The 29-year-old Nichols was handcuffed and brutally beaten even though some of the officers involved in the incident had their body-cameras activated at the time and a stationary police security camera captured the alleged brutality, resulting in seven officers being fired, including five who were charged with murder.

CED discharge has two principal effects on the subject. First, in ‘drive-stun’ mode, or when the probes are narrowly spaced, the discharge results in pain; second, when the fired probes are more than about 9 inches (23 cm) apart, the subject will experience pain and so-called neuromuscular incapacitation, stiffening up and falling to the ground, unable to maintain voluntary control of their movement.

However, despite tens of millions of dollars spent since then on body cameras and supporting storage software by law enforcement agencies across the nation, the technology has yet to become the panacea some politicians and activists once predicted, experts told ABC News.

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But Betsy Brantner Smith, a retired police sergeant and spokesperson for the nonprofit National Police Association, told ABC News that police officers, in general, "appreciate" having body-worn cameras.

"If you look back at the history of policing, it should have been very easy to identify that that's wildly and unrealistically optimistic," Seth Stoughton, a professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina School of Law and one of the nation's top experts on police body cameras, told ABC News.

He said body-cameras are now being created with the capacity to allow real-time facial recognition, live streaming, read license plates, detect when an officer is using profanity and can send out an alert if it senses an officer is incapacitated.

Unlike its predecessors, skin-embedded TASER 7 probes should not be removed by simply tugging the probe body. Instead, police officers are issued with a plastic tool specifically designed for the purpose of probe removal. Because the tool is dual purpose—it also serves as the carrier used to store unused cartridges—it should be readily available from police officers in hospital settings on request (figure 6). An alternative probe removal tool, which operates on the same principle as the cartridge carrier, is marketed by the manufacturers of the TASER 7.

CEDs are now routinely used by UK Police and can cause effects of which the emergency clinician should be aware, in particular the differences relating to the new TASER 7.

In the new TASER 7 device, the probe shaft is fixed to a base plate which sits on the end of a cylinder from which the stored cable pays out during flight. At its front end, the cylinder is attached to the front assembly at six crimp points around the circumference of the base plate. The base plate/shaft assembly can detach from the cylinder during flight and on impact. Figures 2–5 illustrate the probes.

A deformed barb may require removal by a medical professional in hospital as it may not come out easily with the plastic tool.

Most police departments, large and small, are continuing to spend large portions of their budgets on equipping officers with body cameras. The two top police body camera manufacturers, Axon and Motorola Solutions, which both make other devices like stun guns and two-way radios, reported spikes in revenue in 2022, with Axon reporting an increase of $286 million, or a 31% jump from the previous year, and Motorola Solutions reporting overall sales of $2.4 billion, up 13% from the previous year.

Two recent police-involved civilian deaths are casting new scrutiny on the effectiveness of the technology: The Jan. 7 death of Tyre Nichols, who was allegedly beaten to death by Memphis police officers following a traffic stop, and the Jan. 18 fatal shooting by law enforcement officers of Manuel Esteban Paez Teran in Atlanta.

Stoughton said some small police departments with 50 officers or fewer have scrapped their body-camera programs in recent years because data storage costs were too expensive.

The mass and velocity, and hence the kinetic energy and momentum, of the TASER 7 probe is greater than that of its predecessors. This means that the probe shaft may embed deeper into tissue, even though the barbed point is of the same length.

"I would emphasize that what we have seen in the past seven or eight years is certainly not the end of the evolution of this technology," Stoughton said. "And we need to make sure that we're thinking about the policy environment and the regulatory environment, not just for what currently exists, but for what is coming down the pike."

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"That can certainly undermine public trust because it can leave community members thinking, 'What is it police agency that you want to hide by not having body cameras?” Stoughton said.

But a report released in January by the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, concluded that while 80% of the agencies acquired body-worn cameras with those goals in mind, "research does not necessarily support the effectiveness of body worn cameras in achieving those desired outcomes."

