion at July 23 RIOC Operations Committee meeting.



More information on Roosevelt Island Taser issue at previous post.