Less Lethal: Tazers vs. Pepper Spray

Less Lethal: Tazers vs. Pepper Spray

Today, police officers are being called upon more often to resolve dangerous situations outside of their conventional training and technology. The incidents that challenge traditional problem-solving capabilities vary, and include such things as:

People who call for police “assistance” when attempting suicide.

Noncompliant armed subjects who do not create a direct threat (Dunham, 2004).

Historically, officers facing such tactical dilemmas had few options between verbal challenges and deadly force. As a result, police agencies have begun adopting a variety of tools to assist in such endeavors, and three of the more common are pepper spray, impact projectiles, and electromuscular disruption systems.

Agencies often categorize these functions by unit and program. As such, programs that address juvenile delinquency, school-based education programs, police athletic league or police boys and girls clubs, victim assistance, and related prevention programs may be incorporated under a form of community outreach or community services. Missing-person investigations and child abuse investigations, as well as domestic violence investigations, may also be connected to this category, or they may be organized with an investigative unit under criminal investigations, along with investigations involving major crimes such as homicide, rape, robbery, burglary, serious assaults, and major theft and fraud cases. As noted, all of these tasks may be categorized under a special services type of command (Hickman, 2003).

In larger agencies, those with more than 500 sworn personnel, a more defined ESU may also be placed organizationally under the special services command to provide particular aspects of sworn policing duties requiring significant specialized training, specialized equipment, and/or a specialized response. In small- to medium-sized departments, ESU teams may be composed of cross-trained officers who regularly engage in other duties. Larger agencies often employ a separate, full-time unit composed of officers specially trained and equipped to respond to a variety of emergency events (Vecchi, 2002). These types of functions often require a tactical response and the development of a preplanned response to a variety of incidents to include such functions as dignitary protection; special events (parades, festivals, races, sports events, demonstrations, concerts, etc.); directed patrol; high-risk arrest and warrant service; bomb and explosive ordnance investigations; barricade situations; canine unit, which may consist of any combination of narcotics dogs, bomb dogs, and bloodhounds; hazardous device team; sniper unit; crisis negotiation or critical incident management; building collapses; search-and-rescue missions; underwater search and recovery team; hostage rescue; riot control; and other types of high-risk tactical operations (Ijames, 2006).

Since September 11, 2001, it is also more common for an ESU to be trained on the basic elements of weapons of mass destruction in order to potentially provide the ability to conduct tasks connected to the response to a weapons of mass destruction event. These units often will be trained on the elements and principles of an incident command system composed of integrated and coordinated communications, and five key functional areas: command, operations, planning, logistics, and finance. In addition, they must be trained and equipped to respond to hazardous materials incidents, to collect ...