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With Redwood City upgrading its Taser fleet and Santa Clara County set to consider widespread use of the devices in its jails, civil liberties advocates are banding together to push officials to discontinue use of the weapons.
Advocates cite $172 million in settlements from 193 wrongful death cases involving Tasers in the United States, along with the deaths of three people Tased by police in San Mateo County in 2018.
Fixin’ San Mateo County hosted a talk, “The Case Against Tasers,” on Oct. 7. The group’s advocacy efforts began after the 2018 killing of Chinedu Okobi by police officers in Millbrae using a Taser, forming “Justice for Chinedu.”
“The Sheriff’s Office did tweak the (Taser) policy a bit, working with ACLU recommendations,” said Nancy Goodban, a Fixin’ member, in an email.
Fixin’ members have tried unsuccessfully to convince the San Mateo County officials to ban Tasers. Tasers are weapons that fire barbs that cause temporary paralysis.
“But it felt like we had met a brick wall when trying to get either the sheriff or the board to listen,” Goodban added.
The Sheriff’s Office plans to argue to the Community Correction and Law Enforcement Monitoring Committee on Tuesday, Oct. 14, for the purchase of Tasers for use by deputies in its three central jails following a pilot of the devices. If the recommendation is approved by the committee, it will go to the Board of Supervisors for a vote. A staff report to the committee doesn’t state how many Tasers the Sheriff’s Office is recommending the county buy.
Coalition for Justice and Accountability, which works in Santa Clara County to reduce and eliminate the use of Tasers, participated in the Oct. 7 talk. The group helped limit the number of Tasers the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office uses — from up to 1,100 Tasers to just 75.
In an Oct. 14 staff report, the police department noted that during the first six months of the pilot, Tasers helped resolve 39 incidents peacefully, with zero injuries reported.
“The sheriff (Bob Jonsen) is trying to push to arm all of his deputies with a Taser,” Richard Konda of the Coalition for Justice and Accountability said during the talk. “He’s not giving up, and we’re continuing to fight that.”
Past incidents, current use of Tasers by police
The San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office revised its policy manual in 2019 after the 2018 incidents. The first happened in January, when Warren Ragudo died after Daly City police used a Taser on him. That August, Ramzi Saad died of cardiac arrest after Redwood City Police officers Tased him.
The District Attorney’s Office investigated Okobi’s death but declined to file charges against the officers. Researchers have shown that police officers are rarely charged in cases of excessive force.
“Until you get a different kind of prosecutor, it doesn’t matter what you do, the cops are not going to feel any threat about using Tasers because they know they’re not going to be prosecuted,” said Aram James, a Coalition for Justice and Accountability member and retired Santa Clara County deputy public defender. “We’ve got to get prosecutors to exercise their prosecutorial discretion in a different way.”
The county paid Chinedu’s family $4.5 million in a settlement over his death, but Ekene Okobi, Chinedu’s sister, said the county has offered “no admission of the harm that has been caused.”
“California supposedly is a sanctuary state filled with a lot of sanctuary cities, but the fact of the matter is, there are a number of law enforcement who are coordinating and cooperating with ICE as they sort of reek this path of destruction across our communities,” she said during the talk. “Causing destruction and pain that will be felt for generations. … It’s all the more important for people across the state, across the country, … around the world, to continue pushing law enforcement to be more accountable.”
The county policy updates included adding automated external defibrillators to each patrol vehicle. The devices can be used for emergency first aid if a person is exhibiting heart problems after a Taser is used on them. Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Gretchen Spiker confirmed each patrol vehicle contains an AED.
The policy update included a limit on the number of times a Taser can be used on a person. If a Taser has been used three times on a person, it’s deemed ineffective and other use of force should be considered, unless it’s an exceptional circumstance, according to the policy.
“Multiple activations and continuous cycling of a Taser has been observed to be associated with the risk of death or serious injury and should be avoided whenever possible,” the policy states.
In early August, University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University launched a database, which includes 12,000 cases, that tracks how law enforcement agencies in the state handle misconduct allegations. The system, created using generative artificial intelligence after a team of journalists, data scientists, lawyers and civil liberties advocates collected and vetted millions of records, also tracks use of force that results in death or serious injury.
“With this new database, Californians will have even better access, making it easier to find out which law enforcement officers have a history of bad behavior and which of our police departments do the right thing to hold their officers accountable,” said former state Sen. Nancy Skinner, who helped lead the legislative push for the new transparency laws and helped secure state funding to create the database, in a prepared statement.
More Tasers, acting ‘without accountability’
In May, Fixin’ and other community members advised the Redwood City council not to invest more money in Tasers. The council voted 6-1 to sign a $1.5 million contract with Axon to upgrade its Tasers and training.
East Palo Alto is the only city in the county that does not use Tasers.
Sean Allen, a retired police officer with the Santa Clara advocacy group, said Tasers can be “unpredictable” and lethal to people with medical conditions.
Since police departments themselves generally are liable when someone dies after a Taser is used on them, individual officers act “without accountability,” he said.
“Because they know (officers are) protected, even if they make a mistake, and they’re gonna call a mistake,” Allen said. “So the law enforcement community as a whole is gonna be your struggle; getting cops to come out and say something about it. If I tell you what my strategy would be.”
Allen suggested that minority and female officers in police unions might be more willing to speak out against Tasers because they might be in better touch with how use of force affects people of color and protected classes, he said.
Watch a recording of the Oct. 7 presentation below: