Big surge in Taser usage
THE number of times Cheshire police used tasers went up massively last year. According to the latest figures from the Home Office, police in the area used tasers a total of 232 times in 2016 – up by nearly two thirds from the 140 times they were used the year before.
Officers only discharged their tasers on 17 of those occasions, which is also up slightly from the 14 times they were discharged by police in 2015.
In almost all cases the tasers were fired with a live cartridge, rather than on drive stun or angle drive stun, where it is held against a person’s body and fired.
Officers also used tasers to ‘red-dot’ people 117 times – where it is partially activated and aimed in order to put a red dot on the subject – and drew them without taking any further action 12 times.
While the number of times that tasers were used at all in the area has gone up, ● Cheshire police are less likely to actually discharge them once they are drawn compared to other police forces in the country.
In total, officers in the area ended up discharging their tasers just 7% of all times that they were used.
Across England and Wales, tasers were used by police 11,294 times – up slightly from the 10,390 occasions they were used in 2015.
Half of the time tasers were used to red-dot people, but they were also discharged by officers 1,910 times – 17% of all occasions they were used.
Of those taser discharges, 1,755 were fired in full.
Taser use is recorded in seven categories, with the highest use in each incident recorded.
The highest use is fired, where the taser is fired with a live cartridge, followed by angled drive stun and drive stun, red dotted, arcing, which is the sparking of the taser without aiming or firing, aimed, and drawn.