Is Taser usage by police on the rise?

The Dutchess County Sheriff’s Office has 50 Tasers, and almost every patrol officer carries one. Yet a single deputy accounted for a quarter of the department’s stun-gun uses since 2005, according to a Poughkeepsise Journal analysis of 467 stun-gun reports from 19 local police agencies.

Police agencies in the cities of Poughkeepsie, Newburgh and Kingston also had members who disproportionately used stun guns — with a Poughkeepsie officer accounting for almost 30 percent of Taser uses in 2010 and 2011 on a force with 28 Tasers, the records analysis showed.

While the more-frequent uses may be tied to risky or high-volume assignments, the agencies did not keep statistics on individual officer use, so they did not know of each officer’s standing as the top user until they were told by the Journal. While the local agencies routinely review all stun gun incidents, they are advised to “monitor and track” use of the compliance devices to “determine whether some officers are using ECWs (electronic control weapons) more frequently or in a different manner than their fellow officers and if the uses are legitimate,” according to 2011 guidelines from the Police Executive Research Forum and U.S. Department of Justice.
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20120212/NEWS01/302120078/Stun-gun-use-per-officer-can-vary-widely


ShockRounds: less-lethal ammo assaults multiple senses.

SmartRounds Technology (SRT) is developing a round which carries liquefied compressed gas and then activates a high-powered “shock wave” which, upon impact, rapidly expands and “attacks three of the five human senses.”

Generally, one unit volume of the liquefied compressed gas will expand to around 800 unit volumes at standard temperature and pressure, meaning that a relatively large amount of gas (like a chemical irritant) can be carried in quite a small package.

The ShockRounds are designed to be fired from SRT-approved rifle launchers modeled on the Colt M4 carbine while the pistol launcher is modeled after an unnamed “popular semi-automatic handgun.

While the military’s test-firing its smartest munition yet, less-lethal weapons-makers are busy coming up with their own brainy bullets. Like one that senses when it strikes flesh, then deploys a devastating payload “to attack three of the five human senses.”

That’s the delightful idea behind ShockRounds, a new, less lethal munition developed by Smartrounds LLC. The company’s president, Nick Verini, tells Danger Room that the munitions, which boast a 300-foot range, are meant to replace other less-lethal options, like bean bags and rubber bullets, “which are really quite inadequate.”

“Munitions already out there depend on kinetic energy. They’re deployed, they hit, they hurt …[and] they can do too much harm,” he says. “We wanted to come up with a smarter way to pack a punch.”
http://endthelie.com/2012/02/08/shockrounds-less-lethal-ammo-assaults-multiple-senses/#axzz1mGhpGgyF

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/02/smartrounds/#more-72060