Tased and confused:
Idaho, Wyoming police officers get trained in the ways of the Taser
- posted: 27 Feb 2007
- scrollnews@byui.edu
Mike Walton / Scroll
Dep. Brad Holjeson of the Fremont County Sheriff’s Department reacts to getting shot from behind by Tasers during a police training last week.
When police go into a situation, the more options they have available to neutralize a violent suspect, the safer the officer and the suspect will be.
Last week, Idaho law enforcement officers underwent two days of training to use a Taser X26, a non-lethal weapon that can be used to debilitate a suspect without killing them by shocking them with 50,000 volts.
It gives us another option,
said Sergeant Cameron Stanford of the Madison County Sheriff’s Office. Usually it’s pepper spray, baton and then lethal force. [The X26] gives us something in between.
Officers and deputies from Aida, Fremont and Madison Counties and also Cokesville, Wyo., attended the training class to learn how to instruct other officers how and when to properly use the X26.
The X26 is the size of a small gun, and is also held, fired and holstered like a gun. Its ammunition is a blue cartridge placed in the front that contains two barbed hooks attached to wires.
To use the weapon, an officer aims it at the suspect and pulls the trigger. The hooks are ejected from a cartridge into the skin or clothing of an armed or combative aggressor and electricity courses through the wires.
As part of the training, officers who handle the weapon are hit with the Taser in order to experience the effects themselves.
Captain Randy Lewis of the Rexburg Police Department recalls his experience as memorable.
I wouldn’t want to go through it again,
Lewis said. It’s something you don’t forget.
However, the electricity does not have any adverse after-effects and the pain stops as soon as the Taser is turned off. Pepper spray, another option for debilitating an aggressor, on the other hand lasts a long time and can injure officers and stick to materials.
In comparison, pepper spray costs $10 a bottle and a Taser can cost from $500 to $1200 per gun and $20 per cartridge, as much as a real gun, Stanford said.
The Rexburg Police Department have two officers with Tasers on patrol at all times, but they haven’t used the Taser much — about five times in the last two years. 
