Nearly $5 million to be spent on new Tasers for police officers

Funding will let the city buy over 1,000 weapons

San Jose leaders have agreed to spend nearly $5 million to equip all of its police officers with new Taser stun guns.

The San Jose Police Department has received unanimous approval from the City Council to enter a five-year contract with Axon Enterprise to buy more than 1,000 of the weapons. Deputy Police Chief David Tindall told the council Tuesday that the department’s current

Taser supply has reached its shelf life and that the weapons were breaking down and malfunctioning.

“We cannot hand out those old Tasers to our recruits and those police officers that are going be entering the ranks, therefore delineating that they will not be armed with Tasers when they go out into the streets,” Tindall said.

The council’s decision to approve the purchase of the weapons comes at the culmination of a year marked by local and national calls on elected officials to redirect funding for law enforcement toward social and community services. Since George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police officers, San Jose leaders have vowed to begin having conversations with the community about “reimagining public safety.”

Sparky Harlan, CEO of the nonprofit Bill Wilson Center, brought up concerns during Tuesday’s council meeting that the community was not consulted about the decision prior to this week’s vote. Instead of buying new Tasers at this time, she said the city should focus on working with organizations like hers to find alternative ways to respond to mental health crises and nonemergency calls.

“We’re trying to stand up a relationship between the city and the community, so now is not the time to buy Tasers without including input from the commu

nity,” Harlan said.

Axon manufactures the Taser — the most popular kind of stun gun used by American law enforcement. It has been used by law enforcement agencies as an “intermediate use of force” to temporarily immobilize a person by jolting him with about 50,000 volts of energy.

A 2011 report from the National Institute of Justice found that serious injury or death among arrestees decreased 40- 60% and officer injuries were reduced by more than 70% since police departments started using Tasers in the early 2000s.

Although they are a less lethal option than guns when officers are attempting to de- escalate certain situations, at least 500 people in the United States died from 2001 to 2012 after being shocked with a stun gun during an arrest or while in jail, according to Amnesty International, an organization that supports stricter

limits on the use of Tasers.

City Council member Sylvia Arenas called the request from the Police Department “badly timed” but came to the conclusion during Tuesday’s virtual meeting that the purchase was necessary.

“The optics of this are not congruent with what we’ve said to our community, but I understand the difference in terms of obtaining the tools for our police officers to make sure that they’re safe, that our community members are safe and then also having those conversations about how we deploy these tools,” Arenas said. “We’ll have many other discussions to talk about the use of force and the reimagining (of public safety).”

As a former police officer, Council member Raul Peralez said having less lethal tools like stun guns for officers to use in violent and potentially dangerous situations was critical to ensuring public safety.

“If we were simply to not to renew or not to use Tasers, myself and our officers would be left with limited options and for the most part, more lethal options,” Peralez said. “… Could our policies be looked at to see when or how we should be using these devices? Indeed. But are there times when you could utilize this tool and it could save lives versus the other options? “Absolutely.”

The new contract will allow the Police Department to replace about 1,160 outdated Tasers with those that are significantly upgraded and can automatically connect with an officer’s body-worn camera. The new Tasers will offer the capability to capture critical data, such as the time of deployment, electric energy output, the name and badge of the officer who used the weapon and how many times the officer pulled the trigger.

In 2019, San Jose officers used Tasers about 93 times. As of September this year, Tasers had been used about 70 times, according to Tindall.

“In our opinion, a Taser is one of the most valuable de- escalation tools that we have,” the deputy police chief told the City Council.