Electrical current doesn’t always work

It doesn’t always work.

Yet it works so well so often law enforcement officers rely on it — too much, if they’re not careful.

A Taser didn’t work a week ago when Muscogee sheriff’s deputies first tried to take down Raymond Joseph Geoffrion, who they say was armed with guns, blades and pipe bombs.

Geoffrion was holed up in a Cusseta Road apartment, where for four hours authorities negotiated with him.

After 3 1/2 hours, they rammed open the apartment door. Seeing Geoffrion prepared to detonate a pipe bomb, they withdrew, they say.

That destroyed the door, and 30 minutes later, they persuaded Geoffrion to come to the doorway unarmed. That’s when they fired the Taser at him.

Propelled by compressed gas and trailing thin copper wires, the Taser’s twin barbs shot out at 180 feet per second. When they hit him, Geoffrion should have been immobilized by a battery-powered jolt of up to 50,000 volts at .0021 amps. His muscles should have locked, contracted by the electric current running between the probes.

But he did not drop. One barb had bent as it embedded. Geoffrion might have felt a shock, but it didn’t stop him. Deputies say he grabbed a short-fused pipe bomb and an igniter as they swarmed in.

Missed connections

Authorities have learned heavy or loose clothing can deflect a Taser’s metal probes, though trainer Shawn Riley of the sheriff’s office says the electrical current still can arc onto the skin, if the barb’s close enough. Two inches is close enough to make the connection, says Sgt. Tim Wynn of the Columbus Police Department’s training division.

Some criminals and prison inmates have been finding ways to block Tasers, and police and corrections officers have had to adjust their tactics to compensate.

Riley says a Taser works best at a range of 7 to 15 feet. The twin barbs deploy at different angles — one shooting straight and the other dropping 8 degrees — so they spread a foot apart for every 7 feet traveled toward a target. On impact they need to be at least 4 inches apart to work well, Wynn says. The farther apart they are on the body, the more muscle groups they engage. The muscles between the two probes contract for 5 seconds as the current cycles through, overriding natural electrical signals from the brain. If after 5 seconds the suspect still refuses to cooperate — an increasingly rare obstinacy, officers say — the Taser can be triggered repeatedly, in 5-second bursts.

Because one probe shoots lower than the other, sometimes one will miss, dropping off to one side or falling between a suspect’s legs. Without both barbs embedded, there’s no connection. A lone probe delivers no current.

So, things can go wrong, like this:

• On Aug. 16, a 23-year-old man at 54th Street and Chumar Drive in Columbus started fighting with police officers trying to arrest him on a traffic warrant. Though Tased in the chest, back and legs, he kept fighting, trying to take the Taser away from an officer and use it on him. During the struggle, the officer got a painful shock when he hit the Taser’s contacts, police say.
  
• On March 31, a police officer was injured in a struggle with a 22-year-old who not only kept fighting after being Tased, he broke free and ran. A bystander tackled him, and officers Tased him again, then handcuffed him.
  
• On Oct. 13, 2006, a Columbus man arrested at a concert in Charleston, S.C., kept fighting after he was Tased twice. He managed to turn the Taser on one of the officers wrestling with him. He finally was subdued but later was Tased twice more when he refused to get into a patrol car.
  

The Taser effect

So a Taser doesn’t work every time, but every other time, it does, immediately incapacitating a combative suspect. Manufacturer Taser International says studies show Tasers work 94 percent of the time, reducing injuries to officers and suspects, and cutting complaints of police brutality.

Since the Muscogee Sheriff’s Office started using Tasers, its complaints of officers’ using excessive force have dropped to zero, says Maj. Joe McCrea -- who admits that’s with a notable exception: the fatal shooting of Kenneth Walker on Dec. 10, 2003.

Columbus police report the same effect: When officers start carrying Tasers, complaints drop, and so do injuries to suspects and to police.

Each Taser has a laser, emitting a beam that puts a tiny red dot on the target.

Often just showing someone the red dot will gain compliance, says McCrea, who recounts this tale of an unruly prisoner:

“We had a guy that was sentenced for murder. We brought him down and put him in a holding cell. He went nuts. He wanted to kill everybody. He wanted to fight... . We got a bunch of officers down there, because we knew this was going to be bad. We brought a Taser in, put that laser on him, and told him it was a Taser. You should have heard the change in the pitch of his voice. He went into ‘I’ll do whatever you want. I’m sorry.’ He was extremely compliant.”

Columbus police say that’s often what happens out on the street, where those familiar with the Taser call it “Georgia Power.”

As it locks the muscles, the Taser’s current delivers a painful jolt. Those who’ve felt it usually don’t want to repeat it.

Suspect deaths

A few years ago news reports focused intently on suspects who died in police custody after being Tased, but that attention since has faded.

Taser International spokesman Steve Tuttle says that’s not unusual for new police weapons and tactics.

“We went through the same microscope and vetting that was found with the choke hold, and postural asphyxia — which is wrestling someone and putting him on his stomach — and then it was pepper spray,” he says.

The police use of oleoresin capsicum or cayenne pepper spray caused a similar stir when some suspects died after being hit with it. “If you were a reporter and I was an OC pepper spray manufacturer, you and I would be talking about in-custody deaths eight years ago,” Tuttle says.

