Electric-Shock Weapons, Tasers and Policing

Front matter

ELECTRIC-SHOCK WEAPONS, TASERS AND POLICING

MYTHS AND REALITIES

Abi Dymond

Contents

Acknowledgements List of abbreviations

1 Introduction 2 Technologies, tools, and TASERs 3 ‘Better stunned than gunned’? Origin myths and mission creep

4 A ‘nicer’ weapon? Projectile electric-shock weapons and public safety

Chapter 2

As the introductory chapter has demonstrated, in order to understand projectile electric-shock weapons such as TASERs, we need to examine not only the literature pertaining to the weapon itself, but the broader literatures and theories around police use of force, discretion, technology, and technological change. This proves quite a challenge, however. Theories of policing and, in particular, theories pertaining to police use of force are underdeveloped (Ariel et al 2019; Terrill 2014). As I demonstrate here, those that do exist can be described as inherently human centric in nature. They are insufficiently attentive to technologies, the role they can play, and the way they can impact individual officers, police agencies, and the police role more generally.

This chapter is structured as follows. I start by discussing the limited literature around projectile electric-shock weapons—which focuses, almost exclusively, on TASER—and the use of force more generally. I demonstrate that, focused as it is on human agency, the injury potential of different force options and police militarisation, it is largely inattentive to the role and agency of weapons technologies. In the second part of the chapter, I demonstrate that such limitations are also found in each of the main theories of policing, from macro approaches (consensus, conflict, and predatory policing approaches) to micro and ‘transformational’ (Reiner 2010) approaches. In sum, while the existing literature on TASER, the use of force and broader theoretical debates in policing can aide our understanding in many ways, it is often unable to adequately conceive of the full role, scope, and impacts of technologies such as less lethal weapons.

Technologies and debates around use of force

The existing literature on TASER and use of force can be broadly divided into three categories. Firstly, much work is closely associated with the concept of police discretion, commonly understood as freedom to choose (Davis in Holmberg 2000) or ‘decisional freedom’ (Bambauer in Joh 2016: 15).

It is commonly understood that, in decisions around use of force—as in many areas of policing—officers have considerable flexibility around what action(s) to take and indeed, whether to act at all. Terrill and Mastrofski’s (2002) classic study differentiates between two approaches explaining discretionary decisions around the use of force: a psychological approach which focuses on the characteristics, experiences, and views of police officers and a ‘sociological perspective’ that focuses on the characteristics and behaviours of those subjected to force. Despite their differences, both approaches focus on human characteristics in use of force outcomes, be it at the level of the officer, the civilian, or both. Later work by Paoline and Terrill (2007) differentiates between situational variables (including the number of officers and bystanders at the scene), offender level variables (including socio-demographic characteristics and their level of resistance), and officer level variables (including education and length of service) that impact use of force decisions. Bolger’s (2015) meta-analysis similarly differentiates between ‘encounter’ or situational characteristics (including the resistance offered by the member of the public and incident location), characteristics of the member of the public, officer characteristics, and community and neighbourhood characteristics that may help explain the use of force in general. A related strand of work focuses on identifying factors associated with the use of specific use of force options (Avdi 2013; Crow and Adrion 2011; Dymond 2018; Gau et al 2010; O’Brien et al 2011; Quinton et al 2020; Sousa et al 2010; Stroshine and Brandl 2019, White and Ready 2010), almost always in the USA and often looking at the use of TASER.

While findings from these studies are mixed, these works provide some evidence that use of force is impacted by civilian characteristics (including mental health and ethnicity, a point to which we will return in the next chapter) and situational variables (including the number of police officers and the reported conduct and behaviour of the member of the public), with officer level variables seen as less important. However, the differences between these categories should not be overstated, as they all focus on human attributes (for example, officer and offender characteristics), with less emphasis on technologies and other non-human influences. Indeed, previous authors have often been concerned with demonstrating that the choices officers make are ‘a product of social control’ and fully influenced by people’ (Pepinsky 1984: 266), with other considerations downplayed (Dymond 2020). Often, too, the choice of which weapon to use is seen as something to be explained by ‘social’ factors. It is explicitly cast as the outcome of interest, as the dependent variable, not as an actor with explanatory power in its own right (ee, for example, my own previous work on TASER; Dymond 2018, as well as works by Crow and Adrion 2011; Gau et al 2010, all of which see TASER as an outcome variable ).