Stoughton was a key prosecution expert witness in two recent high-profile trials of police officers that hinged on body-camera evidence: Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was convicted for the murder of George Floyd, and former Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, police officer Kim Potter, who was convicted of manslaughter in death of Daunte Wright.

Stoughton said the primary goals of law enforcement agencies acquiring body-cameras have been to curb abusive behavior of officers; bolster transparency and build public trust; and improve the quality of evidence.

Stoughton said both cases illustrate the problems with body cameras. In the Nichols incident, body cameras failed to curb the alleged behavior of the officers involved in his death. He said the Teran episode, undermines the public trust because none of the officers involved in the shooting had body cameras despite them being used by colleagues serving as support.

Since their introduction into UK policing in 2003, the use of CEDs has been associated with non-fatal injuries and a small number of deaths, with one death being attributed solely to CED use. In this case, the electrical discharge from the CED ignited fuel that the subject had poured on himself.2 There have also been a small number of fatal outcomes in the UK where the electrical discharge from the CED was considered to have played a contributory role.3–8

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Considering that probes have been deployed on more than 26 000 occasions in the 4 years to March 2021, CEDs appear to be relatively safe weapons provided that they are used lawfully by the police in situations in which less injurious options for use of force are inappropriate or unlikely to succeed in resolving a violent encounter. There remains a paucity of prospective studies on their use in the operational setting and it is unclear whether certain vulnerabilities increase the risk of morbidity and mortality.

None of the officers involved in Teran's shooting were wearing body cameras, although some backup officers had their body camera's rolling, but only captured the aftermath of the shooting, officials said. The officers who shot the 26-year-old environmental activist, claim he fired the first shot. Teran's family said an independent autopsy found he was shot 13 times and the bullets that hit him came from several different firearms. The case remains under investigation and none of the officers involved have been disciplined or charged.

In the UK, the medical effects of CEDs are considered by the Scientific Advisory Committee on the Medical Implications of Less-Lethal Weapons (SACMILL), a government-sponsored independent advisory committee. SACMILL assesses the medical impacts of less-lethal weapons, including CEDs, used by police in the UK, and makes recommendations regarding their use.

"You can give the best training to the worst people and you're not going to have the desired results. So, we really have to start looking at elevating the standards rather than downgrading the standards," Haberfeld said.

She suggested more money should be spent on recruiting higher quality police officer candidates than on body cameras. She said many police agencies have lowered the standards for recruits because there are fewer people going into the profession.

The most common brand of CED is manufactured by Axon Enterprise, Inc, under the TASER trademark. Devices include the TASER X26 (launched by Axon in 2003 and discontinued in 2014), the TASER X2 (launched in 2011) and the TASER 7 (launched in late 2018).

Taser was introduced into UK policing in 2003 to bridge the operational gap between use of incapacitant sprays and firearms. Use of force reporting in the UK indicates that Taser is relatively safe provided that it is used lawfully. Taser use can result in injuries and has been implicated in a small number of deaths. The latest version of the weapon, the TASER 7, has entered UK policing. The TASER 7 uses a novel probe that has implications for the medical community. A review of Taser medical effects and probe removal for TASER 7 are presented.

Correction notice Since this paper was published online changes have been made. The manufacturer of TASER devices is Axon Enterprise, Inc (not Axon International). The funding source should have been listed as the Home Office and not DSTL. The article refers to the use of an animal model to investigate the interaction of TASER probes with tissue. For additional context, the probes were fired into a section of porcine thorax/abdomen obtained from an animal that had been humanely slaughtered at a licensed abattoir. References to T7 in the abstract should read TASER 7. The author B Sheridan has been updated to Robert D Sheridan.

"This is the sort of the hidden reality of the body worn camera system," Stoughton said. "The cameras themselves are not very expensive. What's expensive is the storage. We're talking about gigabytes and gigabytes and gigabytes, hundreds or thousands of hours of video, tens of thousands of hours of video for a large agency. And all of that data has to be backed up somewhere either on an in-house server, or, more likely, on a cloud-based system."

Online ISSN: 1472-0213Print ISSN: 1472-0205 Copyright © 2024 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and the College of Emergency Medicine. All rights reserved.

