As head of the Berlin Special Forces, Oliver Stepien has already introduced them after years of test run – so-called distance electrical pulse devices, also known as tasers. For more than a year Stepien is now police chief in Brandenburg, Now the devices are also being tested here – initially in the Elbe-Elster district and for a month with the Cottbus team. Stepien speaks of a success. “The positive expectations are confirmed,” he said on Wednesday in Potsdam.
The devices close two electrical wires with hooks through which electricity is conducted. When people are hit, the affected muscles contract extremely quickly and painfully for five seconds, so that they are paralyzed for this time – the people are incapacitated.
Six times since March it was enough to threaten the use of the taser so that suspects could be arrested, vicious dogs could not be chased on the officers or search warrants could be enforced.
The device had to be used twice – with an ex-boxer. He had rioted in Sonnewalde in the south of the country. “It would have taken massive violence to stop it,” said the police chief. “The man is not inexperienced in arguments with the police.”
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At the end of March he rioted in a parking lot, demolished cars and insulted passers-by. He was drunk and raised his fists – he didn’t mind the police threatening the taser. Then the officers pulled the trigger. In May he cursed customers at a gas station – again drunk – and stood in the middle of the B96. The police again used the taser to arrest the man.
Stepien hopes that the Taser will be able to bring stupid and aggressive people under control more quickly and with less force. In addition, pepper spray does not always work for aggressive people who are intoxicated with alcohol or drugs. The Taser test will run until 2022, then the results will be evaluated. The Ministry of the Interior will decide whether to equip the entire police force.
In Berlin, the test, which has been running since 2017, has been extended to two sections by a further year until 2021. Red-Red-Green couldn’t agree Introduce tasers as a regular resource and regulate new legislation.
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In everyday police life there are certainly situations in which they are more suitable as a baton or even a pistol: suicides have already been prevented with tasers, men who attacked their partners have been stopped – or a naked person who threatened the police with a knife after a break-in has been caught .
In Berlin, however, tasers are legally treated like firearms, it is different with the federal police, who have been testing the tasers at Berlin’s Ostbahnhof since November, among other places.
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