ABSTRACT
This chapter examines projectile electric shock weapons and officer safety. After examining the academic literature, the chapter complements this with officer views, drawing on over 50 interviews with TASER specially trained officers, trainers, and other officers working with the weapon. The account that such officers present is broadly positive, suggesting they perceive electric-shock weapons as safer and more effective than other alternatives—findings often borne out by the literature. While these accounts are highly valuable, a range of factors, including police subculture and beliefs around technologies, might help explain why officers tend towards such accounts. After examining these factors, I then present an alternative account, one that draws on officer views to highlight slightly different, and less positive, features of the relationship between projectile electric-shock weapons and officer safety. In so doing, I challenge the mainstream myths around projectile electric-shock weapons and officer safety. I also underscore the importance of looking not just at the technical features of such weapons—which might lead one to conclude that they are safer for officers—but looking more broadly at the socio-technical network surroundingthem, which could support the opposite conclusion. Further, drawing on a key concept in Science and Technology Studies, Bloor's notion of symmetry, I highlight the need to carefully investigate claims about the benefits and effectiveness of technologies in policing and elsewhere.
