After a police shooting, New Bedford ponders Tasers

(Taser International Photo)

A shocking picture: a sample of a Taser.

By Martin Finucane, Globe Staff

In the wake of a police shooting of a knife-wielding man, city officials in New Bedford are discussing equipping police with Tasers, the electric shock dart gun intended to offer officers a nonlethal alternative to dealing with threatening suspects.

Councilor Brian Gomes, who is pushing the proposal, said he wasn't criticizing the handling of the recent shooting -- he simply wanted to give police "the tools they need in this 21st century." Gomes said he had raised the idea once before, in 2006.

Gomes said the council would be meeting with city administrators and the police department to talk about providing officers with Tasers and another device, the beanbag shotgun.

Deputy Police Chief David Provencher had no comment on the incident in which the man was fatally shot and said it would be "entirely inappropriate" to discuss the new weapons in that context.

But he also said the department was open to the idea of arming officers with Tasers.

He said one key obstacle was the city's tight finances. He also said people should recognize that the device is not the panacea for "all the world's problems."

"It's another tool. It has its pros and it has its cons," he said.

Tasers have been criticized by some, including the human rights group Amnesty International, which says that since June 2001, more than 290 people have died after being Tasered by police. The group says it's concerned that the device is being used as a routine tool, rather than a last resort, and has called for study of its effects.

Police departments in the state have held mixed views on whether to employ Tasers.

The shooting in New Bedford on May 14 was one of three fatal shootings by Massachusetts officers of knife-wielding suspects in the past few weeks. Other shootings occurred in Revere in late February and on Tuesday in Lynn.

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