SHOCK TACTICS

On Tuesday (16th) evening Dale Burns, a 27 year old from Barrow, Cumbria died after been Tasered 3 times by police at his home. Police had been called to a “disturbance” and apparently felt the need to use a Taser to arrest Dale on suspicion of criminal damage.

Tasers, which fire 50,000 volts into anyone unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of them, were first issued to British police in 2003, but only to armed units as as a ‘non’-lethal alternative to firearms. Years of gradual creep has seen Tasers issued to more and more ordinary bobbies – such as those that electrocuted Dale – being issued with them. Hundreds of the notoriously incompetent British Transport Police have been equipped with Tasers since 2009 – so you could be in for a shock next time you jump the train.

Current guidance is that Tasers should only be “used in the most extreme circumstances”, although this is the same language that was originally used for the now common place pepper spray, and we’re not sure quite how “extreme” an arrest for criminal damage can get. In the last decade over 250 people have died as a result of Tasers in the US alone, the last death in the UK was in 2006, though as recent as July Met police hospitalised an 82 year old by Tasering him.

The IPCC investigation following Dale’s death is unlikely to have much effect on the increasingly tooled-up nature of British cops so maybe it time to integrate a Faraday cage into your black bloc clobber?