Mixed review / Audit of Houston police use of stun guns finds them effective but leaves some questions unanswered.

Staff

Tue 09/09/08 Houston Chronicle, Section B, Page 8, 3 STAR R.O. Edition

A MUCH-anticipated performance audit of the use of Tasers by Houston police found that the electric shock devices may have helped prevent injury to police officers and targets, but also that they are disproportionately used against black suspects. While offering a series of recommendations to strengthen officer training and data collection, the audit does not call for a moratorium on Taser use, as some community leaders have advocated.

City Controller Annise Parker oversaw the work of a team that included researchers from the University of Houston Center for Public Policy. She says lack of in-depth police statistics on Taser incidents made it difficult to reach firm conclusions as to why black suspects were more often the target and why African-American officers were less likely than white or Latino colleagues to employ the devices against black residents. Although black people made up a higher proportion of persons stopped by police in Houston, the Taser incident rate is above what those numbers would explain.

The audit also revealed that some officers use the stun guns much more often than others, and two had fired Tasers more than 13 times.

"If some officers have different coping skills that allow them to defuse situations without deploying their Tasers as often as other officers," said Parker, "then those skills must be emphasized in the training process."

The controller noted that incomplete or unavailable data from the police department made it difficult to explain some of the audit's findings concerning patterns of Taser use.

"A problem we have uncovered in three successive audits is that the Houston Police Department has a poor data management system," explained Parker, "and really an inability to quickly and easily extract data from their electronic system."

The audit found that since the introduction of Tasers in Houston, they have not reduced the number of police shootings. When Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt proposed four years ago to equip his officers with Tasers, his primary argument was that the electric shock devices could be an alternative to the use of firearms in deadly force situations.

Hurtt cited his experience as Phoenix police chief, where the introduction of the devices contributed to a 50 percent decrease in the number of police shootings of suspects. That hasn't been the experience in Houston, and Hurtt and other department officials now assert that Tasers were never intended to be an alternative to firearms in deadly force situations.

The audit offers more questions than answers concerning police Taser use. It demonstrates the need for improved data collection and should be a jumping off point for further study to determine why one ethnic group is too often on the receiving end of the electronic darts.

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