THE Chairman of Essex Police Federation will be approaching Chief Constable Steve Kavanagh to request that more officers are trained in using Taser.<\/p>\n
Mark Smith said that while the force might not need more Tasers, having more officers trained in the less-lethal weapon\u2019s use would mean the option is available to officers more often.<\/p>\n
He believes the force currently has around 87 Taser trained officers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would like to see within our local policing areas, a doubling of the amount of officers trained,\u201d said Mr Smith. \u201cI\u2019d also like to see Taser issued to response officers rather than just mutual aid trained officers and firearms.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first officers on the scene of an incident will be response officers – those responding to 999 calls. And we don\u2019t know what we\u2019re going to find when we get to a scene.<\/p>\n
\u201cTaser is just another tool to be considered. It\u2019s a deterrent \u2013 it is not always fired – and as far as I\u2019m concerned, is a less lethal option to hit someone with a metal ASP. As far as I\u2019m concerned a Taser is part of personal, protective equipment.\u201d<\/p>\n
At a meeting of Chief Officers on 20 January, Chief Constables across England and Wales announced they have no plans to issue Taser to all the country\u2019s police officers at this time.<\/p>\n
However the National Police Chiefs\u2019 Council said that \u201cchief constables make the operational decisions in their force areas and can increase the number of Taser-trained officers if their strategic threat and risk assessments show there is a need.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Smith added: \u201cI\u2019m starting to collate from around the region over how many Taser officers each force has and then also the size of those forces. And then I\u2019ll sit down with the force and try and put something together.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that within Essex we\u2019ve got very few female Taser-trained officers, and I believe that is because of where we draw them from. We\u2019ve got very few firearms officers that are female, and very few public order officers that are female.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if we were to give them to response and patrol that would automatically knock onto us getting more female officers, and I also think that\u2019s only right.\u201d<\/p>\n
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THE Chairman of Essex Police Federation will be approaching Chief Constable Steve Kavanagh to request that more officers are trained in using Taser. Mark Smith said that while the force\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2611,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2610"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2610"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2634,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2610\/revisions\/2634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}