Relatedly, in such conceptions, excessive use of force is seen as resulting from human intentionality (as in the bad apples hypothesis), as resulting through

‘transmission’ and proximity to problematic police officers or ‘bad apples’ (Ouellet et al 2019), or through human omission or flaws (lack of training, inability to become a skilled user of force, continuation of a culture supportive of the use of force). As Griffin and Bernard (2003: 3) note, explanations of excessive force tend to focus on ‘police subculture or personality characteristics’. Little attention is given to how excessive force may be produced, encouraged, or ‘afforded’ by the technologies officers carry and their characteristics.

Another strand of work within criminology explores the relative risk of injury, and other negative consequences, for officers and members of the public that are associated with different force options, again often with a focus on TASER and projectile electric-shock weapons (Castillo et al 2012; Jenkinson et al 2006; Kaminski et al 2013; Lin and Jones 2010; Paoline et al 2012; Smith et al 2007; Smith et al 2010; Taylor and Woods 2010; Terrill and Paoline 2012). Relatedly, a few studies attempt to assess the relative effectiveness of different force tactics, including TASER (Brandl and Stroshine 2017; Lin and Jones 2010; White and Ready 2010), although this literature has been described as limited and subjective (Stevenson and Drummond-Smith 2020). Unlike much of the medical and technical literature on TASER (e.g., Ho et al 2012; Jauchem 2010) this draws on and analyses police data in an attempt to assess ‘real world’ outcomes, not laboratory conditions (for further studies on the medical literature around TASER see, e.g., Braidwood 2009, the Council of Canadian Academies and Canadian Academy of Health Sciences 2013, and SACMILL 2016).

Taken as a whole, these strands of work are highly quantitative and tend to treat the effects of the weapon as a set of objective, given, independent facts (also see Innes et al 2005 for a similar observation in the context of crime intelligence analysis). They are seen as an ‘empirical reality’ (Terrill and Paoline 2012: 153) that can be demonstrated, a singular ‘truth’ that can be uncovered (Ho 2009; Truth Not Taser 2008), and as a set of ‘misunderstandings’ that can be clarified (Jauchem 2015), often via statistical analyses. These are worthy topics of investigation yet, as others have noted, few commentators ask fundamental questions about how the weapon and it’s use are understood and portrayed (Anais 2015; Moreau De Belliang 2015; Rappert 2004b) and how it might be reshaping interactions between the police and members of the public. Further, with some notable exceptions (De Angelis and Wolf 2013; Rojek et al 2012), little qualitative work has been done exploring use of force guidance and training, and how it is understood and operationalised (for exceptions, see, Buttle 2007; Cushion 2020; Keating-Jones 2017). Where studies have been done they have tended to focus on capturing the range of policies available (see, e.g., Thomas et al 2010), or on the impact of a particular policy shift (Bishopp et al 2014) instead of exploring a particular policy and associated training, and its varied effects, in detail.

A final strand of work focuses on the militarisation of the police and the acquisition of new weapons, tactics, and equipment. Yet, ironically, technology is side-lined even in these debates. In the classic debates between Waddington (1987) and Jefferson (1987; 1990), discussion focuses on the nature and role of the police, and how this plays out and is manifested in interactions with members of the public, especially in crowd-control situations. As such, it falls back on broader questions of the function and agency of the police.

The debate may be occasioned by, and may ostentatiously be about, paramilitary policing—but often seems more about underlying debates about how to conceive of the polic, with debates about paramilitarism providing the case study or venue. Paramilitarism—and, in particular, paramilitary, quasi-military, and new technologies—are seen as a symptom, as a manifestation of, these inherent, underlying roles and functions and the technologies are rarely studied in their own right. Similarly, with the partial exception of Lawson’s work (Lawson 2019), few works look at the effects of militarisation and weapons acquisition on police behaviour. As Haggerty and Ericsson (2000: 43) note, ‘the issue of technology transfer constitutes an important and underexamined form of militarisation of criminal justice’. Overall, then, there is a surprising lack of literature on a topic that is central to the police mandate, and which goes to the very heart of being a police officer (Bittner 1974) and an inattention to police technologies and weapons within the existent literature.

