ACCORDING TO AN ANALYSIS by the Texas Association of Counties, 45 percent of injuries experienced by jail staff happen during an altercation with a disruptive or violent inmate.
But although he is the commander of his county’s jail response team, called to duty whenever an inmate acts out or becomes disruptive, Brazos County Lt. David Drosche rarely worries that one of his officers will be injured during a scuffle.
He credits his county’s investment in training and equipment, both in protective gear and in subject control tools, for the low number of fight-related injuries he sees among his jail staff.
“Our agency is very much supportive of training,” Drosche said, adding that many officers in other areas are not as fortunate. “I have talked to other agencies who have said their administrators won’t support additional training time, they don’t want to compensate them.”
Not only is his county not afraid to invest in training, it’s invested in a number of tools that allow Drosche to perform his job more safely. His team has a wide assortment of tools that can be used to break up altercations, from electronic shields and belts to restraint chairs to non-lethal guns that shoot out balls of pepper spray.
Each of the tools available serves its purpose, Drosche said, and all can help keep his officers from entering a hand-to-hand scuffle that could result in injuries or lawsuits.
But his tool of choice – a non-lethal gun that shoots out pepper spray – has only actually been used once. A poor investment, maybe? Drosche says no, that the reason why it hasn’t been used is because every time his deputies bring the weapon into a situation with them, the problem stops.
“The (subject-control) tool we use has relieved our jail from a lot of use of force situations. It has a very good deterrent factor,” he said. “Just the presence of the (gun) usually deters an inmate from acting out. They don’t know what the (device) actually does... they don’t know how bad it’s going to hurt.”
The guns are able to produce the same effects of pepper spray, but adds an impact component that can further disrupt a person from acting out. The gun can be shot from a distance of up to 150 feet or pointblank range and can alternatively be used to break glass, mark suspects for round-ups and break up riots. Water bullets can be used if officers don’t see a need for contamination.
Other safety tools used by sheriff’s deputies and county jails – though not necessarily in Brazos County – to decrease the number of violent incidents and physical force needed in jails and while on patrol include pepper spray cans, batons, and shot guns that shoot non-lethal bullets such as birdshot.
Still, not all jails have invested in such equipment – which cost anywhere from $260 to $1,000 for the gun. And there are jails out there that have difficulty getting funding for any subject-control equipment at all, said Texas Association of Counties Law Enforcement Specialist Steve Chalender.
But investing in such tools is important for ensuring officers’ safety, as well as the safety of inmates and suspects, he added.
“I think it’s been an issue in most counties as to whether the expenditure for this equipment is justified,” Chalender said. “The commissioners court has to be convinced that it is a good investment. I think any tool that prevents an officer from having to engage with an inmate is cost-effective, especially when you look at long-term benefits.” According to a review of workers’ compensation claims filed with county jail employees during an 18-month period, 45 percent of the claims were due to jailer-inmate altercations.
Showing that the tools are a responsible purchase shouldn’t be difficult. Restraint chairs, for instance, cost around $1,600, depending on the model and vendor. Many workers’ compensation claims go well beyond that figure.
“If it lasts only five years, and if you prevent only one workers’ compensation claim during that period of time, it is worthwhile,” Chalender said.
Subject-control tools do reduce the amount of force that must be used when apprehending difficult suspects or inmates, reports show, which in turn cuts down on the number of injuries.
A 2004 investigation by the Austin- American Statesman showed that an increase in TASER usage by the Austin Police Department had gone hand-in-hand with a decrease in the number of excessive force complaints the department received. The investigation looked at 866 use-of-force incidents filed by officers from Jan. 1 to Sept. 27, 2004 and compared them with the 6,477 reports filed between May 1998 and Oct. 2003.
TASERS were involved in less than one percent of the use of force incidents that occurred between May 1998 and Oct. 2003, but were involved in 23 percent of the incidents that occurred in 2004. From 1998 to 2003, officers received about six excessive use of force complaints per month; in 2004, they received an average of three complaints per month.
One important aspect of creating an arsenal of non-lethal subject control tools is purchasing the right balance of tools for the job. While each of the subject control tools available on the market today have their purposes and benefits, they each also have their cons. Most of the time, investing in a single tool just won’t cut it, because there are such a wide variety of incidents that can occur in a jail setting, and while on patrol. Tools are needed for short distances, long distances, single inmate disruptions, multiple inmate situations, fights between inmates, riots. There are jails that mostly consist of small spaces and there are jails that have large, community layouts, or both, so not all tools will work in all counties.
Brazos County, besides investing in the non-lethal pepper spray guns, also uses electrical- current generating devices, such as shields and belts, and it has used stun guns before. The shields and belts, Drosche said, are helpful in some situations, but the department stopped using stun guns due to ineffectiveness. “Stun guns are actually, I guess in some of our opinions, kind of like a toy,” he said. “We can shock ourselves all day long, and it doesn’t really hurt, it’s kind of annoying.”
Pepper spray may cause contamination problems in jails with open, community spaces, and it also doesn’t affect everyone equally. While pepper spray is painful, some people have a higher capacity for pain than others, and those with higher thresholds can continue to be combative even after being sprayed. Pepper spray can also negatively impact inmates and officers who aren’t its target. In addition, it can drift in the air and contaminate surfaces, requiring the entire area to be cleaned.
But, that doesn’t mean it’s not a useful tool to have, and many counties do invest in pepper spray because it’s affordable and easy to use.
