Item B: Eugene Police Department Taser Policy

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Robert Horn introduced himself as an armed private security officer who was licensed to carry firearms. He was also a major stockholder in the manufacture of Tasers, he said. He agreed with the policy as written and recommended that Eugene police officers used Tasers. Robert Roth said he had worked for the Oregon Department of Justice for fourteen years, now retired, had been admitted to the bar in four states and practiced law for forty years. He had no problem understanding the Taser policy document, but was unsure whether it was either fair or responsible to require police officers to understand its meaning. He remarked that the Attorney General of Maryland had done an extensive study of the use of “electronic control weapons” and concluded that these weapons should be used only when individuals posed an imminent threat of physical injury to themselves or others. He was concerned about the removal of the word “immediate” before the kind of threat that needed to be posed before a Taser could be used. Although Tasers were thought of as less than lethal weapons, he understood that they were actually sometimes lethal, and that it could not be understood in advance which people would die from being shot with a Taser. He said that 350-400 people had died from Taser shootings in the US, and he preferred that Tasers be banned, although he believed that a practical stance was for Tasers to be used only when lethal force was justified. Ruth Duemler said that she would like to know how often Tasers had been used in Eugene, which she thought was approximately 30 times. She was concerned that Tasers were a deadly force, and she had noticed law suits being filed in Portland and in San Jose regarding excessive force being used. She felt that Tasers needed to be considered as deadly force, and that police officers needed more extensive testing before being allowed to use Tasers, and that not all officers should use them. Randy Prince commented that he was the chief petitioner for Curb Tasers. He remarked that two assumptions were made in the drafted policy: 1) that Tasers were to be in general use by officers and 2) that their use was to be controlled by internal policies of the Police Department rather than broad governmental laws. He felt that the discussions undergone by the committee were necessary because of not using the simple deadly force guidelines which were well established to limit Taser use and the desire to retain the 90% of Taser uses in which deadly force was not justified. He noted that the UN had declared the use of Tasers to be considered as torture and the ACLU had called for the use of the deadly force guidelines for Tasers. He added that discussion about limiting the use to deadly force situations was outside the scope of this committee’s deliberations. Curb Tasers believed, he said, that Tasers do kill and that certain individuals were more likely to die from Taser use. Officers could not know which individuals were likely to die from Taser use, he argued. He said it was obvious that there was a risk of death with their use because the policy called for the dispatch of emergency medical services in every use of Tasers. The line was fuzzy, he remarked, for determining the appropriateness of the use of Tasers, and would likely be stretched. David Eason commented that he believed in the use of Tasers as a necessary and positive tool for protecting police officers and the general public. When officers were asked to MINUTES—Eugene Police Commission May 4, 2010 Page 3 Use of Force Committee – Taser Public Forum