TASERs are frequently being used by police on children and youth who are in distress or emotional crisis and, as a result, are exacerbating their trauma, according to the latest report from Strategies for Youth (SFY), a national nonprofit policy and training organization dedicated to improving police/youth interactions and reducing disproportionate minority contact.
What’s worse, there are seemingly countless incidents that aren’t known to the public because police aren’t keeping accurate records about Conducted Electrical Weapons (CEWs) discharges, said the report.
“Children and teens are not ‘mini adults,’” write the authors of the report, entitled “Catch & Stun: The Use and Abuse of Conducted Electronic Weapons on Children and Youth.”
“Physically and emotionally, they respond very differently than adults to stress, trauma, and physical assaults,” the authors continue. “Unfortunately, law enforcement in this country frequently fails to recognize that young people require an entirely different set of tools and strategies during encounters and interactions than adults.”
CEWs can and do cause severe harm and permanent injury, and, in some instances, death.
According to a Reuters study conducted in 2017, 1,005 people in the U.S. have died after being stunned by CEWs by police, and in 153 of those deaths, CEWs were ruled as a contributing “factor.”
Looked at another way, between January 2000 and January 2021, TASERs rank as the third leading cause of death in fatal interactions with police, according to Fatal Encounters.
Because of documented harms, they are now classified as “less lethal” rather than “non-lethal” weapons — and thinking about the harm it would impart on a child compared to a full-fledged adult, the impacts can be catastrophic and last for life, physically and psychologically.
The Shock of a CEW
When an officer activates a CEW and the barbed darts hit an individual at 120mph, there’s an initial shock of 50,000 volts. Then, the device sends five seconds of 100 microposules at 19 Hz each, or an additional 1,200-1,300 volts of current, the report details.
After the five seconds, the individual “flatboards” — the following shock when a target’s muscles contract and fall rigid, leading the individual to fall to the ground without being able to use their arms and hands to cushion their fall.
The actual tasing can last for longer than five seconds if the individual with the CEW holds down the trigger, continuing to send electricity through the lines and into the person targeted.
When the tasing is over, the individual who was targeted needs the barbed darts removed, which can be painful and damage the skin.
Axon, the sole distributor of TASERs in the United States, recommends that officers avoid stunning a “low-body mass index person or on a small child” because doing so “could increase the risk of death or serious injury,” according to an instruction manual for the weapon, and should be done “only if the situation justifies an increased risk,” the report details.
To that end, there are documented incidents — particularly in school settings, where school police officers discharge their CEWs, even when a situation seemingly doesn’t justify an increased risk.
In November 2019, the Huffington Post published an article revealing that there have been at least 143 incidents of children being tased by school police since September 2011.
This number is almost certainly an undercount, since the Huffington Post relied solely upon incidents reported in the media or that were the subject of litigation.
The researchers note that in the Huffington Post article, listed the reasons for the tasings included “talking back,” getting into fights, “mouthing off” “defiance” and running away from the principal’s office, or other behaviors that posed no physical danger to anyone.
One seven-year-old special needs student was tased for an “outburst” in class, the report details.
In 2014, 17-year-old Noe Nino de Rivera was attempting to defuse a fight between two girls in a school cafeteria when, according to a video of the incident, the school resource officer shot his TASER into the back of his neck.
Noe froze as a result, and fell full force on his forehead, spending 52 days in a medically induced coma now suffering permanent brain damage.
Witnessing or experiencing an event like this would bring “long-lasting permanent physical and emotional damage” to all those involved, including a future distrust in law enforcement officers as the adolescents become adults.
Racial Disparities
Despite the lack of data kept by either government agencies or individual police departments, a trend is clear — there are racial disparities in the victims in the use of CEWs.
According to a database of police-initiated CEW deaths compiled by USA Today, African Americans accounted for 39 percent of the taser-related deaths since 2010, while comprising just 13 percent of the overall U.S. population.
Moreover, the SFY report highlights Emma Roche, a law student and recent University of Colorado graduate, who wrote her senior honors thesis on the use of tasers on Black children in 2020. By analyzing data from Connecticut’s The State of Connecticut Electronic Defense Weapon Analysis and Findings, 2016 (Connecticut is one of the few states to publish this data), Roche found that Connecticut officers used TASERs on 542 people in 2016.
Of those, 37 were minors aged 7-17 years.
In Cincinnati, a case highlights this statistic perfectly, where an officer discharged a CEW stopping Donesha Gowdy, an 11-year-old African American girl who was suspected of shoplifting. The officer did not issue a warning before deploying his taser, and Gowdy was unarmed.
At only 90lbs, the CEW knocked Gowdy flat onto the concrete parking lot, sparking protests around the city that children should “Never be tased. Period.”
Recommendations
“For the most part, states and jurisdictions have taken a ‘hands-off’ approach to the use of tasers by law enforcement and allowed police agencies to create their own standards,” the report concludes. “This is not working.”
In order to address these issues, the Strategies for Youth research recommends that state legislators need to “rigorously” regulate the use of tasers or other CEWs by police on people under the age of 18. They add that this practice should be banned in nearly every circumstance — and allowed only when public safety absolutely requires it, like when there’s an imminent threat.
To add to this, the researchers recommend law enforcement agencies should carefully document every incident involving a TASER — regardless of age. Documentation should include all demographic data, as well of descriptions and circumstances as to why it was employed.
The report concludes with a few other recommendations:
-
- When a TASER is deployed by an officer against anyone under 18-years-old, it should incite an automatic review by an independent review board;
- Officers must undergo far more rigorous training, including training that focuses on de-escalation and adolescent psychology; and,
- Police departments must prioritize and emphasize negotiation and de-escalation as a central part to their professional development.
“Teens have reported becoming isolated, depressed, and despondent after being tased by police officers,” the report concludes. “The impact on their attitudes toward authority, toward the law, even toward their role in a democratic society, can and does last well into adulthood.”
The report was written by Johanna Wald and Lisa H. Thurau, respectively, the founder and executive director of Strategies for Youth, with contributions from David Walker, Kristen Wheeler, and Lany Or.
The full report can be accessed here.
Andrea Cipriano is Associate Editor of The Crime Report.