Taser use on 8-year-old justified, police in S.D. say

John Hult | (Sioux Falls, S.D.) Argus Leader

PIERRE, S.D. — The police chief here is defending an officer's use of an electroshock weapon against an 8-year-old girl threatening to harm herself.

Parents of the child, who was with a babysitter at the time, want the officer disciplined for using excessive force.

Police Chief Bob Grandpre said three officers responded Friday night to a report of a suicidal 8-year-old girl who had stabbed herself in the leg. She was holding a 4½-inch knife to her chest when officers arrived, and she refused to put it down.

One officer took a step toward the child but stopped when she turned the knife toward him.

"She immediately put the knife back at her chest," said the chief of police in this city of about 14,000 that is the capital of South Dakota.

That's when an officer deployed his Taser, with prongs hitting her chest and stomach. Emergency medical personnel soon arrived and checked the child, he said, who was taken to a hospital and placed on a 24-hour hold. The child had no stab wounds on her leg.

The chief is reviewing the incident, but the officer, whose name was not released, still is on the job. Grandpre said the Taser was the least forceful way to get the child under control.

"He quite possibly saved the juvenile's life that night," he said.

The chief added that the officer has children and feels terrible about the incident, but "we can't control if the threat is 8 or 80."

The child's parents say police should have found another way.

"Tasers are for grown adults, not 8-year-old girls," said Bobby Jones, the child's father. "They say it was for her own

safety, but there is no justification for that."

The girl was not seriously injured, but "she was in pain the whole night," said her mother, Dawn Stenstrom. The prongs of a Taser send electricity into the muscles, briefly incapacitating the body, and the company says on its website that the shock is generally mildly to moderately painful.

The girl was released the following morning, before the 24-hour mark had passed. Stenstrom described the knife as "a little paring knife," and said she's never known her daughter to get far enough out of control as to require physical restraint.

"How much harm could she have done?" Stenstrom asked.

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Her father said the child had merely "acted out. ... Her acting out got her tased."

Greg Connor, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois and consultant from Georgia, is a police trainer who specializes in the use of force. He was surprised to hear of the device being used on a child so young. Rates of injury are lower for officers and suspects with Tasers than with batons and other less-than-lethal devices, Connor said, but "we have to talk about reasonableness with the use of force.

"It's hard to imagine a situation where you'd need to use a Taser on an 8-year-old," Connor said.

Every situation is different, Connor said, which is why it's important for departments to have strict guidelines on the use of force.

In South Dakota, Sioux Falls police officers don't use the devices. Rapid City police officers unholstered the devices 129 times and deployed them 21 times last year, spokeswoman Tarah Heupel said.

Grandpre said Pierre officers used a Taser six times last year and three so far this year, but they never before had done so for such a young child.

Jones and Stenstrom say the officer should be disciplined and they will consider suing.

"Something has to happen here," Jones said. "This is wrong, no matter how they cut it."