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The federal researchers analyzed 70 studies on police body-worn cameras and found "no consistent or statistically significant effects" between agencies that require them and those that do not, including fatal encounters with civilians.

TASER 7close quarter cartridge

Home Office statistics for England and Wales indicate that police officers fired probes on nearly 3250 occasions in the 12-month period to March 2021.2 In contrast, drive-stun was used less than 80 times during the same period.2

"And there won't be because local jurisdictions push back against national standards for police professions from recruitment to training," Maria "Maki" Haberfeld, chair of the department of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told ABC News. "We have the most decentralized police system in the world, nobody comes even close to what we have. And this gives opportunities to police departments to do whatever they feel like doing."

Where the probes of the TASER X26 and TASER X2 have penetrated the skin in an uncomplicated anatomical region, they may be removed by tensing the skin around the probe-penetration site and tugging firmly on the body of the probe. The removal of probes that have penetrated sensitive areas, or have become entrapped in bone, may require the attention of specialist medical staff and it is then that patients may present to the ED. Sensitive areas where probe injuries have been described include the eyes, genital area, mouth, neck and head.

Further information on potential probe removal methods may be found on the FFLM website along with more detailed information on the clinical effects of CEDs.11

In the aftermath Michael Brown's death in Missouri and the subsequent decision by the local prosecutor to clear the officer involved in the shooting, activists pushed for body cameras believing they would boost police accountability and transparency, Brantner Smith said.

Clinicians need to consider any medical, toxicological or psychiatric conditions that preceded CED deployment (particularly acute behavioural disturbance-excited delirium).

In the Teran incident, officers from several agencies were conducting a "clearing operation" of a camp protesters established at the wooded construction site of an 85-acre police training facility dubbed "Cop City." During the operation, officers claimed the 26-year-old Teran refused to comply with verbal commands, drew a gun and shot a state trooper in the abdomen, prompting other officers to return fire, killing Teran, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Seven states -- Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Carolina -- mandate the statewide use of body-worn cameras by law enforcement officers.

TASER 7Cartridges

TASER10

The result is that rules regarding the public release of body-camera videos, how long they are stored, when they must be turned on or kept off vary from agency to agency.

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

Probes in particularly vulnerable areas (eg, the eyes, head, neck or genitalia) should always be removed by medical professionals only, ideally in a hospital setting.

The TASER 7, which will progressively replace the older devices, diverges from both older devices due to its novel probe design.

Partly because of the range of potential injuries that have been associated with CED discharge, the UK Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine (FFLM), together with other bodies representing UK healthcare practitioners, have recently introduced guidance and specialist training around the effects of CEDs and the medical assessment of those in police custody who have been exposed to CED discharge.10 For patients attending the ED after exposure to CED, they should undergo an ECG, and cardiac monitoring should be considered in patients with a significant cardiac risk or pacemaker (although delayed dysrhythmias are thought to be extremely rare). Injuries may be present that were sustained prior to CED discharge and therefore a thorough clinical assessment should be undertaken. Specialist assistance might be necessary for the removal of CED barbs in sensitive body areas. Pregnant patients are advised to undergo obstetric review following exposure to CED. Perhaps the most important aspect of assessment and management of these patients in the ED relates to the assessment of acute behavioural disturbance, acute psychosis or drug-related issues that led to the circumstances in which CED was deployed.

The deployment of probes can be expected to cause small electrical burns around the skin contact sites and could be followed by secondary injury from uncontrolled falls3 which are among a number of injury mechanisms that have been identified.3 9

Conducted energy devices (CEDs), also known as conducted electrical weapons, are hand-held electronic devices widely used by law enforcement agencies in the USA, Canada, the UK, Europe, Australia and elsewhere. Together with less-lethal impact rounds, CEDs are designed to bridge the gap between close quarter options, such as batons and irritant sprays, and lethal firearms in helping to resolve serious and violent incidents.

