tased and confused

Months before the event, before there is any indication of the scope or nature of protests at the Repbulican National Convention in St. Paul, the police are escalating the conflicts to come:

ST. PAUL -- St. Paul police are about to issue Tasers to all 370 officers on the force. Police say they are a safe way to stop a potential threat, but some people say Tasers are dangerous and sometimes deadly....

Shortly after the new shipment of Tasers arrives in St. Paul, the Republican National Convention will come to town, and with it, protestors who may or may not get violent.

Claims that tasers are safe, non-lethal options for crowd control are false. Between 2001 and 2004, more than 70 people were killed by Tasers. Since, studies have shown that the weapons are not as safe as the manufacturers claim, and long-term effects of tasing have not been well examined.

However more troubling than the lethality of the weapons is the decision to deploy them. Providing police with what they perceive to be a safe, simple option for controlling a non-compliant citizen and they are sure to use it. But don't we want violence by law enforcement — and to be clear, tasers are violent — to be the last resort and not the first?

Offering a supposed non-lethal weapon as an alternative to a gun makes some sense if tasers were used exclusively in situations where officers would otherwise be using a gun. But there are countless anecdotes of police using tasers to subdue subjects to don't comply with an officer but are not violent, examples like the now-famous "don't tase me bro" student.

In a loud, chaotic protest, where the line between passionate expression and dangerous activity may seem blurred, arming police with a more dangerous, deadly tool to control the crowd is ill-advised and could prove catastrophic.