Many of these works are underpinned, implicitly or explicitly, by what might be referred to as a ‘sociologist’ (Latour 1992), ‘instrumental’ (Bourne 2012) or ‘neutral’ (Kaplan 2009) approach to technologies. Under this approach, what matters is the intent of humans, not the technologies they carry—a belief sometimes summed up in the argument that ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’ (Latour 1992: 31). Other implications also flow from this anthropomorphic departure point. Technologies are seen as mere tools and little attention is paid to the specific material features and characteristics of the weapon, how they come into being and the differing interpretations that may be attached to them. Instead, technologies are taken for granted. With some exceptions, by and large, their success and effectiveness (or lack thereof) are seen as self-evident and not explored further: the assumption is that, once introduced, technologies fulfil their pre-defined functions, with largely predictable results. As such, little attention is paid to the distinct contributions that technologies may make, the way in which they may make things happen, and their complex interactions with officers, members of the public, and others.

Instead, TASER and other projectile electric-shock weapons are seen as a tool, a neutral means for achieving human ends, whether positive or negative. Hence, for Jauchem, they are an ‘important... tool’ for officers seeking to carry out a wide range of legitimate ‘law enforcement activities’ (2010: 53), for Spriggs they are particularly useful as ‘a tool for safely incapacitating belligerent drug and alcohol users’ (2009: 515). Conversely, for others,

TASER helps the police to ‘terrorise the down-trodden’ (Oriola et al 2012: 66) and ‘socially disempowered’ individuals and is a visible manifestation of the ‘aggressive’ and ‘repressive’ policing of the working class. For Wright, less-lethal weapons such as TASER are similarly ‘tools’ for ‘mass repression’ (1991: 35). Characterised by this ‘instrumental’ approach, much work on less-lethal weapons tends to assume human intentionality and neglect the non-human.

Technologies and criminological theory

Nor is this failing restricted to the literature on electric-shock weapons. Brown (2006: 225) notes, in her classic call for a ‘criminology of hybrids’, that the discipline has long excluded non-human entities such as technologies. More recently, Robert and Dufresne have argued that criminology still needs to attend to, and emphasise ‘the relevance of technology, materiality and objects’ (2015: 2) in its work. Developing this critique, I argue that instrumental accounts are widespread in each of the main criminological theories—be they macro, micro, or ‘transformational’ (Reiner 2010)—and the way in which they conceive of police use of force.

Consensus and conflict theories

Turning first to classic, macro level theories, both consensus and conflict approaches—and attempts to combine them—tend to assume human intentionality and to neglect the non-human. Consensus theorists, often drawing on Durkheim’s work on the police (Terpestra 2011), understand the police as using force for the public good, symbolically reaffirming social norms, and protecting social order as a whole (Kitossa 2016; Lee et al 2013; Marenin 1982; Terpestra 2011). Sherman argues that police use of force is like ‘a subcontract to collect garbage’; an arrangement which may leave the police with dirty hands, but which ‘makes our lives infinitely more pleasant’ (Sherman 1980: 2). Waddington (1987: 37) observes that the police of the nineteenth century may have appeared as ‘instruments of class oppression’. However, in more recent years, decreasing levels of police violence and the reluctance of police to ‘use their... coercive might to do anything that could be interpreted as the suppression of legitimate political activity’ (Waddington 1994: 379) casts doubt on this hypothesis. Instead, the police are keen to assert their political independence and impartiality to prevent criminality and maintain order—although he does note that the maintenance of order is inherently ‘a conservative function’ (1987: 37).

Conflict or critical perspectives—with their roots in Marxist and even Weberian sociology (Terpestra 2011)—understand the police as acting less in the public good and more for dominant elites (Marenin 1982; McMichael 2017; Mitrani 2014; Petrocelli et al 2003; Shantz 2016; Vitale 2017; Wacquant

2009). For example, O’Neill and Loftus’ (2013: 439) study of surveillance finds that ‘it is the poorest and most marginalized citizens in society who are becoming ever more policed’. Hallsworth and Lea (2011: 142) posit the existence of coercive security state which aims to manage a growing ‘surplus’ population that is structurally irrelevant to capital accumulation. Wacquant (2009: 1) notes that there is a close relationship between neo-liberalism and the punitive law enforcement policies aimed at those ‘trapped in the margins’. Nor is this a recent development, as Mitrani’s (2014: 1) history of the Chicago Police shows. Similarly, Vitale’s work powerfully argues that the police are a tool for ‘managing inequality and maintaining the status quo’ (2017: 13). Mutsaers’ study of police discrimination in The Netherlands (2019: 8) concludes that, when compared to the consensus model of law enforcement, conflict models have much to recommend them.

