TASER should be issued to every officer on the front line in a bid to keep officers and the public safer, Essex Police Federation has said.<\/p>\n
Last month, Northamptonshire Police\u2019s Chief Constable Nick Adderley announced that his would become the first force in the country to arm every officer with Taser after a \u201csickening\u201d trend of attacks on officers.<\/p>\n
Essex Police Federation would like the same, but has warned that it would take time to equip all officers.<\/p>\n
Chairman Steve Taylor said: \u201cEssex as a force is slowly growing the number of Tasers available on the front line, and the view of our federation is we would like to see Taser made available for every officer. But that\u2019s going to take time. It\u2019s an expensive piece of kit and we\u2019re a poor force. So those two things don\u2019t marry up very easily.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would much rather our officers have it and not need it than it not be available when they do. So we are consistently and fairly lobbying the force to increase its Taser provision. To be fair to Essex Police, they are doing that. They are listening and we are slowly growing the number of Tasers that are available on the front line. For some officers that change can\u2019t come quickly enough. I do appreciate that. But I\u2019m encouraged that we\u2019re moving in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Steve also warned that Taser is not a panacea. He added: \u201cTaser is a really impactive piece of kit and we know in Essex it is only actually discharged a fraction of the time it is used. When it is used that means someone is deterred from using violence because they simply had the device turned on or pointed at them. Not fired at them, pointed at them. So, I don\u2019t dispute that it\u2019s a really effective piece of equipment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s only reasonable to add into this debate that it\u2019s not the silver bullet. It\u2019s not completely infallible. It does fail. It doesn\u2019t work on everyone. There are circumstances where we can\u2019t or shouldn\u2019t use it. So in that sense it\u2019s a fantastic piece of kit but it is just one of many tools we\u2019d like to see our officers have more readily available, rather than a super-tool that will solve all ills. It\u2019s a great tool. We\u2019d like to see more of it \u2013 but it is just a tool.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TASER should be issued to every officer on the front line in a bid to keep officers and the public safer, Essex Police Federation has said. Last month, Northamptonshire Police\u2019s\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":116,"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\/75148"}],"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=75148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75369,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75148\/revisions\/75369"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}