RUMFORD – Excessive force? Or effective compliance device?

Tasers are the newest tool in Maine’s law enforcement arsenal, and the arguments for and against use are colliding.

Maine’s sheriffs and police chiefs say the devices have functioned largely as marketed, have saved lives and prevented injuries to both suspects and officers.

Others, including attorney Benjamin Gideon of Berman & Simmons, say training and use policies for the devices are lacking and that some officers in some cases are abusing this electronic gun.

Police in Maine are armed with Tasers, with many departments handing in their billy clubs in trade. Departments have used proceeds in their drug seizure accounts to arm entire forces, or purchased a couple of weapons and distributed them sparingly to test their use and effectiveness.

Officers are trained to use the devices to persuade efficient compliance from an unruly suspect, and they work by enforcing submission through pain.

A Taser is a hand-held weapon that fires two barbed prongs into suspects to immobilize them. The prongs are connected to thin trailing wires that deliver a five-second 50,000-volt shock that painfully contracts muscles, freezing suspects on impact.

A new, effective tool

In Oxford County, where each deputy may carry a Taser after training, they have used the devices on suspects about eight times, and police in Auburn, Lewiston, Rumford and Livermore Falls have also used the devices for situations ranging from unruly traffic stops to suicide attempts. (See sidebar for details.) Deputies in Franklin County have also used a Taser on at least one occassion.

Almost all the times Tasers were deployed in Oxford County last year, suspects were under the influence of drugs or alcohol, according to Chief Deputy Dane Tripp.

Both Tripp and Sheriff Wayne Gallant said they believe the devices are effective tools in the hands of properly trained officers.

Lewiston Police Chief Bill Welch said his department has actually used the devices eight times since they were issued in July of 2007. Six involved shooting the prongs at suspects to shock them; the other two were instances when the Taser was used in “drive stun” mode, pressed against a suspect’s skin to make them comply with an order or to release a grip, Welch said.

On 12 other occasions the threat of Taser use was effective enough, Welch said, without firing the weapon.

“In the majority of our cases just the mere threat of use causes people to come into compliance,” Welch said.

After studying whether Tasers were appropriate weapons for issue to officers, the Lewiston department also opted for Taser models that record a digital video each time they are deployed to provide protection against claims of misuse and to prevent officer abuse.

“In the information that I’ve found, the longer an agency had them the less they had to use them,” Welch said.

Limited tactical use

When the Maine State Police decided to start using Tasers in 2006, the department took a deliberative and cautious approach to putting the weapons into service, said Lt. William Snedeker, commander of special services.

The state issued Tasers to the 23-member tactical team unit, and not to all 350 state troopers. The decision was intended to ease into Taser use at the state level, but also to test the device’s effectiveness with the most highly trained officers, Snedeker said. It is also more likely that tactical team members will be placed in situations where lethal force is more apt to be an option, he said.

Keeping the Tasers in the hands of a few highly-trained officers, who test monthly on all their weapons, helps with what Snedeker termed “span of control” issues and limits the possibility of overuse, abuse or charges of misuse.

More importantly, state troopers are often working alone, sometimes with back-up miles away, and if a trooper decided to use a Taser over a firearm in a life or death situation and the officer missed or the device malfunctioned, then the officer’s own safety could be at stake, Snedeker explained. Under current procedure, tactical team members using Tasers are always backed up by another armed officer.

“You are out on the road by yourself, a couple people jump out of a car with knives and you choose to Taser somebody you better hope it works because if it doesn’t, unless you’re Quick Draw McGraw and you can get the other weapon out really quickly… You see where I’m going with this,” Snedeker said.

“We made the decision until we get a good body of evidence, that the most highly train people use these in very carefully prescribed situations and we will go from there,” he explained about the decision for limited distribution of Tasers to officers.

But the state’s decision is not meant to be any kind of commentary on the decisions local departments or other agencies may make, Snedeker said.

“I don’t think it would be fair for us to comment on the usage of other agencies,” he said. “We have it in a (fewer) number of hands, higher trained hands, more supervision; situations that have already unfolded that are usually deadly force situations. So we are not concerned about mission creep because we have it in so few hands. That doesn’t mean that other agencies, for very good reasons, made what they felt was a well-informed decision to deploy these in greater numbers.”

Power of the tongue

The state’s tactical team has used Tasers just twice, according to Sgt. Nick Grass, team commander.

In the first instance, the weapon was used in the direct contact drive-stun mode as police attempted to arrest an Augusta man who was refusing arrest following a domestic dispute.

The second instance, last September, involved a standoff with attempted murder suspect Scott White in Rumford.

In that instance, Sgt. William Keith fired a Taser at White, who was armed with knives, but one of the prongs flew over White’s shoulder. When White turned toward Keith, Trooper Timothy Black fired three shots from his handgun, killing White.

In a critical incident review of the shooting, Keith and Trooper Scott Hamilton, the team’s defensive tactics instructor, concluded that despite the malfunction, the Taser remains an effective tool.

Grass said the Taser would still be a tool the team carries and uses when appropriate and needed.

“It’s pretty easy to justify the use of a non-deadly tool,” Grass said. “It’s a heckuva a lot harder to justify the use of a deadly tool. The Taser is just one more tool in the toolbox before we use deadly force if we have to. “

“I’m not a huge fan of anything because I’ve seen everything fail,” Grass said. “I certainly do not discourage the use of them, but it’s a tool. It may work and it may not. I think good sound training and tactics and the power of your tongue work more effectively than any tool you can ever put on your tool belt.”

