ESSEX Police Federation will be looking for the force to treble the number of Taser trained officers.<\/p>\n
Mark Smith, Federation Chairman, said Chief Constable Steve Kavanagh \u201cis in agreement that we can train more officers\u201d with using the less-lethal weapon \u2013 with the final number still to be confirmed. The Federation is hoping that the current 70 plus officers trained to use Taser can increase to more than 200.<\/p>\n
The plan would be that \u2013\u00a0as well as firearms officers and mutual-aid trained officers \u2013\u00a0response and patrol officers will also be able to use the less-lethal weapon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t been pushing for the purchase of more equipment,\u201d said Mr Smith. \u201cIt\u2019s just the training of more officers because we have enough equipment to be able to put some more Tasers out there. We\u2019ve got an agreement that it can roll out outside of our current policy \u2013 the full scope will need to be negotiated.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would like to see a trebling of officer numbers carrying Taser increase from 70 to more than 200 \u2013\u00a0I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s achievable but I would like maybe three times the amount of the non-firearms officers and also trebling the amount we deploy per LPA each shift.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Smith said the push for more officers to have Taser is not a reaction to a spate of recent high profile attacks on officers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was already working on it and pushing for it, so I can\u2019t say it\u2019s as a result\u201d said Mr Smith. “But obviously I think that this is good evidence towards having a greater number.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been working on it for some time and been talking to the Chief. We know budgets are tight and now isn\u2019t the time to buy more equipment, but certainly to train more officers up and to deploy and make full use of the Tasers we already have in force.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ESSEX Police Federation will be looking for the force to treble the number of Taser trained officers. Mark Smith, Federation Chairman, said Chief Constable Steve Kavanagh \u201cis in agreement that\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\/2754"}],"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=2754"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2805,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2754\/revisions\/2805"}],"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=2754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}