Sometimes the problems associated with funding such devices don’t come from price tags or lack of usefulness, but from controversy surrounding the tool, Chalender said.
That may be the case with the previouslymentioned TASER, a type of stun gun that is becoming more and more popular in jails because of its unique ability to actually incapacitate its target for short periods of time rather than just causing them pain, which many inmates have a high threshold for. Despite that advantage, many agencies are staying away from the tool.
The Brazos County Sheriff’s Office is one of those agencies that has refused to buy-in to the device, at least until the frenzy against the tools has died down and more medically significant information is available, said Drosche.
“I have talked to a lot of agencies that very much like the TASER. They couldn’t say anything negative about it,” he said. “But our administration really does not feel comfortable with (them). There is just so much negative media attention out there, and we are waiting until more information comes out, one way or the other.”
He added that he feels his department’s tools of choice are effective without creating the additional problems of being debatable. “Through everywhere I’ve been and all the training I’ve been to, I’ve never heard one single controversial thing about the (tool).”
It’s difficult to blame those agencies for their unease. Headlines about the tool being abused and causing deaths are everywhere: “Inmate Dies After Being Stung Twice by TASER”; “Aspen officer’s TASER use on woman investigated”; “Officer Resigns Following TASER Incident”; “TASER Jolt Nearly Kills Man”; “Man Dies After Police Use TASER During Scuffle”; “Use of TASERS Aided Death, Coroner Finds”. Why fund something that could cause the county a liability, or a public revolt? It’s a good question, and one that each agency must ask itself.
The tool’s supporters say the deaths are coincidental, that it saves more lives than any other tool on the market because it operates differently than other stun guns, in that it fires a higher wattage and targets a larger area of the body and causes more muscular disruption. Jerry Staton, an Austin-based licensed TASER instructor who is not employed by the company but is a strong advocate of the devices, said he believes the device is safe and effective to the point that “law enforcement has never had a tool like it.
“A stun gun is an electronic device, where you must walk up to someone and touch them with it, and because of the low level of current that it is delivering, it is painful (but) does not incapacitate you. You can ignore that it hurts and continue to function,” Staton said. “A stun gun has four contact points with the target, and those contact points are only a couple inches apart, so the current only affects a small region of the body. A TASER deployment, at the distances that we would like to see (them) deployed, is going to deliver contacts that are going to cover six inches to a foot apart, getting additional muscles involved.
“The reason why (they) are better is because you don’t have to rely on pain to get compliance,” he added.
Many of the deaths associated with the device have been ruled to be caused by other things, such as drug overdoses, but so much controversy remains that the Justice Department recently began a review of TASER-related deaths. The investigation should take about two years, according to a mid-June announcement made by the National Institute of Justice, the department’s research leg.
The review will first focus on 30 cases in which the devices may have contributed to the deaths of their targets. According to the Justice Department, there have been 184 deaths related to electro-muscular disruption devices in the last 10 years, but in 154 of those cases, medical examiners and coroners ruled that use of the device was not a factor in the death. In the remaining 30 cases, medical examiners have either ruled that the device helped contribute to a person’s death, or that its role in the death could not be determined. Of course, the TASER is not the first subject control device to stir up negative attention. The problem with shying away from a tool because of a controversy is that almost all subject control tools are controversial, or have been controversial.
In the past, Amnesty International and other organizations have questioned the use of both pepper spray and restraint chairs. In a Nov. 4, 1997 statement, AI declared that “the use of pepper spray by police in California against peaceful protestors, including a 17-year old, is cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of such deliberateness and severity that it is tantamount to torture. … Because of the great risks associated with pepper spray its use must be questionable in any circumstances.”
A Feb. 2, 2002 AI report titled “The Restraint Chair: How Many More Deaths?” stated that “inadequate training and supervision of detention officers in (the use of restraint chairs) has caused unnecessary pain, injury and even death.
“Since the beginning of 2000, at least four inmates have died in the USA after being subdued in a restraint chair,” the AI report continued. “Although restraint chairs have been promoted by their manufacturers as safer than other forms of four-point restraint, as the prisoner remains upright in a sitting position, there appears to have been no independent testing as to their safety. Amnesty International further believes that restraint chairs are particularly prone to abuse because they are so easily deployed, and their use is virtually unregulated in many jurisdictions.”
And just mention the Rodney King beating, and old-fashioned batons suddenly seem like inhumane third-world weapons. Even videos taken of scuffles in which deputies are correctly using the tool do not make for good public relations.
Drosche said his department rarely uses batons, not because of any controversy surrounding them, but because they can be easily taken and used on deputies.
The fact that all subject control tools have had their fair share of negative attention suggests that it’s not the tools that are the problem, but training and a need for officers to restrain themselves from using force until absolutely necessary instead of when warranted.
“Self-control alone will bring you more success in dealing physically with inmates that all the defense and control methods ever taught,” states the guidebook from the Use of Force in a Jail Setting regional workshops, held this past winter.
While Drosche is thankful for the number of tools available for him to help his do his job, he agreed that restraint – which is the result of proper training – is actually one of the most important tools a deputy can have and practice.
“I would say, at our facility, time is on our side. We have all the time in the world to handle a situation,” Drosche said, adding that, in most cases, officers will spend around an halfhour assessing a situation and will create a deescalation plan before reacting. “If you prevent your staff from rushing into a situation, and they make sure they have all the information they need, then you can handle a situation professionally.”