“The tasers saved lives!”

By Axel Lier

The Taser-Off debate is getting new tension!

Police officers in particular were electrified by this news: In an email to the police leadership, State Secretary Torsten Akmann (SPD) announced that the test run with the taser would end in December.

Dirk Bork, chairman of the staff council of the city directorate (Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Mitte, Neukölln) now wrote a fire letter to the governing mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD), interior senator Iris Spranger (SPD) and police chief Barbara Slowik.

“Wherever the resource could prevent the use of firearms, it was successful,” writes Borg. “It saved lives!”

Since 2017, Tasers have been threatened 43 times by patrol officers, used five times and prevented three suicides. Personnel councilor Bork: “With the equality to firearms, very high hurdles have been set for the use of the taser in Berlin and thus its possible use has been severely restricted.”

The demands of the trade unions: The House of Representatives must change the law on direct coercion (UZwG) and classify tasers as “devices of physical violence” – similar to batons and pepper spray.

But that will probably not happen with the red-green-red coalition! Vasili Franco, interior expert for the Greens, told the “Berliner Zeitung” that he was “fundamentally skeptical” about the deployment. Niklas Schrader, domestic spokesman for the Left Group, made a similar statement there. “If it were expanded to include patrol duty, the inhibition threshold for using the Taser would drop.”

This attitude was clear to the opposition. “The Greens and the Left reject everything that improves or facilitates the work of the police,” said CDU interior expert Frank Balzer.

For the SPD domestic politician Tom Schreiber, on the other hand, the taser is a “legitimate tool” – especially for the riot police: “I don’t understand the fear of it.”

Schreiber asks: “Why don’t we combine tasers and bodycams. Every release would be documented so cleanly. A double safeguard for later reviews.”