Rangeley Chief Phil Weymouth agrees.

“I’m kind of looking over the whole thing,” Weymouth said. “There have been some bad incidents reported, but you’re not always getting the whole story from the media so you really don’t know what went on, and there have been times when a suspect’s life has been saved and an officer escapes without injury.”

Police already carry a lot on their belts, pepper spray, baton, gun, he said.

Pepper spray doesn’t always work. A Taser doesn’t always work.

“My opinion is there is a lot you can do with talk,” Weymouth said. “I think as you get older you realize talking does a lot of good. We’re looking, we just haven’t jumped yet.”

Tasers in court

Attorney Gideon is one of Maine’s critics of Taser use, arguing that adequate training and standardized policies for use of these devices are lacking and that cases of police abusing the devices could become more commonplace as use becomes more widespread.

In October, Gideon won a $110,000 federal jury verdict in an excessive force suit stemming from a 2005 Taser incident in South Portland. In that case, Officer Kevin Gerrish stunned Stephen Parker with an electronic gun during a traffic stop in which Parker was later charged with operating under the influence. Parker sustained injuries to his shoulder when he fell to the ground after being shocked.

“I remember I couldn’t breathe, no muscle control, no, no control of any of my muscles. I thought I was dying, to tell you the truth,” Parker, the South Portland man, said during a deposition by Edward Benjamin, the attorney defending the city’s police.

“Do you know how long that feeling lasted?” Benjamin asked Parker.

“It, it felt a lot longer than I was told that it actually was. It felt like minutes,” Parker said.

The decision is currently under appeal as South Portland argues the presiding judge should have dismissed the case because law provides police immunity if an officer is acting in the heat of the moment.

So far, five other potential defendants who have been shocked by police have contacted Gideon claiming police misused Tasers against them. Gideon has filed intent to sue in only one case, involving a Brunswick man who was shocked multiple times during an arrest in 2005.

Alternative to deadly force?

Lawyers have been largely unsuccessful in arguing the device itself can cause injury or death, Gideon said.

One study, by doctors at the American College of Emergency Physicians at Wake Forest University in North Caroline, examines the injuries a police officer sustained while being shocked during a Taser training session. The officer sustained compression fractures to the vertebrae of his back caused by involuntary back muscle contractions, the study states.

“The manufacturer of the conducted energy weapon has recognized the possibility of muscular contraction injuries, including vertebral fractures, and placed specific information and disclaimers about this possibility in their product information,” the study reports.

Blunt trauma and soft tissue injuries associated with falls are also common with the use of conducted energy weapons, the study states. Puncture wounds from the device’s barbed prongs are also common.

“Concerns remain about the relationship between conducted energy weapon use and unexplained deaths of suspects in police custody, as well as possible direct cardiac effects of the electrical shock, though recent studies in human subjects have supported the overall safety of conducted energy weapons,” the Wake Forest University study states.

Police – many of whom are required to undergo a Taser shock while training to use the devices – may be learning how to effectively use the devices and what it feels like to be on the receiving end, but little emphasis is placed on when it’s appropriate to shock, Gideon said.

Instead of being an option for other than deadly force, as originally intended, the devices are increasingly being used as tools of coercion or a means to gain compliance from unruly or disrespectful suspects, Gideon said.

“Are Tasers going to be an alternative to deadly force or are they going to be something else? Gideon asks.

Some groups, including the United Nations Committee on Torture and Amnesty International, maintain use of the device on a human is akin to torture.

Law enforcement personnel shocked by the devices as part of their training agree the pain experienced is excruciating. But officers also say the option is better than a physical confrontation with an unruly or dangerous suspect, and far better than having to shoot somebody.

One video provided to the Sun Journal by the Oxford County Sheriff’s Department shows deputies and jail officers wincing in pain and occasionally uttering profanity during a training session there.

No wrongful death suits here

So far, no wrongful death suits blamed on Tasers have been filed in Maine, but potential misuse of the devices continues to draw attention and criticism nationwide.

From the stunning of an elderly dementia patient in her Chicago apartment to the infamous “Don’t Tase me bro,” incident involving a Florida college student speaking out at a political event, when and how Tasers are deployed are increasingly being scrutinized by government, the public and police.

The October death of a would-be Polish immigrant who was shocked repeatedly by Royal Mounted Police in a Vancouver airport prompted a Canadian government review and new policies for officers using Tasers. The Canadian review panel noted, “usage creep,” where Tasers were being deployed more and more frequently in situations not requiring lethal force.

The panel recommended several policy changes, including allowing Taser use only “…in those situations where an individual is behaving in a manner classified as being combative or posing a risk of death or grievous bodily harm to the officer, themselves or the general public.”

In Maine, Snedeker said the state would continue to review whether Tasers should be issued to all troopers.

“There is a lot of troopers that would like to have them,” Grass said.

“Discussions are ongoing,” Snedeker said. “We will let the environment and the situations dictate if we recommend a roll-out further, but we still think a lot of the conditions are still present (to support) the decisions that were valid at the beginning. It doesn’t mean we have ruled out there won’t be a further deployment in the future, it’s just that it’s going to be done in a methodical manner.”

Staff writers Donna Perry, Terry Karkos, M. Dirk Langeveld, Mark LaFlamme and Regional Editor Scott Thistle contributed to this report.