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The purpose of this paper is to review the Braidwood Commission's two reports on the use of TASER conducted energy weapons in Canada and the death of Robert Dziekanski to determine whether the Commission's conclusions and subsequent recommendations constitute sound evidence‐based public policy.

This study analyzes Commissioner Braidwood's eight findings from the first report regarding the medical implications of the use of TASER devices by comparing those findings to the body of scientific, medical, and technical literature on the physiological effects of TASER technology. Additionally, this study reviews the potential ramifications of the Commissioner's recommendations regarding the use of TASER devices in both reports.

Evidence from the existing literature does not support the Commission's findings regarding the medical risks of the use of TASER technology. Recommendations to restrict the use of TASER devices are unlikely to reduce arrest‐related deaths, but they are likely to result in increased injuries to officers and suspects. Other recommendations, including training standards, testing requirements, reporting requirements, medical assistance, and research and review, are consistent with other reviews on the use of TASER technology and are necessary and appropriate to restore public confidence in police use‐of‐force.

The Braidwood Commission recommendations have had an immediate impact on the policies of several police agencies in Canada, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but this study is the first critically to review whether those recommendations constitute formulation of sound evidence‐based public policy.

Less lethal weapons have become a critical tool for law enforcement when confronting dangerous, combative individuals in the field. The purpose of this paper is to review the medical aspects and implications of three different types of less lethal weapons.

The paper conducted a comprehensive medical literature review on blunt projectiles, irritant sprays including oleoresin capsicum (OC), and conducted energy devices such as the Taser™. It reviews the history, mechanisms of action, intended and other physiologic effects, and medical safety risks and precautions of these devices. In particular, the paper focuses on the issue of sudden in‐custody death and less lethal weapons, reviewing case reports, animal research and human investigative studies on this topic.

In general, these three different types of less lethal weapons have been effective for their intended use. Each type of less lethal weapon has a number of physiologic effects and specific medical issues that must be considered when the weapon is used. There is no clear evidence that these devices are inherently lethal, nor is there good evidence to suggest a causal link between sudden in‐custody death and the use of irritant sprays or conducted energy devices.

While further research on the physiologic effects of these devices is needed, this paper provides law enforcement with a medical review of less lethal weapons including blunt projectiles, irritant sprays such as OC, and conducted energy devices such as the Taser.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of police use of conducted energy devices (CEDs) on officer and suspect injuries while controlling for other types of force and resistance and other factors.

Data on 1,645 use‐of‐force incidents occurring between January 1, 2002 and July 2006 were obtained from two different law enforcement agencies. Logistic and generalized ordered logistic regressions are used to model the odds of injury and severity of injury.

The use of CEDs was associated with reduced odds of officer and suspect injury and the severity of suspect injury in one agency. In the other agency CED use was unrelated to the odds of injury; however, the use of pepper spray was associated with reduced odds of suspect injury. Among other findings, in both agencies the use of hands‐on tactics by police was associated with increased odds of officer and suspect injury, while the use of canines was associated with increased odds of suspect injury.

Although this research was carried out in two distinctly different law enforcement agencies with different histories of CED adoption, the fact that CED use was associated with reductions in injuries in one agency but not the other indicates the need for additional research on the impact of CED use in other settings

The analysis suggests that relative to other forms of force, the use of CEDs and pepper spray can reduce the risk of injury to both suspects and law enforcement officers. This information should prove useful to law enforcement agencies considering adopting CEDs and suggests that agencies should consider the use of these less lethal alternatives in place of hands‐on tactics against actively resistant suspects.

At the time of this writing there was no published independent research on the risks of injury associated with CED use in field settings. The findings reported herein will help inform the public debate on the utility of CEDs for law enforcement.

To provide a comprehensive picture of the wide range of technical, operational, and management issues that must be considered when developing, acquiring or using less lethal weapons for law enforcement agencies.

The source of the insights provided in this paper come from a careful reading and critique of the less lethal technology literature and the organization of and participation in many less lethal weapon technology conferences, technical working groups, and peer review panels.

The essential attributes of less lethal weapons for law enforcement applications are described as well as the many practical considerations that must be made when acquiring and using them.

This review should help law enforcement and corrections agencies make more informed decisions on the acquisition and deployment of less lethal weapons and should also be a useful starting point for weapon developers.

Scientists and engineers seeking to develop new or improved less lethal weapons for law enforcement will benefit from having in one source a basic insight into the complexities and challenges of producing a successful less lethal weapon. Non‐technical professionals will gain a greater understanding of the difficulty in producing less lethal weapons that are both very effective and very safe, but also affordable and practical.

Few studies track non‐lethal weapon use by law enforcement agencies (LEAs), the number/level of force used by these agencies, complaints for excessive force, and injuries to officers and suspects, both over time (especially recently) and with a national probability‐based sample. This study aims to address these gaps by developing longitudinal estimates to examine these use‐of‐force issues.

