A Growing Threat to Life: Taser usage by Greater Manchester Police

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Heya all!

My group Resistance Lab published their first report today. Thought you might like to know as we did all of it in Observable - the support I’ve had on this form has been awesome and really helped get it out.

Thanks a lot,

Kim

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Hi @kimadactyl - and thanks for sharing! I had a quick look and will read more after breakfast.

I note that your report is rather lengthy. You might consider adding a ‘Table of Contents’, similar to this one:

I had initially tried to model this for you, but Mike’s ToC uses a different header level for the title ‘Table of Contents’ than you do for your standard headers, so it looks off without a bit of tweaking modification (which I haven’t done).

Just a suggestion - do with it as you will :wink:

And thanks again for sharing!!

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That’s a good shout. We’re mostly pushing people to it through our website (A Growing Threat to Life: Taser Usage by Greater Manchester Police | Resistance Lab) but will publish a revision next week most likely so might add it then. Thanks :slight_smile:

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Cool! I’ll cross post this to a related thread. :slight_smile:

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The report states:

The Home Office data also indicates that police are showing an increased willingness to draw their weapon without discharging it. Between 2011 and 2015, the police discharged the Taser in approximately 1 in every 5 incidents. In subsequent years, that number has declined to 1 in every 8 incidents despite growing access to and use of Tasers (ibid.).

How is that an “increased willingness”?

The report does not analyze/correlate and/or account for justified use of force.

For example, the Police use of force statistics, England and Wales: April 2017 to March 2018:

The statistics in this release are ‘experimental statistics’ and do not represent all police use of force in England and Wales.

These statistics should be used and interpreted with caution.

In the year ending March 2018:

  • There were 313,000 recorded incidents in which a police officer used force on an individual.
  • Restraint tactics(e.g. handcuffing) were the most common type of force used (286,000 times).
  • The most common reason force was used by an officer was to protect themselves(214,000 incidents).
  • The most common impact factor was the subject being under the influence of alcohol(127,000 incidents).
  • The most common outcome was the subject being arrested(203,000 incidents).