In honour of the news that UK home office is encouraging all police officers to carry Taser guns as standard equipment, I’d like to issue a warning. If you can avoid it, don’t get tasered. It’s awful.
I was, as far as I am aware, the first person in the UK to take a 50,000 volt hit from a Taser gun. It hurts. A lot.
I did it as a stunt, really. It was 2001, and the Metropolitan police had just announced they were going to trial the Taser. I got in touch with the man testing it out for them, Anthony Bleetman, a consultant heart surgeon based in Birmingham. "Come on up," he said – "You can Taser me. That’ll be good for your story.
Tasers fire two barbed darts with trailing wires. The voltage across the darts interferes with the central nervous system, and – unless you’re special forces or on drugs – it’s pretty hard to stand up when the shock is hitting. Basically, a Taser makes you fall down.
By the time I (and the photographer) got to Birmingham, Bleetman had changed his mind. “Instead,” he said, “why don’t I Taser you?” I could think of plenty of good reasons, but the photographer was there, and there might have been a blank page in New Scientist if I chickened out. So I said OK (the story is here). Reluctantly, I might add – I don’t generally do stupid things.
In an anonymous, curtained room in the hospital, Bleetman and a colleague took a medical history, pinned the darts to me (I’d seen them fired, and frankly wasn’t confident they’d hit where Bleetman intended. Neither was Bleetman). They altered the shock time from the default 5 to 0.5 seconds counted to three, and pressed the trigger.
I crumpled to the floor, and two seconds later I got up again. The photographer wasn’t sure he’d got it, and asked if we could do it again.
I said no. I felt fine, but I vowed there would be no police-baiting in my future.
As I said, my shock only lasted for half a second, while the default setting on the guns is ten times as long. That would be horrific. And the idea that people might get multiple blasts – such as the one that got Taser into legal hot water – is pretty scary, as is the statement that they might be used to enforce obedience, rather than just contain violence. At a press conference, Richard Brunstrom, chief constable of North Wales Police, tasered himself and then said it was the consequence of disobeying a police officer. That’s not what they’re for, is it, Richard?
They’re also not for intimidating certain sectors of the community: two-thirds of the Met’s deployment has been on black people. Perhaps that’s why the Met has said today it won’t be increasing its Taser deployment – it knows there is enough of a problem with mistrust of police officers.
Having said that, being a police officer can be pretty scary, so I’m not one of those people that think it will be a bad move to equip them with Tasers. Used wisely, it’s like mace or other non-lethal weapons: an option. And, I have to say, I’d rather be shot with a Taser than with a bullet. Not that I’ve been shot with a bullet – but the fact that I wouldn’t volunteer for that tells you something, surely?
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