Police shootings after electrical weapon seizure: homicide or suicide-by-cop

Abstract

Risks of handheld electrical weapons include head impact trauma associated with uncontrolled falls, ocular probe penetration injuries, thermal injuries from the ignition of volatile fumes, and weapon confusion police-involved shooting. There is also an uncommon but critical risk of a shooting after a subject gained control of an officer’s electrical weapons. The authors searched for police shooting incidents involving loss of control of TASER® weapons via open-source media reports, crowd-sourced internet sites, litigation filings, and a survey of Axon law-enforcement master instructors. The authors report 131 incidents of subjects attempting to or gaining control of an officer’s electrical weapon from 2004 to 2020, 53 of which resulting in a shooting. These incidents demonstrated a risk of 11.8 shootings per million electrical weapon discharges (95% confidence limits of 9.0 to 15.1 per million by Wilson score interval). The use of electrical weapons presents a rare but real risk of injury and death from a shooting following a subject’s attempts to gain control of the weapon.