Chron criticizes HPD again for Taser usage
What's HPD to do? The Chronicle thinks police officers shoot too many people, so Chief Hurtt convinced Council to buy Tasers. Now the Chronicle's Roma Khanna writes, disapprovingly, that HPD is using the stun guns too often on mentally ill people:
More than 120 encounters between Houston police and people with mental illness ended with officers using their Tasers to control troubled suspects in the grips of a mental crisis, according to a Houston Chronicle review of more than 1,000 incidents since December 2004.
In many cases, officers were forewarned they were about to encounter someone with mental health issues — yet almost never did officers call on colleagues specially trained to deal with the mentally ill to calm a volatile episode, according to police reports.
Most of the people officers stunned with their Tasers carried no weapon. Fewer than one in four were later convicted of a crime.
Some had committed violent crimes, threatened others or harmed themselves. But most were people who failed to follow officers' orders in the fog of their mental confusion, records show.
I didn't see a link to the records, but I'd be interested to know if that's what the records really say or if that's the Chronicle's interpretation.
We were skeptical when Council gave HPD $5 million to purchase the Tasers instead of investing in manpower, but we sure didn't see any critical pieces in the Chronicle. In fact, the only local news outlet to look into the effectiveness of Tasers was the Houston Press, so it seems highly unfair for the Chron to castigate HPD for shootings, then turn around and castigate HPD for what it uses as a less-lethal alternative. Exactly how would the folks at 801 Texas Avenue have Houston police officers do their jobs?
UPDATE: The AP has picked up the story which means there are multiple entries on Google News, and Drudge has the story linked on his homepage as well.
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