More recently, attempts have been made to go beyond these classic debates by developing new macro-level theories. One strand of work seeks to combine consensus and conflict approaches (Marenin 1982; Reiner 2010; 2012; Terpestra 2011). Ina classic turn of phrase, Marenin notes that police agencies can fill multiple roles simultaneously, engaging both in ‘class repression’ and issuing ‘parking tickets’. Others also see the police as serving multiple functions. Gerber and Mendelson’s study of the police in Russia finds that officers often engage in ‘predatory policing’ (Gerber and Mendelson 2008), with officers motivated by individual self-interest, as well as the interests of the police as an organisation. Police officers are concerned less with maintaining order, or with protecting elites and are more focused on personal enrichment, self-preservation, and the preservation and promotion of the police themselves. As Gimbel and Muhammad (2019) note, it is not just corrupt police departments that benefit from policing initiatives such as the ‘war on drugs’; such schemes also bring benefits in terms of revenue from seizures and fines and help to justify police presence and expansion. Such theories also dovetail well with critical perspectives and should not be seen as mutually exclusive (Gerber and Mendelson 2008: 5).

At the macro level, then, the emphasis is very much on police officers furthering broader human goals, be they order maintenance, elite protection, self-preservation of the police as an institution, individual, and financial interests of the police officer, or some combination of the above. Technologies simply help the police to fulfil these objectives and pre-existing goals, however these are conceived. Hence, for Waddington (1987; 1993; 1994), key debates are around which technologies and tactics are more or less effective in helping police-manage crowds and maintain order. O’Neill and Loftus (2013: 439, emphasis added) note that ‘the enduring ambitions of state policing have been greatly enhanced by the dramatic expansion of technologies’. Wacquant (2009: 1) posits that punitive and proactive law enforcement policies are characterised by ‘an insatiable craving’ for technologies, including TASER—although he does not address this at any length. Hallsworth and

Lea (2011: 152) argue that ‘technologies of power’ (2011: 142) such as CCTV, new legal powers, and crowd-control tactics help the State constitute identify and handle ‘drug addicts, the homeless, (and) the permanently unemployed’. However, they pay little attention to the agency of the non-human in this rendering. Technologies are, more often than not, seen as a means to an end, a way of ‘tooling up (the) leviathan’ and achieving ‘efficient control’ of target populations (2011: 146).

Although there are fundamental differences between many of these classic works, then, there are also similarities. While these accounts may vary on the focus, aims, and theoretical underpinnings of their work, they nevertheless share a conception of technologies as a means to (various) end(s). Technologies may be intermediaries, tools to passively relay, and accomplish human goals, but they are not mediators or active agents.

Interactionist approaches

Other theories focus less on the macro and more on micro-level interactions. Drawing on Goffman’s work, Rojek et al (2012) look at the use of force interactions between officers and members of the public. They demonstrate that the amount of force and coercion used in a given incident is related to the extent to which the citizen demonstrates, or fails to demonstrate, deference and respect, and the social dynamics and interactions that take place (2012; 305). Wolf and De Angelis (2011: 659) also draw on interactionist, constructivist approaches to discuss TASER in more detail, exploring how proponents and opponents of the weapon seek to construct and define the ‘reality’ around the weapon in different ways. They focus not on ‘objective’ facts around the weapon but, rather, on the ways in which constructions of the weapon and its effects are made, and challenged, by different groups. Using Goffman’s notion of ‘keying’, they show that ‘opponents’ of TASER responded to claims of ‘proponents’ by appropriating and repurposing claims made around the effectiveness and accountability of the weapon.

Such approaches are not necessarily incompatible with more macro and conflict-based approaches (Rojek et al 2012). Nevertheless, like macro approaches, they maintain a focus on human intentionality, how humans understand and interact. Even when technologies are in the frame, they provide the backdrop against which action takes places and are not typically seen as key actors in the incident. For example, Rojek et al’s research discusses a number of incidents involving the use of TASER, amongst other use of force options. However, the role of the technology is not explored in any detail and the focus is on how the different human actors interpret and account for the use of force incidents. The discussion centres on human interactions—for example, members of the public (dis)regarding officers’ orders and officer decisions and responses—that make force more or less likely and how these are accounted for. There is no consideration given to how such interactions may themselves be shaped by the presence and affordances of different technologies such as TASER, and the kind of actions, interpretations, and accounts technologies may encourage, facilitate, or make possible.

