A man fires a Taser: their use is
becoming more commonplace in Britain,
but are they always safe?
Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
It was an ordinary November morning when Howard Swarray went to
his local gym in Whalley Range, Manchester. During his regular workout,
he started to feel light-headed and suffered an epileptic seizure.
Paramedics were called but, as the 41-year-old father of three writhed
in agony, so were Greater Manchester police.
As a disorientated Swarray struggled with those restraining him, an
officer racing to the scene was recorded on police radio saying: "If
he's getting aggressive I am sure 50,000 volts will stand him up."
Swarray
has no memory of what it felt like to be shot with an electric stun gun
but his medical notes recorded that a Taser was used against him five
times. Swarray was so heavily sedated with ketamine by an attending
doctor in order to transport him to hospital that he spent eight days in
a coma. He was subsequently diagnosed with kidney failure.
This was only one of nearly 9,000 incidents in which UK police deployed Tasers
in the six years after they were first trialled in 2003. The frequency
with which the American-built electronic stun gun is pointed by police –
the only people alongside the military who are permitted to use them in
this country – is rising steadily. Tasers were last month deployed in
the eviction of Travellers from Dale Farm in Essex and against a mentally ill 72-year-old in Cornwall. Last year one was accidentally fired into a 14-year-old girl.
They have been fired by police in every corner of the country; and in
situations ranging from the Raoul Moat siege to stunning an Alzheimer's
sufferer and subduing a man in a fracas at Frome football club.
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