One Saturday morning in March, two Department of Public Safety officers contacted a man about a trespassing issue near a slough by campus, according to the Eugene Police Department. He resisted the officers’ attempts to handcuff him, and he was not affected by pepper spray when the DPS officers sprayed him with it.
An altercation ensued, and all three men fell into the water, according to EPD. The man managed to hold both officers’ heads underwater as they struggled, and the officers were only able to subdue the man with the help of two passing bicyclists, according to police.
An Emerald story about the event solicited vigorous debate among members of DPS and the campus community online in the ensuing weeks. Some posters advocated for issuing officers guns or less-lethal electroshock guns -devices that incapacitate people by jolting them with electricity that are often called by the brand name Taser – to take down armed or otherwise dangerous offenders on campus. Others asserted that giving campus police weapons would escalate violence on campus or lead to reckless use of deadly force.
What is undisputed, however, is that increasingly dangerous people are tramping through campus. Meth and other drug busts happen on campus on a seemingly weekly basis, and DPS is only outfitted with batons and pepper spray, a chemical to which some perpetrators are immune.
Thus some DPS officers have called for the ability to carry Tasers.
At first, the thought of DPS officers carrying weapons which could emit thousands of volts of electricity was a little scary to us, too. But though there are clear drawbacks to arming campus security officers, this may be the best option to allow officers to protect themselves without lethal weapons.
More than 2,700 law enforcement agencies in the U.S. use electroshock guns, which were adopted by the Portland Police Bureau in May 2002, according to a study published in 2004 in the journal of Academic Emergency Medicine. Based on a review of 227 Taser usages listed in Multnomah County police reports, the study concluded the popular Taser M26 model “appears to be a safe and effective non lethal weapon in this case series. No deaths were reported.”
The potential drawback of Tasers is that some people react more strongly to the electrical stun than others. According to a report on Tasers by CBC News, since 2001 approximately 50 people have died in North America from Taser shocks. The CBC does, however, amend that statement with the fact that, according to the company Taser International, 100,000 police officers have voluntarily taken Taser hits with no resulting deaths.
Several large university police forces already use Tasers. In 2001, the president of Iowa State University recommended that officers carry them after receiving input from the student body and the school’s faculty senate. Oregon Health and Science University issued Tasers to its officers in 2004.
The DPS inquiry into acquiring Tasers may sound drastic, yet it is clear that schools around the nation are taking similar steps and
reporting few to no negative repercussions. The administration should seriously consider this proposal instead of burying it and offering only vague promises to look into the matter.
Like any weapon, Tasers do have the potential to kill. If or when DPS officers begin carrying Tasers, it will be of the utmost importance to provide rigorous training in the appropriate use of those weapons.