An independent group established by Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Ellis to strengthen public scrutiny of the police is shining the spotlight on how Taser is used in Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent.
The Ethics, Transparency and Audit (ETA) Committee was launched under the ‘New Dawn of Transparency’ agenda by Mr Ellis and aims for Staffordshire to be the most open and transparent police force in the country, an ambition which is shared by the Chief Constable.
It is made up of eight members of the public and meets regularly to monitor the work of police including how crime is recorded and how complaints from the public are dealt with. It’s due to be localised across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent later this year.
An ETA review of Taser that was due to take place in August has been brought forward after a report by the Independent Police and Complaints Commission (IPCC) showed that Staffordshire appeared to have the highest Taser use in the country in 2013.
Click here to view the ‘Scoping Document for Use of Taser Review’
Mr Ellis said: “I’m not alarmed because the number of complaints about Taser is very low in Staffordshire – but it is interesting that there’s such a big variation with Taser use in other forces.
“Out of the 619 incidents in Staffordshire, Taser was actually discharged 71 times.
“A lot of the time officers use it as a deterrent to prevent trouble – similar to the way that body cams have had an effect across Staffordshire since their roll out in the past 12 months.
“Statistics and numbers can easily mislead and it might be that other forces discharge Tasers on a more regular basis. But we won’t know until a thorough piece of work has been done by the ETA panel and I’m looking forward to getting the results.
“The ETA has been given wide-ranging and rigorous powers to scrutinise crucial areas of policing to make sure decisions made are correct. I’ve asked them to get beneath the statistics so that we can take a common-sense approach to this and make sure that Taser is being used appropriately in Staffordshire.”
