ACLU of Arizona Report Finds Arizona Law Enforcement Lacks Guidelines for Taser Use on Children & Pregnant Women

Law enforcement and correctional agencies in Arizona, the state where TASER International has its corporate headquarters, often use Tasers “preemptively” against citizens, according to a recent ACLU of Arizona report. Even if citizens do not present an imminent safety threat to officers, officers will use the Taser. They’ll also use it “offensively as a pain compliance tool,” a use TASER International anticipates in its training material and agency policies.

The report, which the ACLU of Arizona claims is the “most comprehensive survey of Taser use by law enforcement agencies in Arizona to date,” illuminates the following key findings: Tasers are widespread among law enforcement, providing officers with Tasers does not guarantee lower levels of use of lethal force, officers often receive inconsistent guidance on when it’s appropriate to use a Taser, agencies lack clear guidance on Taser safety including the use of Tasers against vulnerable populations, law enforcement is too reliant on TASER International for training and agencies lack data collection and other mechanisms for monitoring Taser use.

The ACLU of Arizona recommends the implementation of a “strong accountability mechanism” for Taser use that would include data collection. It suggests law enforcement re-assess where the use of a Taser should be on the “use-of-force continuum.” Furthermore, it calls for more regular training on Taser use and the establishment of a statewide body to review Taser use and develop policies and training resources for law enforcement.

The finding that Taser proponents are completely off when they argue in favor of Tasers because deployment of lethal force will decline is perhaps the most significant finding of the report. The report calls attentions to the fact that “TASER’s marketing campaign has always been that Tasers are a safe alternative to the use of lethal force. Indeed, the company’s slogan, ‘Saving Lives Every Day,’ is emblazoned on its corporate headquarters in Scottsdale.”

Taser shocks have most often been used in the place of “less-lethal uses of force, such as baton strikes, chemical sprays, and the like” and situations when “situations where lethal force would not be justified (i.e., in the absence of an immediate threat to officer or public safety).”

After completing an analysis of Phoenix Police Department use-of-force reports, The Arizona Republic found 377 incidents involving the use of a Taser. In nearly nine out of ten of the incidents, the subjects had posed no imminent threat to officers with any weapons. For example: “A shoplifter who stole four cans of soup from a Food City, and fled on a bike who was shocked as officers dragged him to the ground; a 15-year-old boy at Alhambra High School who was shocked in the back as officers attempted to arrest him on a marijuana charge; and an intoxicated man who ignored commands to leave a bar and was shocked in the back as he walked away.”

ACLU of Arizona notes TASER International has insisted its weapons are “non-lethal.” A file released by LulzSecurity, a computer hacker group that recently released data from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, shows since the release of an October 12 training bulletin from TASER International, law enforcement has been aware they should not be aiming Tasers at any person’s chest.

In the bulletin, TASER International suggests the 50,000-volt weapon could possibly lead to someone going into cardiac arrest. Officers in Phoenix adopted the new guidelines immediately, although Mark Spencer of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association did not initially instruct line officers on the development. Instead, Spencer only had praise for Tasers as he said, “It really minimizes harm, not only to officers but to suspects.”

TASER International, after issuing the bulletin, worked to spin the findings saying, “We have not stated that the Taser causes (cardiac) events in this bulletin, only that the refined target zones avoid any potential controversy on this topic.”

To the question of whether law enforcement could still deploy a TASER into a subject’s chest, TASER’s position was that officers should not “intentionally” target “when possible.” The recommendation, according to TASER, would go a long way toward “reducing risk management issues and avoiding litigation.” (What, in emails released by LulzSec, could be characterized as a policy of CYA.)

The TASER weapon’s propellant was changed from gunpowder to nitrogen in 1994, according to the ACLU report. This allowed TASER International to escape regulation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and made it possible to “aggressively market the weapon as an alternative to lethal force” and escape testing of the product by the Consumer Products Safety Commission.