In a review last year of in-custody deaths that occurred after Tasing, Amnesty International said Tasers too often were used repeatedly on unarmed suspects:

“Amnesty International considers that the use of the Tasers in many of the cases which resulted in death was excessive, amounting in some cases to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” it said. “In many of the cases reviewed by AI, those who came in contact with the police were not armed, or had already been restrained.”

Law enforcement agencies say such deaths are caused not by Tasers but by drug overdoses, illnesses or a condition called “excited delirium,” in which a drugged or mentally ill suspect becomes so overheated and violent that his body shuts down.

Tuttle says the way to battle charges of abuse is to track Taser use. Each Taser has a computer chip that records how often it is used, and the manufacturer now offers a new accessory: A Taser camera recording both video and audio.

“That’s crucial in terms of if you really want your citizens to have transparency on what’s occurring in your community: Record it,” Tuttle says.

A new tool

Tuttle says the company started making Tasers in 1994 and selling them to law enforcement agencies in 1998. He says 11,500 U.S. agencies now are using a total of 260,000 Tasers, and 3,500 agencies issue a Taser to every officer.

According to Columbus Finance Director Pam Hodge, the city has spent about $200,000 on Tasers.

Last week it bought 50 more with holsters and cartridges for $52,350, or $1,047 per unit. About 200 Columbus police officers now have Tasers, with more to come. McCrea says the sheriff’s office has about 80 Tasers.

Police praise the Taser as the most effective law enforcement tool of its type, with advantages over other “nonlethal” weapons such as:

• Pepper spray, which can get caught in the wind and blown back into an officer’s face, or hit other officers fighting with a suspect. Pepper spray requires decontamination, and it can take two hours to get a suspect in custody cleaned up enough to go to jail, Wynn says. Usually people recover immediately from being Tased.
  
• The ASP baton, which often requires repeatedly striking a suspect to disable him, causing bruises and possibly fractures, and provoking complaints of excessive force. McCrea says yet another advantage to the Taser is that the drop in complaints of police brutality means a drop in costly litigation.

Like pepper spray and the ASP baton, the Taser offers police an option other than deadly force.

But if you’re facing someone who’s armed with a gun, then you’d better be prepared to shoot, police say, because if you’re not, you get shot.

‘Taser dependency’

Officers call it “Taser dependency,” Riley says — relying too much on this high-tech gadget and forgetting what could go wrong.

McCrea cites the example of deputies going after a suspect a few years ago: The guy was hiding out in his home, refusing to come out. The deputies didn’t know if he was armed. The two taking positions on either side of his door both had their Tasers out.

They got the guy without a fight, McCrea says, so no one considered the risk until later, when in re-examining the situation, someone asked: “Wait a minute — neither of you had a gun drawn?”

Police Chief Ricky Boren says it’s preferable to have another officer with a gun backing an officer using a Taser. “Most of the time, when you use a Taser, what comes next is deadly force,” he says. “In a close proximity to a suspect, a Taser should only be used when an individual is backing you up with a gun, just in case that does not work. And Tasers don’t work on everybody.”

Feeling the current

Typically officers who carry Tasers get a dose of “Georgia Power” during their training — not only to taste what they’re dishing out, but to understand how someone getting tased is supposed to react, Riley says. That way they know when a Taser isn’t working.

Police Lt. Jack Long says an officer who has been Tased makes a more credible witness in court, should the Tasing of a defendant become an issue. That way a defense lawyer can’t say, “So you Tased my client, but you’ve never been Tased yourself?”

Police being trained to carry Tasers are Tased not with probes but with alligator clips attached to their clothes. Each gets a full 5-second burst of current. Often female officers take the pain better than the males, but no one shrugs it off.

No one, it seems, except that rare suspect who appears unfazed.

Posted anonymously to an online law enforcement forum at officer.com are some reports of Tasers having little effect:

“My team Tasered a guy four times -- he was armed with a meat cleaver and kitchen knife,” one says. “It had no effect apart from a bit of disco leg. . .Like every other tool at our disposal, it might just not work and you should be prepared for it.”

A local police sergeant privately worries that one day an officer will be killed after drawing a Taser instead of a gun.

Local agencies say officers are trained to have a backup plan, in case the Taser fails. The product warnings that come with a Taser state: “Consider acceptable options, alternatives and back up plans in case of ineffective deployment...”

The backup plan

So, a week ago deputies going after Raymond Joseph Geoffrion in a Cusseta Road apartment tried to drop him with a Taser, and it didn’t work. They say Geoffrion grabbed a pipe bomb and tried to light it.

The tactical squad rushing him had a backup plan, an increasingly lethal set of steps.

When the Taser didn’t stop him, an officer with a 12-gauge shotgun hit Geoffrion with a load of rubber pellets. That dropped him. Had it not, other officers likely would have shot and killed him, McCrea says.

Fired at close range, the pellets meant to knock Geoffrion out penetrated his flesh, authorities say. Last week he was in stable condition after having surgery in an Atlanta hospital, McCrea says.

Unfortunately for Geoffrion, the Taser didn’t work.

If it had, he’d be in jail instead of the hospital.

Copyright 2007 Columbus Ledger-Enquirer