In Stun Gun Training, Officer's Spine Is Fractured
New York Times
Tue September 18, 2007
Advocates for the use of stun guns by police departments like to point to evidence that they are a generally safe way to subdue aggressive suspects.
But they could probably find a better spokesman than an officer in North Carolina who volunteered to be shocked at a training class. The officer ended up in the emergency room with two spinal fractures.
The incident, involving a Taser, is described online by The Annals of Emergency Medicine. The authors of the report say it is the sole case like it they could find.
The officer was described as a healthy 38-year-old who volunteered to receive a standard five-second Taser discharge. The device usually fires two darts into its target.
But in this case, to avoid puncturing the officer's skin, the Taser charge was conveyed through two alligator clips, said an author of the report, James E. Winslow of Wake Forest University.
Two other officers supported the volunteer as he was shocked, to make sure that he did not fall. At first, everything appeared normal, with the officer experiencing the usual pain and muscle contractions.
But he continued to suffer severe back pain, and when an ambulance took him to a hospital, doctors found two fractured vertebrae. The fractures were caused by intense muscle contractions, the report said.
Nine weeks later, the officer reported considerable continuing pain and told doctors that he had been able to return to work just part-time and at a desk job.
Tasers are used by more than 11,000 law-enforcement agencies in the United States, and they are widely considered safer than other tools used by police officers, like pepper spray and nightsticks, the authors said.
"However," they wrote, "conducted energy weapons are weapons and, like other weapons, are clearly capable of causing injuries."
Share your thoughts in the Forum