Vulnerable people, such as children, elderly, pregnant women and those with heart problems, are widely understood to be at risk of death or injury if they are subjected to the voltage of a Taser. The ACLU report shows the alarming reality that much of Arizona law enforcement lacks guidelines on what to do if faced with a “vulnerable” person.

Ten agencies were found to be silent whether to Tase pregnant women. Only four agencies explicitly ban tasing pregnant women. Twelve agencies were found to be silent on the tasing of children or the elderly. Only one agency explicitly prohibited tasing young or elderly people. And, eleven out of ten agencies had no policy on using a Taser on a subject multiple times, an action that has been seen as a key factor behind ECW-induced deaths.

Of particular interest to those who have followed the story of the SB1070 law and the issue of immigration in Arizona is the fact that Maricopa County, where the anti-immigrant Sheriff Joe Arpaio is in charge, has developed no policies or guidelines on when and when not to deploy a Taser in high-risk situations. Maricopa County is the only police department with over 500 sworn officers that did not offer its own training in addition to TASER International’s training. This is especially troubling given the fact that an Amnesty International 127-page report found Maricopa County had the highest number of reported deaths from Taser use in the United States.

Taser use has been posing increased liability for law enforcement. As of September 2010, five deaths from Taser use were occurring on average each month.

Courts have found Tasers constitute the use of “excessive force” and thus violate the Fourth Amendment, provided the Taser was used in an instance when its deployment was unjustified. Victims of Taser use can seek compensation but only if an agency’s use guidelines are deficient and if training is so poor that it could be considered “deliberately indifferent.

Memphis, Tennessee, San Francisco, California and Las Vegas, Nevada, have all opted to ban the use of Tasers.

To date, ACLU’s work on Taser use has been mostly on a state-by-state basis without a federal campaign. The report clearly demonstrates the risks posed by Tasers. More importantly, it shows the growing private influence of TASER International and how law enforcement has become dependent on using Tasers to make police work much easier, even if that means putting a person at risk of death or injury and violating the rights of an individual.

[A side note: A Los Angeles City Council voted in May 2010 to bar official travel to Arizona and consider the termination of contracts with businesses as part of a boycott in response to the SB1070 law. The Council made one exception: it would not cut off business with TASER International because, according to a councilman, “various local public safety agencies need its stun guns and no other company can provide the service satisfactorily.]

Reverend Billy Talent and the Church of Life After Shopping protest the Correction Centers of America building, a commercial immigrant detention center (privately-owned prison) | Photo by Reverend Billy and the Church of Life After Shopping

Reports reveal that private prison corporations with interests and operations in Arizona stand to benefit and profit greatly as a result of immigration laws like SB1070. And, that isn’t altogether surprising because these same reports are indicating these corporations played a role in influencing the law, which is proof that border politics and the private prison businesses are tied.

Progressive news magazine, In These Times, reported on State Sen. Russell Pearce’s (R-Mesa) involvement in the passage of the Arizona immigration law and his ties to private prison corporations. The report explains how Pearce submitted a version of the legislation to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)," an organization which he and 35 other Arizona legislators belong," a "full month and a half before SB1070 was introduced to the Arizona Senate and nearly two months before its counterpart was first read in the House."

A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, ALEC bills itself as "the nation’s largest bipartisan, individual membership association of state legislators" and as a public-private legislative partnership. As such, ALEC claims as members more than 2,000 state lawmakers (one-third of the nation’s total legislators) and more than 200 corporations and special-interest groups.

The organization’s current corporate roster includes the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA, the nation’s largest private jailer), the Geo Group (the nation’s second largest private jailer), Sodexho Marriott (the nation’s leading food services provider to private correctional institutions), the Koch Foundation, Exxon Mobil, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Boeing, Wal-Mart and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, to name just a few.

Rachel Maddow covered ties between private prison corporations in Arizona and Arizona’s lawmakers on her show Thursday night:

"Last year, Arizona state officials moved legislation to try to privatize the whole state prison system. Arizona planned to "seek bids from private companies for nine of the state’s 10 prison complexes." It was the first effort by a state to put its entire prison system under private control.

