Wednesday night, during the current Toledo Police Department's Citizens Academy, local residents learned about the departments Action Response Policy. Members of the local media, including Scott Sands, were invited to be on the receiving end of one of the tools officers can use with non-compliant suspects -- the Conducted Electronic Weapon (CEW), most commonly known by its brand name, TASER.
Watch what happened when Scott was tased in the videos below.
Thanks to Allison Dunn & Jeremy Wadsworth at The Blade, Jay Hannah at NBC24, and Ida Tedesco at WTOL11 for the video and pictures.
In 2017, Toledo Police responded to 262,018 incidents. Of those, 633 required some form of Action Response -- 90 a K9, 55 involved a Taser, 10 involved a Pepper Ball, 5 with Mace. However, out of the 633 number, there were only 40 instances where lethal/deadly force was required -- 37 of those incidents involved a wounded or vicious animal. In 2017, only three were armed suspects that required TPD to respond with lethal or deadly force thanks to the many non-lethal options police may responsibly and reasonably choose to effect an arrest.
TPD Sargeant Erik Welling explained, "People are not as trusting of the police and we'd like them to come in and keep an eye on us and just learn about everything that we do in order to keep them safe every day."
TASER is actually the safest, and most studied, non-lethal compliance tool TPD officers have literally in their belts. TASER, an acronym for the Thomas A Swift Electric Rifle (a cartoon reference), only sends about 0.0012 amperage to the receiving suspect. As a comparison, a Christmas Tree bulb has 1.0 amp and a 100 Volt wall outlet puts out 16 amps. This small jolt is enough to create neuro muscular incapacitation (NMI) to subdue a non-compliant suspect.