Member-only story
The History of the Taser Shows Tech Can’t Fix Policing
Fifty years after development began, the supposedly nonlethal Taser has failed to reduce the use of firearms by police
You hear a click, like the sound of a pencil being snapped. That click — and the searing pain that accompanies it — are nearly instantaneous, but your mind tricks you into thinking that there’s a distinct period between them.
When a Taser shock hits you, no matter how much you expect it, it comes as a surprise — a literal shock, like a baseball bat swung hard and squarely into the small of your back. That sensation, which is actually two sharp steel barbs piercing your skin and shooting electricity into your central nervous system, is followed by the harshest, most violent spasm you can imagine coursing through your entire body. With the pain comes the terrifying awareness that you are completely helpless. You lose control of almost everything, and the only place you can go is down, face first to the floor.
The whole thing lasts five seconds — but it feels like an eternity.
I had just spent several hours interviewing employees in the Scottsdale, Arizona, headquarters of the wildly successful, publicly traded company that makes Tasers, and the company’s main press officer asked me if I’d like to take a spin. For whatever reason, I voluntarily subjected myself to being shocked by the company’s signature product.
As soon as it was over, I began to ask myself for the first time: Is a weapon this powerful really necessary for police to do their work safely? Many cops would say yes, of course: The purpose of Tasers is to disable and immobilize unruly suspects without shooting them. Tasers give police another option that is less likely to kill someone than a gun. Tasers make police safer.
But the deeper I looked into the history and use of Tasers, the flimsier this reasoning seemed.
A physicist and business executive named Jack Cover invented the Taser in the late 1960s after reading newspaper stories about police officer–involved killings, as well as a piece in the Los Angeles Times describing a man being subdued by an electric fence. That was Cover’s inspiration, in fact — an electric…
