Five police forces in England and Wales started trialling the use of Taser in April 2003. In September 2004 my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary approved chief officers throughout England and Wales to deploy Taser to authorised firearms officers in their force where a firearms authority has been granted in accordance with criteria laid down in the ACPO Manual of Guidance on Police Use of Firearms.
Since 20 July 2007 authorised police firearms officers in England and Wales have been able to deploy Taser in operations or incidents where the use of firearms is not authorised, but where they are facing violence or threats of violence of such severity that they would need to use force to protect the public, themselves or the subject. The deployment of Taser by specially trained police units who are not firearms officers, but who are facing similar threats of violence, is also being trialled in 10 police forces. The 12-month trial began on 1 September 2007.
The use of Taser by police forces in England and Wales has been provided by the Association of Chief Police Officers and is shown in the following table. The figures in the table do not include uses by authorised firearms officers outside a firearms operation or in the trial by specially trained units. These figures have not yet been centrally collated and verified.
Force Drawn/aimed/red-dot Arced Drive stunned Fired Total incidents when Taser ‘used’ Avon and Someset 3 1 0 8 12 Bedfordshire 2 1 0 8 11 Cambridgeshire 15 0 0 2 17 Cheshire 4 2 0 6 12 City of London 2 0 0 0 2 Cleveland 27 0 1 20 48 Cumbria 8 2 0 1 11 Derbyshire 12 0 0 2 14 Devon and Cornwall 0 1 0 9 10 Dorset 26 3 2 15 46 Durham 23 0 0 17 40 Dyfed-Powys 1 0 0 0 1 Essex 5 0 1 6 12 Gloucester 10 0 0 7 17 GMP 4 0 1 11 16 Gwent 5 0 0 4 9 Hampshire 0 0 0 8 8 Hertfordshire 9 0 2 5 16 Humberside 24 4 0 2 30 Lancashire 15 0 1 11 27 Leicestershire 0 3 0 0 3 Lincolnshire* 11 3 1 6 21 Kent 0 0 0 2 2 Merseyside 22 1 1 6 30 Metropolitan* 66 4 27 112 209 Norfolk 2 0 1 6 9 North Wales* 48 2 1 12 63 North Yorkshire 0 0 0 0 0 Northants* 8 0 0 5 13 Northumbria 42 0 0 5 47 Nottinghamshire 0 0 0 2 2 South Wales 0 0 0 1 1 South Yorkshire 0 0 0 1 1 Staffordshire 37 2 0 2 41 Suffolk 0 0 0 8 8 Surrey 0 1 1 0 2 Sussex 2 0 0 4 6 Thames Valley* 5 0 1 5 11 Warwickshire 0 0 0 0 0 West Mercia 8 0 0 6 14 West Midlands 18 0 1 22 41 West Yorkshire 40 6 3 33 82 Wiltshire 0 0 0 2 2 Total 504 36 45 382 967 * Denotes original trial force (includes data from April 2003) Notes: 1. Table as at 16 November 2007 (England and Wales) 2. Only the highest level of ‘use’ during each incident is recorded (multiple uses during the same incident are only recorded once on this table)