Two surveys of LEAs were conducted (n=518 and n=357 LEAs), covering 2003 to 2008, and statistical weights were used to align the data to be representative of all state and local LEAs in the USA, including adjustments for survey non‐response.

Conducted energy devices (CED) deployment has risen significantly (to about 70 percent of LEAs). However, standard baton use is down to 25 percent in 2008 and when available to the officer, batons are more likely to be left in their vehicles compared to CEDs. Baton use and empty‐hand tactics are becoming less commonly used by officers, but CED use was ranked among the most used tactics from 2005 to 2008. Excessive force complaints against LEAs, internally generated, have more than doubled from 2003 to 2008. Officer injuries varied little from 2003 to 2008, but they are still only about half as common as suspect injuries. Also, only 20 percent of LEAs collect injury data in a database, complicating future research.

This is one of the few studies to track, nationally, the types of non‐lethal weapons in use by LEAs, and force level used, providing aid to LEA executives and policymakers who need to follow new trends in non‐lethal weapons.

This paper seeks to address a deficit in the criminal justice literature by examining patterns of electronic control device (ECD) use and effectiveness as reflected in 1,188 official police use‐of‐force report records collected over a three‐year period (2005‐2007) by the Washington State Patrol (WSP).

Chi‐square, t‐test, ANOVA and logistic regression analysis were employed to analyze the data with respect to patterns of use and outcomes for officers and arrestees.

The findings observed indicate that the ECD tended to replace several other types of force used to gain compliance, tended to resolve incidents involving the use of force with fewer forms of force being used, and decreased officer injury rates. The ECD was rated as generally effective by officers, but not as effective as other methods of gaining compliance in life‐threatening situations. Results concerning suspect injury rates were somewhat mixed.

Relying on the official self‐report from a single agency limits the ability to generalize to other law enforcement agencies.

The paper indicates the importance of providing for the systematic collection of data on police use of force involving the threat of use and deployment of the ECD.

A number of questions concerning ECD's appropriate use, effectiveness, and potential for harm have remained largely unanswered. The paper addresses this deficit in the criminal justice literature.

Police technology fundamentally shapes the police role, and the adoption of technology is even linked to the success of police reforms. Police adoption of emerging technological tools changes the way police interact with citizens. The change in police citizen interactions can then have serious implications for the social control that police have over citizens, the civil liberties citizens enjoy, police accountability, and the legitimacy that the police hold in contemporary American society.

While technology impacts these critical issues in policing, not all technology adopted by the police is likely to influence their relationship with the public. As such, this chapter closely examines the ways that several emerging technologies adopted by the police (i.e., body-worn cameras (BWC), aerial surveillance, visual surveillance, social media, mapping and crime prediction, and less lethal force technology) impact issues related to social control, accountability, and legitimacy. The current literature seems to indicate that some innovations such as BWCs enhance police accountability and legitimacy, and also expand social control. Other technologies such as aerial surveillance and conducted energy devices increase social control, and display a complicated or unclear influence over police legitimacy.

This paper sets out to encompass a comparative analysis of news reports and official police records of TASER deployments from 2002 to 2005.

The methodology involves a content analysis of all LexisNexis and New York Times articles involving police use of the TASER during the study period (n = 353). Regional (New York Times) and national (LexisNexis) news reports describing police use of the TASER are compared with police reports of all TASER deployments by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) during the same timeframe (n = 375).

Descriptive statistics and logistic regression are used to compare the data sources with respect to: the circumstances in which the weapon is deployed; the characteristics of the suspects involved in the TASER incidents; and the significant predictors of continued suspect resistance and repeated use of the TASER by an officer.

The paper examines official police records on TASER deployments from one police agency. This limits the ability to generalize the research findings to other police agencies that have adopted different practices and policies regulating the deployment of CEDs. Additionally, the content analysis includes only articles in the mainstream print media.

The paper concludes with a discussion about some myths associated with news reports on police use of the TASER, and their potential impact on both public perception and police practices.

To date, research has not systematically compared media representations of the TASER with official reports on police deployments of the weapon. That is the focus of this paper.

The current study examines the effect of changing a specific use-of-force policy coupled with de-escalation training implementation on patterns of police use of force.

An interrupted time-series analysis was used to examine changes in police use-of-force incident records gathered from a large, southwestern US metropolitan police department from 2013 to 2017 based on a TASER policy change and de-escalation training implementation mid-2015.

Results demonstrate that changes to use-of-force policy regarding one type of force (i.e. use of TASERs) coinciding with de-escalation training influence the prevalence of use-of-force incidents by increasing the reported police use-of-force incidents after the changes were implemented. This finding is somewhat consistent with prior literature but not always in the desired direction.

When police departments make adjustments to use-of-force policies and/or trainings, unintended consequences may occur. Police administrators should measure policy and training outcomes under an evidence-based policing paradigm prior to making those adjustments.

This study is the first to measure the effects of changing use-of-force policy and implementing de-escalation techniques in training on patterns of police use of force and shows that these changes can have a ripple effect across types of force used by police officers.