Great news for the private prison companies, right? Great news, in particular, for Corrections Corporation of America, which is the single largest private prison company in the country. CCA already runs six detention facilities in Arizona. They hold prisoners from other states at their facilities in Arizona. They also hold the federal contract to hold federal detainees in the state.

So, you know what would be awesome for a company like that? You know what would be awesome? What would be really awesome for the shareholders and everybody if the state of Arizona started producing a whole lot more federal detainees — people detain on federal issues, federal issues like, I don’t know, say, immigration violations.

Imagine the boon to the private for-profit prison company that has the contract to house federal detainees in Arizona, if Arizona came up with a whacky plan to arrest a lot more people for suspected immigration violations. Imagine how awesome a law like S.B. 1070 would be for an industry like the for-profit private prison industry in Arizona. Sure, it’s an industry with an incredibly awful record in Arizona, but there is money to be made here — and it turns out that that industry, particularly, Corrections Corporation of America, which stands to benefit the most, that industry and that company in Arizona, they’re really well connected""

Just as one might say there’s no racial profiling in the Arizona immigration law, CCA is maintaining they have no plans to "house" any illegal immigrants in Arizona. Morgan Loew, a reporter with CBS’s local Phoenix affiliate, KPHO, whose reporting was a source in Maddow’s report, addressed this claim:

"Maricopa County, the Phoenix Police Department, we don’t deport illegal immigrants. When someone’s picked up on the side of the road or for a crime, they’re taken to the jail. At that point, their immigration status is determined. If they’re an illegal immigrant, they’re reported to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Then their taken to one of these private prisons, Corrections Corporation of America.

So, you’d have to do the math. But if you increased the number of people who are picked up, illegal immigrants, increase the number that are sent over to ICE, you’re likely going to increase the number that companies like Corrections Corporation of America are going to be housing.

Right now, they’re — I think they’re charging ICE here in Arizona about $11 million a month to have about a 5 percent vacancy rate that they keep sort of for big busts or that kind of thing. So, obviously, that number would go up and they would have to make extra accommodations to handle more illegal immigrants."

A watchdog report by Philip Mattera and Mafruza Khan of the Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First and Stephen Nathan of Prison Privatisation Report International, showed CCA’s dependence on federal contracts tied to the incarceration of immigrants:

CCA got its first contract from the federal government and has continued to depend on its friends in Washington, DC. In 2002 the three federal agencies with correctional and detention responsibilitiesthe Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), the United States Marshals Service (USMS) and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (now a branch of the Department of Homeland Security and known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE)accounted for about 32 percent of CCA’s total revenues"

"the explosion of the so-called "criminal alien" population in the wake of the 1996 Immigration Reform Act. The federal government’s campaign to lock up non-citizens for a wide range of crimes, including relatively minor ones such as attempting to re-enter the country without proper documents, generated a huge new demand for prison beds. The BOP addressed the problem by calling on private contractors to help meet its "criminal alien requirements," or CAR. As a result of the CAR-I solicitation process, CCA got two contracts in 2000 that allowed it to fill its long-empty speculatively built prison in California City, California, and its Cibola

County Correctional Center in New Mexico. Together, these deals are estimated to be worth $760 million to CCA over ten years. In 2002 CCA was rewarded again with a $103 million CAR contract to fill its struggling McRae Correctional Facility in Georgia. Analyst Judith Greene has referred to these CAR contracts as a "virtual bailout" for CCA.

The same watchdog report hints at the sentiment that may be shared by many in CCA thanks to the Arizona immigration law. A 10-K filing from CCA from nearly a decade ago reads:

"We believe that recently proposed initiatives by the federal government in connection with homeland security should cause the demand for prison beds, including privately managed beds, to increase. The proposed funding [for homeland security] is intended to support the agencies’ efforts to prevent illegal entry into the United States and target persons that are a threat to homeland security. We believe that these efforts will likely result in more incarceration and detention, particularly of illegal immigrants, and increased supervision of persons on probation and parole

Those who hear Marg Baker talk about supporting Japanese internment camps for illegal immigrants should not think she is that crazy. She is merely expressing the solution to the sentiment of fear that the businessmen working in the private prison industry in Arizona wish to implement.