Similarly, Wolf and De Angelis (2011; 669) challenge researchers to ‘move past simply examining the ...merits of the TASER’ in order to examine the discursive struggle around the weapon and how different groups try to define and claim the ‘reality’ around it. This is a crucial step and this topic is both important and under-examined. Yet it may also be worth examining the reverse. Perhaps, just as groups try to define TASER, so TASER technology shapes, defines, and (dis)empowers certain groups, simultaneously constructing new interests and identities in the process.

A lack of attention to technology and a theory of how it constitutes (as well as being constituted by) the ‘social’ is an understandable omission in these innovative and methodologically sophisticated works. However, this omission is not restricted solely to these authors, but is found more broadly in much interactionist work within criminology. As Brown (2006: 225) notes, interactionism places a strong emphasis on the ‘social construction of crime’. In such renderings, the interactions between society and technology remain underexplored, with technology often seen as socially constituted and as a means of social control. This risks neglecting how society and human action may be shaped and co-produced by non-humans and—more fundamentally—how the former cannot be understood without, and is seemingly inseparable from, the latter.

Nodal security and transformative approaches

While many of the aforementioned schools of thought have roots tracing back to the classical sociologists (Terpstra 2011), in recent years, a new perspective on policing—what Reiner (2010) calls the ‘transformation thesis— has emerged. Documenting the wide range of transformations that have occurred in modern day policing and security, these approaches challenge us to move beyond the central focus on the police and to look more broadly at a range of privatised, hybrid, and transnational actors providing policing and security services. Such approaches regard the police as one of many security providers in a transnational and diversified field (Sheptycki 2012). As such, the focus is less on uniformed police patrols and more on multiple, interlocking, imperfectly connected actors drawn from a range of areas—a notion captured by terms such as ‘plural policing’, ‘policing webs’, and ‘policing assemblages’ (Brodeur 2010).

Whatever terminology is used, such notions rightly draw our attention to actors beyond the traditional police service. Yet, more often than not, these actors tend to be exclusively human in origin. Take, for example, Shearing and Johnston’s (2010) conceptions of ‘security governance’ and ‘nodal governance’, which posit that the police are just one node among many in networks that act to govern security in more or less streamlined ways. On some occasions, Shearing and Johnston pay little attention to technologies in their description of the nodes in the networks. Nodes are seen as entities comprised of ‘individuals, groups (and parts of groups), organizations (and parts of organizations) or states’ (2010: 502). In other descriptions, nodes are seen as being comprised of four ‘elements’: ‘mentalities (relating to how nodes think about security); technologies (relating to the methods they might use to facilitate it); resources (relating to the social, cultural, economic or other means they might deploy in its furtherance); and institutions’ (2010: 495). While this description has a place for technologies, they are again seen as a means, a ‘method...to facilitate’ different ends. Thus, despite acknowledging that technology is ‘vitally important’ (Shearing 2005: 58), it is hard to argue against Brodeur’s claim (2010: 305) that the governance of security perspective tends to ignore technological developments and ‘is more relevant for...understanding...manned security than for explaining the proliferation of security equipment and its impact on policing’.

Perhaps this critique can also be extended to the transformation thesis more broadly. For example, Sheptycki’s (2002: 330-311) work on post-modern policing looks at different ‘sectors of the field’, including police detectives and the secret service, but also encompassing corporate security guards and specialists, private security guards, and private investigators. In this discussion, technologies are mentioned fleetingly, if at all, and are seen simply as tools. He notes, for example, that ‘access to secure sites...is frequently controlled by a variety of technical devices... tools by which the guardians of corporate ‘territory’ perform their roles’.

Moreover, even when writers in this vein attend to technologies, they are often focused, at least in part, outside of the police and seem reluctant to turn their gaze inwards. Haggerty and Ericson’s (2000) fascinating work on the ‘surveillant assemblage’ captures the meshing of human and non-human— via, for example, the creation of ‘data doubles’-—as well as the transformatory potential of such hybrids. For Haggerty and Ericson, desires for control, governance, security, profit, and entertainment energize the surveillant assemblage, a provisional, contingent entity that includes and merges together the human and non-human. Components include CCTV, police databases and drug tests, forensic laboratories, implanted silicon chips, social workers, and health professionals. Police and state agencies are certainly present in Haggerty and Ericsson’s fascinating account, but the surveillant assemblage reaches beyond the police and is characterised by transformative effects in a number of areas, from policing to insurance, marketing to medicine. Yet it would be equally interesting to explore human and non-human assemblages within the police and to address what implications technologies have for the police role itself.

