Murphy is one of the officers responsible for training hundreds of Hamilton police officers to use the conductive energy weapons as they're rolled out en masse this year.

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He volunteered to be shocked by a Taser himself, so he'd know how it feels firsthand – but that's not mandatory for every cop carrying one.

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The X26P model Taser that Hamilton's officers are being outfitted with fires two probes, which stick into a person's skin like needles.

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Hamilton is one of the first police services in the province to outfit all front line officers with the "less lethal" option on their belts, after the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services eased restrictions on who could use them back in 2013.

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If fired properly, they create a 1,300-volt circuit that travels between the person's body and the weapon. And if that happens, you're not moving – because it causes extreme pain and muscle contractions that locks people in place or causes them to collapse.

And in some cases, the person who has been shocked will urinate or defecate, too. "That's usually enough to change behaviours," Murphy said.

According to the report, Tasers were most often used to "apprehend/control emotionally disturbed/mentally ill persons," at 24 times, compared to just seven times where a person either had or was thought to have had a weapon.

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But of those 64 times, 48 were just in "display mode" – in other words, an effort to subdue a person without physically shocking them.

Hamilton officers will receive more yearly training on the new weapons than any other tool at their disposal. After an initial 12-hour training session, officers have to undergo a four-hour training session each year to keep using them.

According to the service's just-released year-end use-of-force report, Hamilton police officers used conducted energy weapons (commonly known by the Taser brand name) 64 times in 2014, which is an increase of 56 per cent from the year before.

In essence, it's the less lethal equivalent of pointing a gun at a person and warning them. Murphy says that's often enough to get a person to stop any dangerous behaviour.

Hamilton police armourer Sgt. Darren Murphy knows exactly what a Taser's electrical current ripping through your nervous system feels like – and he doesn't recommend you try it.