I think the taser is a great tool for the police officers. If innocent bystanders are at risk, whip that zapper out. That’s why I’m not jumping up and down over the fellow at the airport here in Vancouver who was zapped: airports are full of innocent bystanders, and are a secure area besides. Taking tasers away from officers, or putting unreasonable limits on their use, would be a mistake.

But there are some fine lines here. In this video, no one is at risk other than the police officer, and I’d have to say that the indicators of potential violence/risk (to me, as an untrained observer) aren’t there. A hand on the shoulder and a stern talking to probably would have done the trick.

Using the taser is basically about the same (in terms of level of force, not effectiveness) as getting out the billy club and smacking the guy repeatedly on the torso. Sometimes you have to do that even when the suspect is not doing obviously dangerous things, but is putting others at risk. In those instances, the taser is an incredibly valuable tool: the cops need that tool, and should use it when appropriate.

But in the incident in this video…I just don’t see it. Once the officer drew the taser, he had no choice but to use it when the suspect refused to comply. He had no other escalation, other than drawing his gun and shooting the driver. But I think the officer’s mistake was drawing the taser to begin with.

It is easy to second-guess the police, and I usually try to avoid it: faced with a split second choice that can easily be life or death, I don’t feel competent to judge. But this video makes me wonder if the training the officers are getting on taser use, at least on this particular force, is really “correct”.