Study: Ethnic, racial aspects of Taser use

HOUSTON, Sept. 10 (UPI) -- Houston police officers were more likely to use Tasers on African-American suspects than on Latino or Anglo suspects, researchers said.

Rice University political scientists Mark Jones and William Reed, with colleagues at the University of Houston, found that of 1,417 Taser deployments by officers from December 2004 to June 2007 nearly 67 percent were used on black suspects. About 25 percent of Houston's population is African-American, the study said.

In addition to determining the incidence of who was shocked by Tasers, the researchers looked at who was doing the shocking.

"African-American officers were significantly less likely to use their conducted energy devices than Anglo and Latino officers," the report said. "The explanation for this observation most likely hinges on a complex set of factors related to the way in which the suspect interacted/responded to the officer and in which the officer interacted/responded to the suspect."

Latino suspects were somewhat more likely to be subjected to a conducted energy devices deployment than Anglo suspects, but this difference was modest and driven primarily by the greater tendency of Latino officers to utilize their conducted energy devices when a suspect was Latino, compared to when the suspect was an Anglo, the report said.

The report is at: http://www.houstontx.gov/controller/auditmain.html.