Her notion is totalitarian but so is the notion that you can incarcerate and control a prison population and make money. And the people of Arizona should fear the existence of an industry that depends on "criminals" to succeed because if crime isn’t high then the industry will always work to find a way to "criminalize" a population for profit.

Flickr Photo by DrCuervo

The day before SB1070, the Arizona immigration law, was to go into effect, Federal Judge Susan Bolton halted the "worst" of the law from going into effect.

A New York Times editorial, "Showdown in Arizona," indicates that Bolton affirmed the "government’s final authority over immigration enforcement." She made the following basic points that "those who support the Arizona law have ignored or forgotten:"

-A state cannot require its police officers to demand the papers of people they stop and suspect are illegal immigrants. As the judge wrote, the law places an "unacceptable burden on lawfully present aliens." 

-Arizona cannot require that every arrested person have his or her immigration status checked, or that people be detained until they prove they are here lawfully.

-Arizona cannot make it a state crime for immigrants not to carry papers at all times, or for an undocumented immigrant to look for work.

-It cannot give officers the power to make warrantless arrests of anyone they believe has committed a crime that makes them deportable. Deportation is a matter to be decided by a judge in court, Judge Bolton wrote, not a state trooper or sheriff’s deputy in a traffic stop.

Despite the ruling, there will be civil disobedience in Arizona against the SB1070 law today. There will be a national day of action in support of immigrant rights and in opposition to the SB1070 law. And, there will be a formidable amount of Americans who rally in defense of the SB1070 law in support of targeting "illegals" who are in America.

The key problem with the law, as many who have followed discussion of the law since May, is that the law racially profiles. People like Arizona police officer Paul Dobson, a man who has posted video and conducted interviews in opposition to the law, are convinced it will put them in situations where they have to racially profile individuals and behave like Nazis.

Fernando Silva, a US citizen who has been speaking out against SB1070, asks, "If the law is not racist then why would racial profiling need to be explicitly prohibited in it?…It says race may not be a factor in explicitly prohibited in determining immigration status, which is useless because there’s no other factor."

"To say the law permits racial profiling isn’t a fact. On its face, the law is perfectly constitutional because it doesn’t say anything about race," added Silva. "But there are certain facts, which could prove that this law is racially biased." Silva cited Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s record and Kris Kobach’s email to Senator Pearce as evidence that racial profiling is a legitimate fear.

Silva’s thinking is exactly what promoted me to record the following video message. I directed this message to viewers who had been commenting on a previous video called, "Do I Look Illegal?" that now has over 120 comments from people who, for the most part, fervently support the SB1070 law.

The law may not explicitly single out Latinos, but the country understands Arizona is a border state. More than 75% of illegal immigrants in Arizona are Latino. So, instinctively, law enforcement authorities especially police officers are going to be especially attentive to the presence of Latinos as a way of eradicating the immigration "problem" the state’s political leaders and many of its citizens think exists.

 Here is the video I made prior to my comment on how those in favor of SB1070 support racial profiling.

There are two routes to go when discussing the law. One can talk about the facts and what the law will and will not do. One can cite studies and try to employ well-reasoned arguments to explain why people, whose prejudice against immigrants is too much for them to bear, exaggerate the immigration problem. Or, one can simply share the remarks with others and give the reactionary views of people who support the law what the remarks most deserve: sunlight.

How many actually think you can reason with people who are so stuck on their worldview that immigrants are The Threat? It’s much easier to expose them and take them on for what they are saying rather than trying to find common ground and instead of hoping you can question them and get them to see the error of their judgment.

So, I’ll conclude this with a few comments I received on my post.

