State & Local Government Policy, Business and Technology

New York Police Embracing a Weapon They Have a Complicated Past With: Tasers

The New York Times: Even as police departments across the country embraced Taser stun guns over the past 15 years, the New York Police Department kept them out of the hands of almost all officers. Only some sergeants and members of a specially trained unit were issued the handgun-shaped weapons, and regulations required many of them to keep the devices in the trunks of patrol cars.

The restrictions were rooted in the department’s troubled history with an earlier generation of stun guns, most notably an episode 30 years ago in which officers in a Queens precinct tortured prisoners with one. More recently, in 2008, an officer with the elite Emergency Services Unit fired a Taser at an emotionally disturbed man on a ledge in Brooklyn. The man fell some 10 feet to his death, and the lieutenant who had given the order to fire the Taser committed suicide eight days later.

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