Tasers Go Mainstream, But Who's Talking About Race

Tasers Go Mainstream, But Who's Talking About Race?
New America Media, Commentary, Raj Jayadev, Posted: Oct 01, 2007



"Don't Tase me, bro."

The last word of that emphatic plea made the statement by Florida student Andrew Myers the catchphrase of the year, now appearing on T-shirts and commemorative mugs. "Bro," really? Why not just go with "dude" or "buddy?" But in all fairness, I don’t know what would come out of my mouth if someone were about to pump 50,000 volts of unwanted energy into my body.

The video of Andrew Myers being Tased at the John Kerry event came right before another video of a woman being repeatedly Tased in Ohio and after a 15-year-old autistic boy was tased in Los Angeles – making September, unofficially, Taser Month. Late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel even did a spoof called the “Tazzy Awards,” and “Morning with Mike and Juliet” did a Tasing demonstration, shocking a dummy right before an awkward commercial break.

While Tasers have hit the mainstream (Google Trends ranked “Taser” a top-ten searched term at its celebrity peak) the real concern on the ground remains charged with an issue not discussed on the talk show circuit – race.
While studies on the use of Tasers in cities that have implemented them have been limited, Houston is perhaps the most revealing. Houston police data show that in almost 1,000 Taser deployments over a two-and-a-half year span, 63 percent of those Tased were black, while Houston’s population is only 25 percent black. In fact, the study itself was prompted after professional football player Fred Weary, an African American, was Tased during a traffic stop, and charged with resisting arrest. A judge later dismissed the charges, and Black activists organized to demand a usage study.

Ironically, the Houston Police Department began using the weapon after allegations of using unjustified deadly force on Latinos. Layered on top of the disproportionately high rate of use of Tasers on African-Americans was the remarkably high use on the unarmed – 95% of the recipients of Taser shots were not wielding a weapon.

Despite the recent controversy, Tasers are increasingly part of the urban law enforcement arsenal, now in use in 11,000 departments nationwide. This week, despite growing calls of concern, another city, Palo Alto, is arming its police department with the weapon. Aram James, a member of the Coalition for Justice and Accountability, says that although Palo Alto is 80 percent Caucasian, the likelihood is that the weapon will be used on people of color on the “other side” of town – East Palo Alto, which is a minority-majority city.

“My concern comes from the history of use of force in Palo Alto,” says James. “For example, K-9’s were used on 80% people of color, basically used as border control, and Tasers will be just another potentially lethal weapon used in the same way.”

In San Jose, California, a uniquely multi-ethnic grassroots coalition made up of families who have been recipients of Taser discharges has formed to call for bans against the weapon. On September 11th, the coalition marched to City Hall and released 291 black balloons, representing the number of people killed during Taser-involved incidents in North America.

The procession was led by 30-year-old Noreen Salinas, the eldest daughter of Steve Salinas, a Native American man who was tased to death on May 25th, 2007. Steve Salinas was at a motel, unarmed and reportedly naked, having come out of the shower, when police entered his room after a disturbance call by the motel. He was Tased repeatedly, and died after becoming unresponsive. The Santa Clara Coroner's Office stated that the cause of death was "undetermined."

Noreen Salinas
Photo credit:Charisse DomingoNoreen Salinas says her father was the victim of a racial profiling. "It was his dark color of skin that resulted in their lethal judgment. My family is not Latino, but he looks it, and they saw his tattoos and figured it was okay to go overboard on him."

Walking alongside Noreen Salinas during the march was Marlo Custodio, an 18-year-old Filipino-American who was Tased along with his older brother in February in a park. Marlo, a youth leader with the Filipino Youth Coalition, was unarmed, yet was Tased while complying with officer requests to get out of his car. Marlo was approached by police for being at the park after hours. His brother, 25-year-old brother Romel, suffered Taser blasts for over 40 seconds, according to police reports. The Custodio family has since become a rallying point for the community, and they have joined with Black and Latino activists in demanding for a ban.

Stephen Johnson, a 22-year-old black college student, helped organize the rally. He was Tased in the neck in 2005 during a traffic stop. He says the police, “are using tasers as a way to keep Black people subordinate, regardless if they have done a crime or not.”

Like Houston, San Jose implemented tasers after the community demanded an alternative to deadly force. In 2004, San Jose became the first large city in the country to arm every officer with Tasers, in response to the shooting death of Cua Bich Tran, a 25-year-old Vietnamese woman. Tran was shot by police in her home, after officers mistook her Vietnamese vegetable peeler for a weapon.

Since that time, however, San Jose only saw an escalation of officer-involved deaths, on top of a new concern—Taser-involved deaths. Steve Salinas was the fifth person to die after being Tased by San Jose police.

Despite repeated calls from the community and Such major civil rights organizations as the ACLU and the NAACP, the San Jose Police Department has not released requested information regarding Taser usage. But a use of force study conducted in March by the San Jose Police revealed that Latinos represented more than half of the department’s use of force arrests, and that African-Americans were subjected to force out of proportion to their population in the city. The numbers led Reverend Nelson B. Myers, chief operating officer got the NAACP, to call for the Department of Justice to investigate.

Tasers may slip out of the national spotlight as quickly as they arrived, but the controversy on the ground will remain because the critique is not just about the needle-tipped darts, but the context they operate in. For the cities still wrestling with the question of whether to implement them or not, the weapon will continue to be news – with or without YouTube, Jimmy Kimmel and even Andrew Myers, bro.