that is reason enough to have it. that is how it feels and sounds. that is not to say there's not utility and value in tasers. i have seen that. many of the cases i have are in the valley. everybody from fresno up through sacramento and beyond have tasers. the death cases have come about in those communities. we do know that they can be used. i will say that over the last five or six years, tasers in response to some of the cases i have seen half issued on different training nonchalance to incorporate much of what fits here to try to change the dynamics and give officers more guidelines on how they ought to be used. that is not to say the potential for abuse is not there.

that is the question you have to decide for yourselves as to whether or not what you're getting is worth the potential harm you have. i will say, you are not being fair and clear if you think that if a weapon can be used in order to prevent deadly force -- that is not the case. i have not seen that. i have seen officer shoot. they have. taser. they shoot because they have a potential threat of deadly force in front of them. they see a knife in front of them. they can close that gap pretty quickly and shoot them. you will not use a taser for that. you don't know if it is going to work. that is not an accurate fact in order to use tasers.

they may feel uncomfortable using them in communities. it is not because of deadly force. i would say, without having a real position on this, someone who has given a lot of thought to this, he thinks if you're going to do it, you ought to have this kind of study in place. i would support that. i don't think it is a necessary tool to have. remember this. this tart -- this department has function for 200 years. officers have been out in the street. there are incidents of police misconduct that are not as high as other departments i have been involved in. to say you need it because of that, it really is not an accurate statement. if you want it because you wanted, that is different. you ought to be fair and honest about that. commissioner chan: i want to thank our interpreters for tonight for working hard and providing simultaneous interpretation. i apologize for talking so fast.

do you have a question? go ahead. >> counselor, could you step up? >> of all the cases you have litigated, how many would you say, what is the percentage that the taser was abused and misused as opposed to some type of malfunction with the product? >> i have not had any case where there has been a malfunction with a taser. remember, people come to me after they have been abused. i don't get them before hand. when i get it, i'm trying to figure out where in the scheme of things was the force used, was it proper. because it was used to did not make it improper. i have not had malfunctions. what you have had -- one

question is it does not stop after five seconds. you keep pulling on the trigger, it will continue. you do have a continuation. you have the potential for abuse when you have continuation. that is an officer's ability to do that. you do have the ability to determine how many times it has been done. from accountability, you can look back and see whether or not that charge was used properly or not. that goes to the accountability question. that is part of the training and the study, if you do that. >> thank you. commissioner chan: thank you. [applause] mr. john burton, we're ready to proceed. mr. burton flew from los angeles to be with us tonight. i appreciate your taking the time. welcome back. sure. if you would like, we can have

another speaker go before you so you have time to set up, if you would like. ok. sure. let's move to another speaker while we try to get this fixed. is there someone who can help? ok. could i have the aclu here? your name has been mentioned a lot tonight. mr. allen hopper, director of police practices of the aclu for northern california. >> i do want to point out that i have a two-part presentation for you this evening. i would like to present a little video that will take eight or 10 minutes. i have a few minutes of comments. commissioner chan: maybe we will hold off on changing the laptop for now. >> do you want me to go ahead? >commissioner chan: yes, please.

>> however you want to do it. commissioner chan: i think you can use it right now. go ahead. >> good evening. i'm the police practices director at the aclu of northern california. thank you for inviting me to speak this evening. is that better? as i said, i have, with your indulgence, a two-base presentation. i have a video and a couple of minutes of commons. -- comments.

sorry for the delay. i don't know if you have a way of putting it on the main screen.

sound? >> can we pull the camera back? commissioner chan: if we need more time to make this work, we can have another speaker. i want to maximize our time. we will try to make it work. maybe we will have jack speak. sorry about this technical difficulty. mr. bryson, are you in the room? he is not here yet. ok.

rimi from -- i will try one more. barbara. >> all right. commissioner chan: she is the founder of accountability associates. she is an independent police auditor. and stand she is part of the occ. thank you for joining us tonight. >> good evening, chair mazzucco, commissioners. thank you for inviting me to speak tonight. thank you for that introduction. that is some of what i was going to talk about. i started my career in oversight as a member of the staff of the office of citizen complaints

back in 1983. i worked there for 15 years, seven years with the city of berkeley and four with san jose. i serve for 10 years on the board of the national association for civilian oversight of law enforcement. i am here to speak about my experiment -- my experience with the city of san jose and tasered deployment. i'm not here to tell you tasers are bad or should not be used in san francisco. there should be careful guidelines in place for use. i worked with san jose to establish guidelines. when first deployed there, the city relies on tasered training, -- relied on taser training, which was to use them early and often. they have changed recommendations. the guidelines adopted in 2005 were the product of my

recommendations as the auditor, were completed about taser guidelines by a representative of the aclu, and they are somewhat abbreviated from the guidelines disseminated for this meeting. the guidelines are an excellent starting place for developing a taser policy. if tasers were to be adopted, i recommend careful monitoring of taser usage by officers and units, as well as department wide. regular reports should be made to the commission and to members of the public. there should also be independent oversight of taser usage by the occ as well. supervision is extremely important. this there's often -- this is shown in the numbers.

