Police chief seeks widespread Taser training for officers

Chief Bill Scott said Wednesday that he wants to train every sworn San Francisco police officer in his department to use the electric stun guns that they have been denied because of staunch public opposition for more than a decade.

While Scott’s support of the tool is nothing new, his desire to have every officer trained in its use appeared to be a departure from previous chiefs’ more cautious efforts to appease the community by equipping just a portion of the department to start.

“In our vision and our quest to have a tool or piece of equipment that allows us to prevent escalation and in the process deescalate force, we feel that this option (stun guns) accomplishes that,” Scott said.

Scott’s comments came as part of a working group presentation to the Police Commission. Several experts testified about not just the possible lethality of conductive energy weapons, which are colloquially referred to as Tasers, but also the effectiveness of the tools.

“You’ve got a what I consider a high failure rate with these weapons,” said Michael Leonesio, a retired Oakland officer who oversaw the department’s roll-out of stun guns.

Wednesday marked the city’s latest effort to acquire the electric shock weapons, proposals for which have been repeatedly defeated over the past decade, making the San Francisco Police Department the last major city force in the country without them.

Former Chief Greg Suhr twice proposed equipping 5 percent of the force with Tasers. In his last push, he suggested that the devices could have averted the fatal, video-recorded shooting of Mario Woods in the Bayview neighborhood in December 2015.

Leonesio, who spoke to the commission Wednesday, said a Taser most likely would have failed with Woods because he had been wearing a thick jacket. He said he found that the weapons had a tendency to fail to incapacitate subjects because of mechanical failures or because one or both of the weapon’s two dart-like electrodes did not land, either because of thick clothing, a bad shot that missed or evasive maneuvers by the subject.

The presentation was part of the Police Commission’s effort to implement a slate of recommendations made by the U.S. Justice Department in the wake of the Woods shooting. The Justice Department said the city “should strongly consider deploying” stun guns. The report also recommended that the department and the commission work with stakeholders and community members to make “an informed decision.”

While the experts who testified Wednesday presented research and cases that highlighted the possible abuse of Tasers and the deadly consequences of that abuse, several members of the public spoke in support of the devices.

“It is quite a dangerous weapon that does have a chance of causing death,” said Alan Beatts, founder of Borderland Books. “On the other hand, it seems to me that if presented as an alternative to a firearm, we are going to be both saving the lives of people who need our care and saving our police officers from the horrible burden of having to shoot someone.”