Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This paper examines the expansion of the use of tasers and its effect on the level of police use of force, suspect injuries, officer injuries, violent crimes, and race distribution of suspects subject to use of force. We examine the effects of a policy that affected the use of tasers in Chicago from 2009 to 2012, by an expansion of the number of available tasers in March 2010. This policy provides an opportunity to study the use of tasers, firearms, and other use of force substitutes. We find that the number of incidents related to firearm discharge and less-than-taser weapons (eg: baton, physical strikes, tackle down) decreased. The total number of use of force incidents increase after the expansion of the number of tasers. The net effect on injuries is ambiguous. On the one hand, officers are less likely to be injured because tasers allow them to not engage in physical confrontation with subjects. On the other hand, subjects’ injuries increase. Finally, we did not find evidence that allowing for tasers change the racial distribution of subjects involved in incidents where officers discharge their firearms. The number of incidents involving black suspects increased by 7-10%; we did not find any statistically significant effect on white suspects. We provide a model that is consistent with our empirical findings where the officer is utility maximizing when interacting with suspects.