Right: Western Australian police are now issued Tasers for use on general duties.
Further implications
Tasers do not represent a solution to the problem of police using lethal force. They appear to be a less lethal alternative to firearms; however, the growing number of deaths associated with their use both in Australia and overseas demonstrates that they are not without risk.There are a number of features of taser gun use which are causes for concern. Firstly, the perception that they are a relatively safe alternative appears to have led to their being over-used. The phrase used overseas to describe this phenomenon is 'taser-creep'.
Secondly and relatedly, critics of the introduction of tasers have argued that they have led to a concentration on physical solutions to the problem of dealing with drug-effected or mentally disturbed people. There is concern that police may now be less inclined to use containment strategies as opposed to interventionist strategies to deal with such non-compliant people.
Thirdly, there is concern that one of the key groups likely to be tasered, the drug-effected and the mentally ill, are also groups upon which these weapons are likely to be less effective or to whom they are likely to cause the most harm.
This would seem to leave the taser in a similar position to capsicum spray and firearms - they are an option, they are a partial solution but they are not an automatic or easy answer.
It is obvious that there is no absolute solution for many of the situations that police are called on to deal with. However, a continued reliance on force, in whatever form that might take, has clear limitations. The Office of Police Integrity in Victoria has noted that 'people with a mental disorder are clearly overrepresented in critical incidents that result in fatal police shootings,' with 17 of the 32 people fatally shot by Victoria Police between 1 January 1990 and April 2005 considered to have a mental disorder at the time of the shooting. This unfortunately large number of mentally disturbed people who have died at police hands over the last decade suggests we need to continue to look for other alternatives to force.