Moreover, despite Brodeur’s (2010; 301) plea that ‘the scope of the investigation (should) be extended beyond the people involved in private policing activities and also include police technology’, and that analysts should not ignore the ‘crucial technological component’ of the policing web (see also Diphoorn and Grassiani 2016), his own work is not immune from this critique. Noting that ‘security technology’, in particular, intermediate weapons such as TASER have ‘the potential for transforming policing’. Brodeur briefly discusses some of the issues around the security manufacturing industry, and TASER, in particular, identifying a number of issues with their use. Yet only a small part of one chapter of The Policing Web is dedicated to a discussion of technology, and Brodeur (2010: 4) sets out the key components of the policing web as being predominantly human in nature, encompassing ‘the uniformed constabulary, criminal investigation, the political police and police informants and private security’. As Brodeur himself notes, the discussion around technologies and the notion of a police-industrial concept contained in the book are ‘still too hypothetical and is meant above all to stimulate further research’. Overall, then, as Diphoorn and Grassiani (2016: 431) state, there is a need for further attention to the non-human within the transformation approach—and, I would argue, more broadly within criminology.

The theories outlined in this chapter have advanced our understanding of the police role and police use of force, in particular. Macro-level theories debates have enhanced our understandings of the role of the police, broadly conceived; of why, when, and on whom force may be used; and how police actions may be in the service of multiple aims simultaneously. Such theories remind us that, even when the police issue ‘parking tickets’ and use force for some vaguely defined notion of a broader ‘societal good’, they retain an oppressive, critical edge—and that police use of force cannot be understood without this context. As Waddington (1987) demonstrates, order maintenance is inherently and inescapably conservative, inevitably privileging the status quo and those who benefit from it. Micro-level, interactionist theories have enhanced our understanding of the interactions between officers and members of the public that comprise use of force incidents and the discretionary decisions that officers make. They have also clarified the importance of social dynamics in discretionary decisions, while noting, again, that such dynamics do not occur in a vacuum and are inseparable from the ‘class, race, and gender of the citizens’ (Rojek et al 2012: 323). Nodal security perspectives broaden our focus away from the police, to policing agents more broadly, and focus on networks, assemblages, and actors that need not be (but yet often are) purely human in nature.

Nor should such traditions be seen as mutually exclusive. Precisely because of their unique ability to use force in situations where it may be required, the police have the potential to do good, preventing and minimising severe harm to others. Yet, precisely because of the unique power they possess and their unique mandate to maintain a social order which—in today’s society— is profoundly unequal, rigged against the poorest and most vulnerable, and striated with ethnic and other forms of bias, the police also have the potential to cause great harm. Too, as interactionist work by Rojek et al reminds us, while use of force incidents take place against this backdrop, and share many common features, each incident is also unique and shaped by the specifics of the interaction, those in attendance and the roles they adopt.

While these theories bring many benefits, they are—as this chapter has shown—implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) ‘instrumental’ in their approach, often highly human centric and tend to ignore or minimise the role of technologies altogether. As such, while consensus, conflict, critical, predatory, and interactionist approaches may differ greatly in their understandings of the role of the police and police use of force, they are united by their human centric assumptions and the lack of attention given to technologies. While ‘transformation’ approaches (Reiner 2010) are more attentive to technologies and non-human actors they tend, too, to prioritise the human and to look beyond the police and not within them.

Hampered by their notions of technologies as ‘tools’ with predictable effects, the literature on TASER and police use of force—and it’s focus on discretion, militarisation, and quantitative assessments of injury rates and factors associated with the use of different force options —remains less well placed to attend to the ways in which technologies may interact with humans and non-human to provide a range of unexpected outcomes. Hence, although the literature on police use of force has enhanced our understanding in many ways, there is much more to be done.

Instead of conceiving technologies as mere tools, it seems important to explore how they can interact with officers and members of the public and how they may impact how force is used and experienced. Instead of assuming that police weapons are successful and effective, it seems prudent to question how they came to be seen as such and how they came to be adopted. Instead of looking just at the “empirical reality’ (Terrill and Paoline 2013) around weapon use, it seems important to look at what stories and myths arise around them. I think this will help us to further interrogate the power and influence held by the police and by external actors; to look at how such power arises and operates in practice; and to complement the valuable insights from critical and interactionist approaches. In turn, perhaps this can help to identity new points of purchase, opportunities for challenge, and ways of reimagining the role of the police. I start this journey by turning in the next chapter to one of the foundational, origin myths of electric-shock weapons; that such technologies provide an alternative to the use of firearms.