Taser use

Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request ref: 01/FOI/23/5062

Version Date: 11/07/2023

The Performance & Analysis Department have provided the following information. 

Data Source:          

Use of Force data from SNAP survey and Pronto.   

Data Processing:              

Qlikview Use of Force Detail report                                 

Incident Date: 01/04/2019 to 14/11/2022

Taser Used "Yes".              

The "INC_LOCAll" variable has been removed as this creates duplicates.  

Weekly Taser Sheet page selected.     

Data limitations/Caveats:                                                                                    

• Whether a Taser was used or not is being accurately recorded for the majority of cases, however the Level of Use is not always recorded in the correct column. This may have a small effect on the numbers quoted.
• More than one Taser deployment can happen at an incident, including by the same officer.
• It is assumed that a Taser Fired is only Fired once at an incident by an officer - this may not be the case
• for all incidents, again it would be overfees to establish this.

 *Devon & Cornwall Police transitioned to a new records management system on 14 November 2022 which has caused some delays and discrepancies in data availability. Work is being undertaken to resolve this issue, but this is likely to take between three and six months. As such, information can only be provided up to this date.                                                           

In each of the following years to 1 April: 2019-20, 2020-21; 2021-22; 2022-2023 

- How many times did the force use a Taser on people in each year? Please give the number of incidents, rather than the number of individuals.

Caveats:

• Duplicate storm references removed to find the total number of incidents.
• 76 incidents did not have a storm ref and were not used in this data

Please break down by incidents where a Taser weapon was drawn, aimed or fired.

Where a Taser weapon was fired, please only mark this once (no need to note it was drawn or aimed in these cases), and similarly where a weapon was aimed, no need to note it was drawn.

Caveats:

• Data contains duplicates as more than one officer may have used a taser during an incident.
• The 76 incidents that do not have a storm reference are included in this data. I am unable to break down the data as requested so all data has been provided.

 - Please provide a breakdown of incidents by the age of the person who the weapon was used on - if exact age is not possible, please use the following brackets (0-17; 18-25; 25-65; 65-80; 80+).

Caveats:

Duplicates have been removed on the storm reference number, therefore the 76 incidents that did not have a storm reference are omitted from this data.