Taser use by police reaches record high

New Home Office figures show that the use of Taser stun guns by police and England and Wales reached a record high last year, in most cases, the devices were aimed at a suspect without being fired.

The data indicates that Taser stun guns were deployed in 23,000 incidents in the 12 months to the end of March - an increase of more than a third on the previous year and double the 2016 total. The weapons were fired on 2,500 occasions between April 2018 and March 2019, widely considered to be the highest number recorded.

The Home Office is providing funding to enable an extra 10,000 officers to carry them. A petition demanding all police officers in the UK are issued with Tasers has reached more than 113,000 signatures.

Police maintain that they are vital to ensure safety, but several civil liberty groups, including Amnesty International, argue that Tasers can be lethal.

Oliver Feeley-Sprague, Amnesty UK's police and security programme director, said: "A large number of officers fail the Taser training course, either in the proficiency of using it or their judgement about when to use it. This demonstrates very clearly that a Taser is not suitable for every officer."

In total, there were 428,000 recorded incidents in which a police officer used force. Restraint tactics, such as handcuffing, were the most common type of force - and were used 401,000 times. Trained firearms officers in England and Wales discharged baton rounds, sometimes known as plastic bullets, 43 times last year.