it has been reported that often, tasers are overused when initially deployed. this was the case in san jose. during the first year, they were used 172 times. in 2006, the second year,232 times. in 2007, 240 times. that is when reports were issued and taser usage was issued. last year, commissioner marshall asked something to the effect, wouldn't it be better to be shot with a taser then with a gun? i think this is a good question and one that members of the public often ask when discussing tasers. i think looking at the number of times tasers are used helps to answer that question. there

far more often than a gun would be used. officers are taught that tasers are not to be used in deadly force situations, because tasers are not always effective if lives are in danger. officers are taught to use deadly force. i was in the other room when officers told stories about incidents that had happened, the removing stories, marie scary stories. in most of those scenarios, tasers would not be an appropriate weapon. tasers are not non-lethal weapons. they are less lethal. at least six people have died nearby when tasers were used. in one of those cases, the man

had been hitting a car with a garden hoe. he did not respond to commands, and officers used batons and pepper spray on him. the coroner's report said that tasers had been used 20 times. he died the next day. a comparison can be made a fatal officer-involved shootings in the five years before and after tasers were deployed in san jose. there were seven between 1999 and 2004, and seven in the five years following. however, when the number of deaths after tasers were deployed is added, it becomes 13. the numbers in san jose do not do a strong support for taser deployment. the other issue is cost.

the cost to purchase, the cost of training, which should be ongoing, because tasers should not be used often, and medical support for those shot. each should be used by a -- should be examined by a doctor. san francisco should purchase tasers with cameras to have the best evidence available. there are many issues and costs which must be weighed. i think you all have their work cut out for you. i also want to say there is a really important step in moving ahead with the crisis intervention program. having worked in berkeley, and a crisis intervention can save lives if it is a party of the department. thank you for the time to address you today.

i know you have many speakers. i do not want to talk long. but i am here to answer any questions you might have. >> mr. john burton, do you want to give it another stab after technical difficulties? if you give it a try, i think it will work this time. >> the cure may be using somebody else's lap top. >> mr. burton is an attorney from los angeles. i believe you were the first attorney to successfully sue taser international after a shooting death. i wanted you to share your experiences on that. >> i have prepared a brief

power. . -- a brief powerpoint. >> got it. >> here we go. the risks of this device are not apparent. these officers to go to these training sessions. they are tasered under controlled circumstances. it hurts like hell. they laugh afterward, go out in the field, and tend to use it in situations far below anything that would justify pulling a firearm, much less discharging it. they are trained that it is not a substitute for legal force. we will see why, as we show you my presentation, that is the case.

when it talks about ecd's, electronic control devices, conduct electrical weapons -- tasers do not have a lockout device on model x26, which is the only one being sold at this time. stinger, which was a competitor that lost a patent lawsuit to taser., had a lockout after five seconds, which was more responsible. it could be cycled three times, and then the taser had to be reset. officers get a lot of adrenalin going. the wind of discharging the device far more than they think they did afterward. we have seen minutes of

discharges. there were 35 second this charges recorded on the device -- their work -- there were 30 five-second discharges recorded on this device. there is no conclusive medical evidence that indicates a high level of death from exposure. i am not sure what they mean by high risk. it is a low percentage of people who are catered -- tasered who have serious injury and die. but we are talking about russian roulette. in the next per group on the next page, it says exposure is safe in the vast majority of cases. let us hope that the victim who is getting tasered is not in that small minority of cases

that involves injury or death. i would like to talk about one of these small minority of cases. this man -- he is a boy. he is 17 years old. he lived in charlotte, north carolina. we have heard about the charlotte department. this is a charlotte-mecklenburg incident that was caught on tape. there'll worked in the local supermarket as a backer. he graduated from high school. he was caught by his employer eating some snack food and not paying for it. there were hot dogs. he was upset. he felt he was being singled out and treated unfairly. he had his polo shirt that belonged to the store.

