When it comes to Tasers, how can a police department claim to have a near spotless record?

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- When it comes to Tasers, Cleveland police have a record of perfection that some law enforcement experts believe is too good to be true.

Between October 2005 and March 2011, officers chose the electrical-shock devices to gain control of struggling suspects 969 times, according to city data analyzed by The Plain Dealer.

And during that period, Chief Michael McGrath and other police supervisors under his command found the use of a Taser to be appropriate in all but five of the cases they reviewed.

The 99.5 percent clearance rate "strains credibility," said Samuel Walker, a criminal justice professor emeritus at University of Nebraska at Omaha who focuses on police accountability.

"None of us," Walker added, "is perfect."

Geoffrey Alpert, a criminology and criminal justice professor at the University of South Carolina, believes the figure suggests a "rubber-stamp process" by police administrators.

"Any action, such as use of force, that has an approval rate of nearly 100 percent is a bit concerning," said Alpert, whose research has been used by the U.S. Department of Justice.

In an interview last week, police officials, including McGrath, stressed that Tasers have been involved in less than a half-percent of more than 300,000 arrests since 2005. McGrath and others attribute the minuscule number of inappropriate Taser incidents to extensive training.

But Cleveland's police supervisors have a history of clearing officers who resort to any type of nondeadly force, not just the use of Tasers. A Plain Dealer analysis in 2007 found that supervisors reviewed 4,427 uses of force over four years and justified the force in every case.

The newspaper looked at Taser use this year as part of its ongoing examination of Cleveland's police procedures, which have come under fire in response to several recent brutality claims.

Link:
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/07/cleveland_police_boast_near-sp.html