"Quite frankly, they thought law enforcement wasn't going to want them," Brantner Smith said. "Now that we've had them for years, what we're really seeing is body-worn cameras save the reputations of police officers and do provide a level of transparency."

"This is not just an existing technology, this is a technology that is continuing to evolve, and I don't know, and I don't think anyone could tell you with any clarity, what this is going to look like in 10 years," Stoughton said.

In 2019, the New York Police Department, the nation's largest law enforcement agency, released its first policy on the public release of body camera footage of critical incidents, requiring them to be made public within 30 days of the episode.

TASER 7voltage and amps

While there are differences in the electrical discharge output of the various TASER devices, a major distinction between the TASER X26 and the later TASER devices is that the TASER X26 has a single cartridge, while the TASER X2 and TASER 7 have twin cartridges. The twin cartridge devices offer the user a rapidly deployable second shot back-up in the event of a probe miss on the first shot.

When probes are fired from the cartridge at the front end of the CED, the top probe flies towards the subject in line with the ‘muzzle’ of the CED, while the lower probe diverges downward. This means that the spread of the probes increases as they approach their target. The spread of the probes is required for the discharge to exert its desired effect.1

In a historic decision in 2018, the Los Angeles Police Commission voted unanimously to direct the Los Angeles Police Department to release relevant video of officer-involved shootings from body-worn, patrol car, bystander and other cameras within 45 days of the "critical incident." The decision made the LAPD the nation's first large police department to have a policy for the timely release of videos.

"The history of policing is really marked by technological interventions that are offered as a way of solving deep-seated, long-running sociological problems," Stoughton said. "They fail to solve those problems because, to put it very simply, deep-seated societal problems are not susceptible to easy technological solutions."

TASER 7for Sale

Despite the DOJ awarding millions of dollars in grants annually to law enforcement agencies to purchase body-cameras, there are no blanket federal policies governing their use other than those pertaining to federal law enforcement officers.

"This whole idea of body worn cameras was really not properly empirically vetted," Haberfeld said. "Somebody said, 'Oh, it's great. We'll put the cameras on them and immediately change their behavior.'"

We conducted a small study using an animal model to assess different methods of removal of tissue-embedded TASER 7 darts.10 The probes were fired into a section of porcine thorax/abdomen obtained from an animal that had been humanely slaughtered at a licensed abattoir. Removal of embedded probes using a needle holder from a standard suture pack was technically far more difficult than using the police-issued removal tool: using a needle holder also made it more difficult to produce an axial force on the probe, resulting in the shaft twisting in the underlying tissue and the potential for increasing tissue damage. We also identified that the shaft of the TASER 7 probe may bend on impact with underlying bone and that the probe body can separate into its two component parts on impact or in flight (figure 7).

The probes of the new TASER 7 device differ from previous models in a number of ways, but the key change for clinicians lies in the two-part construction of the probes. Earlier versions of TASER CEDs have employed solid, one-piece probes in which the shaft is attached to the probe body (figure 1).

Following the 2014 fatal shooting of Black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, an episode that was not captured on video and prompted widespread protests, law enforcement agencies came under intense pressure to boost the use of body-worn cameras to increase police accountability.

CEDs may be used in a number of ways to de-escalate incidents. Drawing the device from its holster, aiming it at a subject, producing a high-voltage arc display at the front of the device (‘arcing’) or painting a laser aiming dot on the subject may all have deterrent value.1 As a last resort, however, CEDs may be used to administer an electrical discharge to a subject. The discharge, which takes the form of brief, repetitive pulses, may be delivered either by direct application of the front end of the weapon to the subject (drive-stun) or by firing two electrically tethered projectiles (probes) of opposite polarity up to a distance of 21–25 feet, depending on the model. The front end of each probe is designed to penetrate the skin or to attach to an individual’s clothing. By far the vast majority of uses in which people are subjected to electrical discharge involve the firing of probes.1

The plastic tool issued to police officers should be used to remove a tissue-embedded probe in non-sensitive areas of the body. This was found to be easier than using a needle holder from a suture pack. A TASER 7 police officer should be able to provide the removal tool to medical staff.