SPPD Satisfies Some Taser Concerns; City Must Set Policy

Last night, I attended the Saint Paul City Council hearing on the SPPD's request for tasers. I came away believing that the SPPD may, in fact, have the right kinds of controls in place to prevent these weapons from being used as instruments of clean torture. At the same time, I am firmly convinced that the Saint Paul City Council must take further action to govern taser use.

As I wrote yesterday, tasers are used in some places as instruments of invisible, or “clean,” torture; that is, torture or abuse that leaves no marks on the victims. There is a case alleging that police in Colorado used tasers to torture a suspect in 2004 that is still pending.

By its very nature, clean torture is hard to prove, since it leaves no marks that its victims can bring forward as evidence of their abuse. This is what makes tasers especially vulnerable to misuse. It is also what makes giving them to police a dangerous thing for democracies.

As far as I could tell, Chief Harrington understands this. The disciplines that he has put in place in the department are the kind that Darius Rejali, author of “Democracy and Torture,” says are necessary for tasers to be a law enforcement weapon that can reduce the number of deaths and injuries to suspects, police officers and bystanders, and that can prevent the misuse of the weapon as a torture device.

Some of these policies include:
• Automatic presence of a supervisor at the scene of a taser discharge by a St Paul Police officer.
• Regular download and examination of the chip that records each time the taser is used. These are followed up with supervisor reviews when the taser is used an unusual number of times, or durations.
• Prohibition of the use of tasers as “prods.” The use is restricted to incidents where there is a violently resisting suspect for whom other techniques of apprehension do not work.
• Requirement that all officers trained in tasers themselves receive a taser discharge, so that they will know what it feels like, and have compassion for the victim, even when the use is judged to be necessary to prevent further harm.

These do not allay all my concerns, though they give me some confidence that the right policies are in place on the SPPD side. I will need better data before I will be persuaded that taser uses by the SPPD are: 1) not unnecessarily escalating the continuum of force to the point where tasers are used, because the officers have a “magic wand” option that seems to solve the problem effortlessly and leave no scars; and 2) actually reducing the number of deaths and injuries resulting from violent encounters between police and suspects.

Finally, police are most likely to use tasers against people who are not going to be articulate self-advocates whom the general public is predisposed to trust. Because tasers leave no physical signs of abuse, victims of taser abuse will have to rely primarily on their ability to persuade people that they have been tortured with a taser. I am going to need a great deal of convincing that a complaint process can be created that will prevent tasers from disproportionately victimizing poor people, homeless people, Black people, immigrants, and mentally ill people.

The SPPD may have the right internal policies in place to make tasers a reasonable, non-lethal (but still violent) weapon for use in violent encounters with legitimately dangerous suspects. If so, I believe that it has much to do with the leadership of Chief Harrington, a practicing Buddhist who once came to my former workplace, Friends for a Non-Violent World looking, looking for nonviolent methods of conflict resolution for the department to adopt. But cities do change chiefs.

The larger point is that the public cannot be properly protected from potential police abuse by internal police policy alone, even when those are enlightened. When fundamental human rights and civil liberties are at stake, the police cannot police themselves.

Now that the Saint Paul City Council has amended its budget to permit the purchase of tasers, it needs to take a much more active and engaged step to set policy on their use. It can take the SPPD’s own policies as a starting point.

Only Ward One Councilmember Melvin Carter saw the importance of the City setting policy before giving the police permission to buy tasers for its entire force. He was the only one to vote against the amendment last. My Ward Four Councilmember, Russ Stark, voted for it. But he told me today that he would work with Carter, the SPPD – and with me, for that matter - to set such a policy.

Such as step should not be optional, but is essential to the defense of our democracy from a creeping comfort with torture. Seven years of the Bush Administration should teach us that this is a very real and present threat.