he took it off and was confronting the manager. this is what the -- this is what the store video captured. there he is. he is not on drugs. the structurally normal heart. healthy 17 year-old. he pushed the display over. here is the officer pulling the taser as he walks in the front door. he has not even make contact yet. you heard about painting the.. the see it right on the center of -- painting the dot. you see it right there on the center of his chest. he fired from 6 feet. that is not effective at that distance. he is now staggering. this was your guy with the night

-- knife. it would not have stopped the deadly threat. darrel staggers across the front of the store. the officer is confused that he did not go down. he holds the trigger down for 37 seconds he is so surprised. darrel does go down right here, underneath the surveillance cameras pointing to the door. we do not see him. this is 10 minutes later, when paramedics time i arrive. the officer does not even know his heart has stopped beating. the rush in. they apply emergency medicine. they try to save this young man. but because the officers thought he was playing possum when he was lying there motionless, they did nothing to give him cpr or expedite the medical attention, and he passed away at the age of

17. this is real. this is what this device is capable of doing. the manufacturer -- but this cost the police department a lot of money when they settled with the family. they have a case now going against taser international corporation for their failure to properly warn. this officer is the victim. he had a son the same age as darrel. he has been decorated by the department for his youth in -- for his work in youth leagues. he had to kill a guy with this device because taser did not warn him not to shoot people in the chest. let me go back to the slide

show. these are the current warnings. there is no way to get them visible for you. but you can go to taser.com. it is in their legal section, not their instructions. taser has done a set of instructions to prevent them from being sued for failure to warn. they have created a situation where police misconduct lawyers like me are going to be able to come up with something that officers were warned not to be -- were warned not to do it every time there is a bad result with a taser in the field. i think commissioner dejesus made this point earlier, which was very astute. they have basically warned against tasering people on drugs, because they are metabolic a compromise. tasering people who are running

away, because they might fall and hurt themselves. people who might have medical conditions the officers would not know about. these are the warnings. i have some training slides. this is the bottom line. ecd is not a substitute for deadly force. you can see from the video why that is not the case. there is a closing disconnect. you have to get too close in. they do not work. if a person is close and assaulting the user of the taser. you aren' -- taser, you are are not going to get a sufficient spread. you were going to get the center of the chest, where there is low muscle mass and not a lot of nerves. and that is where you get the cardiac arrest. injuries or falls are no joke. it is not just this guy who fell

off the fire escape. i got a case reserved -- referred to me yesterday, where a person fell down and fractured three bones in his eye and had a concussion and passed away. i had a guy who hit a curb when he was tasered in los angeles and woke up in the hospital nine days later from hitting his head. these injuries from falls are extremely serious. people explode when they get tasered if there is any flammable substance, which includes pepper spray. they say "avoid targeting sensitive areas." these are being used in a dynamic situation. you have heard the circumstances officers face in the field. how can you say things like this are not going to happen, where

somebody is hit directly in the eye? for cardiac risk, taser finally put up training in 2009 after hundreds of deaths had been documented. in fact, it can defend relate the heart and cause cardiac arrest. they say 100,000 applications. that is the speculation. but they are talking about all applications. when parts are in the chest close together on a fit person, so things are aligned right, that number falls to a much smaller percentage. i think that is unacceptable when one considers that are giving this device as something that is a safe alternative to other uses of force. this is our distance. imagine the time we are going to have in court with the slides

when one of your officers shoot somebody in the chest and they died of cardiac arrest. you knew this was a possibility. officers hate this. they hate this because they are trained -- i do not want to speak to them. the can correct me if i'm wrong. they are trained in the concept of muscle memory. they do not have to think. they know what to do when they get into high stress situations such as shootings. they are taught to target center body mass with their firearms. over and over again, center body mass. stop the threat. now taser is saying you can shoot them anywhere but center body mass. that greatly lowers the effect. you have to get a dart into one of those legs if the person is facing you. if the person is not facing you, he is much less of a threat.

this is psychological metabolic effects. taser international explains their product produces metabolic physiological effects. the market is cycled, the more the effect. these effects can be quite dramatic. so be careful. don't use it on a metabolic the compromised person. that is a person on drugs, acting out, or delirious, somebody who is not responding to verbal commands, somebody who is not responding to officer presents, somebody who perhaps think the officers are there to help them, are there to hurt him or take him away, the mentally ill person. those are the kind of people who are physiologically or metabolic we compromised.