One Western Australian is tasered the equivalent of every weekday by police officers, new data obtained by the ABC via Freedom of Information has shown.

Key points: The data shows people in regional WA are more likely to be tasered than in Perth

The data shows people in regional WA are more likely to be tasered than in Perth Physical aggression is the main reason given for police using their tasers

Physical aggression is the main reason given for police using their tasers But there are calls for more help for police to handle mental health welfare checks

The data also reveals one-quarter of taserings in WA are because a person is self-harming, has mental health issues or is affected by drugs and alcohol.

People living in regional WA are more likely to be tasered than Perth residents, while people as young as 14 and as old as 60 have been tasered.

But police reviews, including three internal investigations, found that every one of the 292 deployments of tasers during 2017-18 was appropriate.

The ABC requested WA's taser data after a high-profile incident where a man was tasered after being pulled over for a random breath test in Fremantle in March 2017.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 4 minutes 4 seconds 4 m 4 s Footage shows the driver being tasered while still in the car.

The police officer, Senior Constable Grantley Keenan, claimed the man posed a threat to the officers, and he was eventually cleared by three internal police investigations.

But he was later found guilty in a Perth court of assault and to have committed serious misconduct by the Corruption and Crime Commission.

WA Police were asked to provide details of how many times a taser was deployed by their officers in the year after the incident, along with where and why.

As shown in the chart below, police said their use of a taser was predominantly because of physical aggression by a person.

This appears in line with WA Police policy, which outlines that officers can use tasers to protect themselves or another person from a harmful act or threat, but not to enforce compliance.

But the statistics also show how frequently police are using tasers on people with mental health problems, including self harming, or affected by drugs and alcohol.

Taser hotspots revealed

WA Police were warned in a 2010 report by the Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC) to be careful about deploying a taser against vulnerable people.

The CCC also said there was a risk of police officers becoming dependent on tasers to deal with incidents where there was no real risk of injury.

The data shows almost a third of all taser incidents took place inside a private dwelling. ( AAP: Dave Hunt )

"The risks of injury and death, and of mission creep, are potentially increased when a taser weapon is used on the young, the elderly, people with an existing health condition, drug users and the mentally ill," it said.

The data shows 17 teenagers were tasered in 2017-18, including a 14-year old from the Goldfields-Esperance region.

Eleven people aged 55 or older were tasered, with the oldest being a 60-year-old person from the Pilbara.

The 2010 CCC report advised WA Police to outline in its policy that officers should avoid tasering young people and the elderly, except under extreme circumstances.

But WA Police would not provide a copy of its policy, which does not outline the age range of these categories.

"There is no specific definition of a child or the elderly person in policy, however there a number of significant considerations listed when deploying a taser, including whether subjects are elderly or infirmed, and subjects are of a small stature/children," a police spokeswoman said.

"Overall, the use of a taser is governed by comprehensive policy, legislation, training and guidelines."

The data shows almost a third of all taser incidents took place inside a private dwelling.

Per head of population, regional West Australians — who represent about one-fifth of the state's population — are more likely to be tasered.

Metropolitan police divisions, including specialist squads, deployed their tasers 191 times, compared to 101 regional deployments.

The Kimberley may have the smallest population of any regional area but it had the equal second-highest number of taserings.

A recent high-profile police incident in the Mid West-Gascoyne region has also highlighted a problem faced by police — the increasing demands of being asked to conduct welfare checks on people experiencing a mental health crisis.

Calls for mental health welfare checks soar

Just last month, the family and friends of Geraldton woman Joyce Clarke, who was shot dead by a police officer after being told to put a knife down, held a protest in the coastal city, asking why the young woman had not been tasered instead.

Her family had called police seeking help to get her back to hospital, just days after she had left a mental institution.

Many experts said a mental health co-response program, where police officers worked with mental health professionals to help de-escalate mental health crises, was an even better way of handling similarly difficult situations.

A WA Police spokeswoman said mental health was a factor in more than 29,000 calls to WA Police in 2018.

Co-response teams currently operate out of four Perth police stations, with WA Police planning to expand the program to the state's South West in January next year.

A 2018 report on the trial outlined how police were increasingly being asked to conduct welfare checks on people with mental health problems because of an under-pressure health system.

Do you know more about this story? Email turner.rebecca@abc.net.au

It cited data showing the demand on police to attend welfare checks increasing from 4,766 incidents in 2007 to 18,902 in 2015 — a surge of 296 per cent.

"Findings also showed that although police are being called to a growing number of mental health incidents, the majority are not criminal incidents," it said.

Fears tasers 'less than beneficial'

But WA's Mental Health Law Centre chief executive Shayla Strapps said if they were not handled properly, those sorts of situations could quickly escalate to criminal incidents and, sometimes, tasering.

Ms Strapps said many of her clients had complex mental health issues, including a paranoia of authority figures.

Shayla Strapps wants more mental health clinicians to join police on welfare checks. ( ABC News: Rebecca Turner )

"We've had some cases of our clients being tasered after the police have been called out [to help]," she said.

"That has resulted in an outcome for that client which has been less than beneficial and has ultimately resulted in a degeneration of their mental health.

"It often results in charges of assaulting a public officer or disorderly conduct, and if they had have had the opportunity to tend to the issues that find them in that heightened state, then we believe there could have been a better outcome."

Ms Strapps said she would like to see the co-response trial expanded, allowing mental health clinicians to accompany police on welfare checks.

"We're certainly not critical of the police but we believe they need more tools in their armour to be able to deal with people with complex mental health issues," she said.

"They need more training but they also need the skills of a clinician to be able to understand what those mental health issues are and to identify how that person can better be dealt with so that everyone has a better outcome."

Taser threat can be useful in crisis: expert

Deakin University criminology lecturer Emma Ryan said there were also significant medical risks in deploying tasers against people in an agitated state.

"While it has been difficult for coroners to draw causal links to deaths and tasers, there is an understanding that people who are in a highly-agitated state are more vulnerable to having their heart impacted seriously," she said.

"So someone who is in an agitated mental health state in a mental health crisis is likely to have a raised heart rate, and so their body is not as able to cope with the electricity coursing through their body as [much as] people who are in a more stable heart rate".

There are calls for police to make their taser policies public in order to improve transparency. ( AAP: Dave Hunt )

But Dr Ryan said the threat of a taser could be useful in calming a situation down.

"They can de-escalate mental health crisis conditions, there's no doubt about that," she said.

"Some people will immediately, fearing an electric shock, succumb to police and perhaps be taken into emergency medical care.

"So that's a better outcome than a critical incident ending up in a firearms use or an injury to a police officer."

Dr Ryan also called on police to make their taser policies public, so that the public and researchers could have better understanding of how and why tasers were being used.