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Tasers Getting More Prominent Role in Crime Fighting in NY City Simon Kennedy After decades languishing in the trunks of squad cars, the Taser, the handgun-shaped device that incapacitates people with a pulsating electrical current, is getting a chance at a higher profile in the New York Police Department. The Taser’s career in New York has contrasted with its ubiquity around the nation, as police officials from Wisconsin to California have praised its usefulness, particularly in encounters with the emotionally disturbed. According to the device’s manufacturer, Taser International, more than 345,000 Tasers have been sold to 12,750 law enforcement and military agencies in 44 countries, with 4,500 agencies distributing them to their entire forces. By contrast, about 500 Tasers are deployed in New York.
(Article continues below) The weapon has not been fully embraced by the Police Department, the nation’s largest police force, partly because of the difficulties in maintaining the devices and in training officers. But it is also because Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly has looked cautiously at Taser technology. Stun guns have a troubled history here: An early model was at the center of a scandal in the early 1980s when it was used to force drug suspects to confess. Mr. Kelly, then a deputy inspector, was assigned to clean up the mess. The old stun gun looked like an electric razor and worked when applied directly to a person’s body. Today’s Taser fires a dart at its target from a distance. Last week, a report on a study of police shootings — commissioned in 2007 after a Queens man, Sean Bell, was killed by officers — recommended that the New York police experiment with using Tasers more. In response, Mr. Kelly said that Tasers would move out of the dark trunks of select police vehicles to sergeants’ crowded gun belts. But he remained cautious, saying sergeants would still be the only ones with the authority to handle Tasers. That population of 3,500 supervisors is larger than most other departments. “This is like turning a battleship around, or an aircraft carrier,” Mr. Kelly said of the challenges of implementing any new law enforcement tool in the Police Department. The New York force, for example, switched later than others from 6-shot revolvers to 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistols. And even then the semiautomatics initially carried only 10 shots, not the regular 16.
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