TASER FAILS TO HALT MAN WITH KNIFE
By IAN ITH - Seattle Times staff reporter
Seattle police say that more than 90 percent of the time, the 200 high-tech electric guns they have at the ready do exactly what they are supposed to do: jolt violent suspects into submission so police don't have to shoot them.
But not early yesterday morning.
When shots from two M26 Taser guns failed to stop a knife-wielding man, a SWAT officer shot the man dead.
As police and the weapon maker were left trying to explain why the high-tech weapons failed, they were quick to again point out that nonlethal weapons are not foolproof. And they aren't meant to replace shooting people, if that's necessary.
"The M26 is not a magic bullet," said Steve Tuttle, a founder of Taser International of Scottsdale, Ariz. "I wish my advanced Taser was a perfect weapon, but it's not. Nothing works all the time. We've made what we feel is the most powerful nonlethal weapon out there, but obviously the man chose his own destiny by lunging at the officer with a knife."
The department has purchased 194 Taser guns since last December and has been gradually introducing them in the field this year as part of a special program to use more nonlethal weapons.
It was prompted by the controversy surrounding the April 2000 fatal police shooting of David Walker, who was skipping down a Lower Queen Anne street and waving a knife. Walker had a history of mental illness.
The shooting was ruled justified, but critics said Walker's life might have been spared if nonlethal weapons, such as stun guns, had been quickly available.
Even then, police warned the public that Taser guns wouldn't mean the end of police shootings.
"We told you at the outset that this (program) is not a panacea, and it wasn't in this case," Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske said yesterday.
About 1,000 police departments in the country have purchased the weapons, and reports show that the guns work 94 percent of the time, the company says.
"It's the closest you can get to causing incapacitation, as long as you get a good hit," Tuttle said.
Seattle police have used the new guns about 80 times, with a success rate of 92 to 94 percent, said SWAT Officer Steve Ward, who helps train fellow officers to use the devices.
A department report released this month studied the first 37 times Seattle police used the shock guns and said that most of the time they were used against assault suspects, mentally ill people and drug dealers.
Of those 37 incidents, 55 percent of the suspects were white, 34 percent were black and 10 percent were Asian, the report said. Two of the suspects were women, and no one was injured beyond small welts from the electricity.
Bellevue police have 10 of the M26 guns, but they have used them only twice in the past five months, once successfully, department spokeswoman Marcia Harnden said.
In July, they shocked and subdued a 50-year-old, mentally ill man who was brandishing knives and a hatchet in his apartment. In September, officers zapped a man in downtown Bellevue who was high on drugs and resisting arrest. But the Taser malfunctioned.
"We had to rush him, and it ended up being an all-out fight," Harnden said.
Seattle police also keep other nonlethal weapons, including bean-bag rounds fired from special shotguns.
Coincidentally, Kirkland police Monday night used a tube-shaped device that shoots a hard plastic bullet to subdue a 40-year-old man who had poured gasoline on himself and was about to flick his cigarette lighter. He was captured without serious injury and taken to a hospital for a mental evaluation, police said.
All officers with the Special Response Team — Kirkland's version of SWAT — are trained to use plastic bullets as well as Tasers, police said.
Yesterday, Seattle police said they weren't sure why their Taser guns didn't subdue the knife-wielding man, who was 23.
Tuttle, the Taser-company spokesman, said Seattle police told him the first shot appeared to work, until the man broke the tiny wire connecting one of the shock probes to the gun. The second shot from a second gun probably didn't hit the man with both probes.
SWAT trainer Ward said that's purely speculative at this point as police investigate the death. But Tuttle said both scenarios are common with the M26.
"These wires are really thin things, and they can easily be broken in a rough situation," Tuttle said. "And you need both prongs to carry the electrical contact."
There are plenty of other situations that could cause Taser guns to fail, Tuttle and Ward say. Low batteries. Loose connections. Suspect out of range or wearing thick clothes.
In one case in another city, Tuttle said, police shot the probes at a man in a biker jacket. The probes both hit a large metal zipper, which defused the electricity away from the man.
In a Canadian case, Mounties shot a man in a hooded sweat shirt. One probe hit the dangling drawstring on the hood, too far from the suspect's body to shock him.
Because the weapons aren't perfect, the company — and Seattle police training — demands that when using a Taser against an armed suspect, another officer should stand by with a loaded pistol ready to fire.
"Even if this device was working, if (the man) was still coming after that officer and slashing, they're going to have to use lethal force," Tuttle said. "In this case, it's good that it was there because it saved that officer's life."
Seattle Times reporters Dave Birkland and Michael Ko contributed to this report. Ian Ith can be reached at 206-464-2109
