Children and dogs targeted as police taser use doubles

THE use of stun guns by North Wales Police more than doubled in less than five years, with children and even dogs targeted with tasers.

Officers used tasers 605 times between January 2014 and September 30, 2018, according to figures obtained by North Wales Live via a freedom of information request.

The figures include incidents where officers have fired their tasers, as well as occasions where tasers have only been drawn, and those where they have only been aimed at people.

Tasers were pulled out on 60 occasions in 2014, compared to 136 times in 2018.

Figures show that, between 2016 and 2018, police used tasers on 367 men, 29 women and four dogs. On four occasions, they were used for “crowd dispersal”.

Over those three years, officers used stun guns on 15 teenagers – the youngest being 15 – but only one of the youths was fired at.

The most common reason police used tasers was due to “aggression towards officers” – with 251 out of 404 uses in the last three years attributed to this.

Other reasons officers with tasers have been deployed include alcohol and drug use, resisting arrest, self harm and mental health issues.

People tasered by police have been armed with weapons including baseball bats, axes, bottles, knives, machetes, metal bars, broken glass, hammers, needles, sledgehammers, swords, razor blades, screwdrivers and even a fire extinguisher.

In 2016, officers tasered two dogs and nine children and, in 2017, two dogs and four people under the age of 18 were tasered.

Incidents involving children last year included officers drawing a taser on a 15-year-old boy who was thought to have a knife, as well as a 16-yearold who was being “aggressive”.

Officers also “red dotted” a 17-yearold boy who was said to be acting aggressively, and another 17-year-old boy reportedly armed with a knife had a taser aimed at him.

In 2018, tasers were used twice on teenagers, including on a 16-year-old boy who it is claimed attacked and threatened a woman with a knife.

The victim suffered injuries to her arm, according to North Wales Police. Two officers attended the incident and drew their tasers but did not fire them.

An officer also drew a taser on a 15-year-old boy who had allegedly smashed cars, doors and windows at a care home with a pole. Police said the teenager also threatened staff and police officers during the incident. Over the last three years, tasers were used 163 times by North Wales Police’s eastern division, 150 times by the central division and 91 times by the western division. Figures for 2018 show that stun guns were used the most in the West Conwy area with 27 uses, followed by 24 in Flintshire North, 23 times in both Denbighshire/ Conwy Rural and Denbighshire/Abergele Coastal, 22 times in Gwynedd South, 20 in Wrexham Town, 18 times in Gwynedd North, 15 times on Anglesey and 14 times in both Wrexham Rural and Flintshire South areas.

Superintendent Jane Banham said: “Although there have been 404 incidents involving the use of tasers over the last three years, they have been fired 44 times.

“Officers can be faced with a variety of dangerous situations, so it is important to understand that being equipped with a taser allows an officer to engage a violent subject, or a person who is armed or intent on selfharming, from a safe distance.

“More than 100 more officers have been well trained in the use of Tasers since 2014 and they are now spread throughout the force’s three divisions, providing us with more options to respond in the most appropriate way to any given incident.”