Essex Police have a strong case for more Taser

30 January 2020

THE opportunity to bid for more Tasers has come at a fortuitous time for Essex Police, the Essex Police Federation has said.

The Government is putting £10 million towards equipping more police officers with Taser, asking each force to decide how much funding they apply for based on the threat and risk in their local area.

Essex Police Federation Chairman Steve Taylor said the force had concentrated its efforts on increasing the number of police officers trained to use Taser, which had been successful. He said: “Now we’re in a space where we can legitimately ask for more devices to equip those we’ve already trained. The timing’s fortuitous for us and we’re confident the force will bid for more devices. We look forward to seeing them in the hands of Essex officers.”

Steve said the Federation had been working with the force for some time to increase the number of Tasers that officers had access to. He added: “We strongly believe that Taser is a fantastic piece of kit and ultimately we’d like to see it become part of an officer’s PPE. But we appreciate it’s an expense, especially when you factor in the retraining costs.”

He said he didn’t mind that forces were being made to bid for the funding, as it helped get more buy-in from the force and made them think about priorities. He said: “The most important point is that there are funds available for us to increase our Taser provision. We’re not a financially well-off force, so it’s a fund that we could really benefit from tapping into. We can absolutely can make a case for it and that’s what we have to be doing.”