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Houston mayor calls for indepedent review of Taser use

Since December 2004, the Houston Police Department has used Tasers 1000 times. In this article, Police Chief Harold L. Hurtt mentions his staff has identified 39 instances in which officers used Tasers on armed suspects where they otherwise would have used a firearm. That’s all well and good, but what about the 961 other instances that they used Tasers on people, mostly minorities? What is the justification for that?

From The Washington Post:

Police data show that in almost 1,000 Taser deployments since December 2004, 63 percent of the suspects were black. Houston’s population of 1.95 million is 25 percent black.

“If that brother was not a Texans football player, if that brother didn’t have the resources that he has, he would have been another big brother that was Tased, and that’s it,” said New Black Panther Nation’s Quanell X, who organized a community meeting with police officials earlier this month to discuss Taser policy and police treatment of blacks.

“Not until a high-profile African-American football player was Tased did the city sit up and notice,” he said. “We need a cease-and-desist order of those Tasers until there is a complete and independent study of their use.”

For a year, Houston City Council member Ada Edwards, who is black, has sought a medical study on the effects of the Taser and also a moratorium on its use because “we have such a preponderance of minorities being Tased,” she said.

Now Mayor Bill White has called for an independent review of Taser use.

• keywords: abuse , houston , minorities , racism , taser