PatriotSue

 2 months ago

Arizona Rancher Krentz and his dog was slaughtered by ILLEGAL MEXICAN DRUG SMUGGLING ALIENS on his ranch last month. He is just one victim of the TENS OF THOUSANDS of U.S. citizens murdered, raped, robbed and tortured at the hands of ILLEGAL HISPANIC ALIENS. Several of Arizona’s Police officers have been slaughtered by your people, ILLEGAL HISPANIC ALIENS. Hundreds of Arizona’s citizens have been killed on their streets by ILLEGAL HISPANIC ALIENS. Officer shot, by ILLEGAL, YESTERDAY.

TwiztedAnimator



2 months ago 



@chi1088 [my handle on Youtube] In Arizona, there is a kidnapping every 35 hours. In Arizona, there is a murder everyday. In Arizona there are 5 Rapes everyday. In Arizona, 56,000 burglaries occurred in 2008. 6.5 Million People, 500,000 Illegal Immigrants….. you do the math.



 

SARGEHVFD



2 months ago 



@chi1088 Apperantly he smoke to much crap. He doesn’t understand Illegals in the US cost over 338 Billion a year, never file taxes, and sendt about 50% of their income overseas. And yes, demand proof of citizenship from all people, I.E. Chicago, NY, DC,

TakebackAmerica2010



2 months ago 



We have lost TENS OF THOUSANDS of U.S. CITIZENS, while our brave young soldiers have died on foreign soil. We have lost MORE U.S. CITIZENS at the hands of ILLEGAL HISPANIC ALIEN, than we have lost brave soldier in both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will soon be over, but the slaughter of our people, at the hands of ILLEGAL HISPANIC ALIENS will continue, until we remove EVERY SINGLE ILLEGAL ALIEN. ILLEGAL ALIEN COMMUNITIES protect those

 

TakebackAmerica2010



2 months ago 



YOU ARE THE REASON AMERICA WILL BECOME MEXICO YOU STUPID FaG!



 

rbrown6984

 2 months ago

Since the Arizona law does not specify nation of origin, like our federal laws, you certainly could look illegal. What does an illegal immigrant look like? Do illegal immigrants wear funny hats or something? Maybe they’re all barefoot or dark-skinned. Is that it? Your ignorance and prejudice toward anyone who looks different from you is showing, though you’d never admit it. Dare I say racist? There are MILLIONS just like you, unfortunately.

 

CTastic1



 2 months ago 



Stop from the bottom and go up I was responding to your whole retarded video. Do you look illegal. Hmm I don’t know. If I pull you over for speeding, I will ask for You i.d. your papers, insurance, check your tags, check your inspection, If you can’t even furbish an I.D. or speak English, I guess I could legally start to assume you’re illegal right? See it’s stupid people like you who fill your head with propaganda from the news. It’s liberal bullshit.



 

CTastic1



2 months ago 



Federal government has to uphold the LAW. WHEN THEY DON"T We do. Again everyone has been repeatedly asked to prove they belong here. Every time you talk to a cop he asks for ID. That’s basically showing your proof. You just somehow forgot it’s a law and want to call this racism all the sudden. The burden belongs on them. THEY ARE ILLEGAL. what part of the word illegal doesn’t mean illegal? 

And two favorites, posted as a comment on a video I shot at an SB1070 protest at Wrigley Field months ago:

dogncatmom

2 months ago 

@ese1818 Yeah they can but the reason Democrats made people get social security numbers for babies (something that they did not need) was so that there would be a lot of available numbers in the system for illegals to use when they got jobs. You must be an illegal,

 

XazulxWolfX

2 months ago 

@chi1088

Wants don’t mean shit. We are a country and we watch after our collective asses; not the entire fucking planets. It’s as if someone broke into your house to live there and when caught said " well i’d rather legally live in a house but i cant therefore me breaking in and tresspassing is entirely justified ". It’s the most retarded logic i’ve ever heard. There is NO LAW stating that I have to be compasionate to my fellow man; and its immoral to say that i’m required to be.

If you participate in protest or civil disobedience actions today, I encourage you to return to this post and leave a comment about what it was like to be out participating in today’s national day of action. If you are in Arizona, I especially want to hear if police crackdown significantly on those engaging in resistance to the law.