question: Why don’t law enforcement officers use tranquilizer guns to subdue perpetrators?
comment: Cop here: There's several reasons. For one, tranquilizers require time to work. In an active use-of-force situation, you're dealing with seconds at the very most. You need instantaneous options. Another is that tranquilizers require specialized doses based on size and weight. It's fine to estimate for an animal, because ultimately if you accidentally kill it, it's not that big of a deal, legally. That's not the same for a person.
passages: Tranquillizer darts are not generally included in military or police less-than-lethal arsenals because no drug is yet known that would be quickly and reliably effective on humans without the risks of side effects or an overdose. This means that effective use requires an estimate of the weight of the target to be able to determine how many darts (if any) can be used. Shooting too few would result in partial effects only, while too many can kill the target. According to James Butts, former Chief of Police of Santa Monica, "Tranquilizing agents don't affect everyone uniformly. Therefore you cannot predict whether or not you have a sufficient dose to tranquilize the individual. Second, any tranquillizer will take time to enter the bloodstream and sedate the individual. If someone is advancing on you with a deadly weapon or a threatening object, there's no way a tranquillizer would take effect in the two to three seconds it would take someone to seriously injure you."
   When an armed and violent criminal is sheltered in a location not easily reachable by a tranquilizer round or disabling shot - or lethal ammunition, if authorized by mission leaders - police, military, and counterterrorism officers maintain distance (often out of the direct line of sight and behind cover) while often using a megaphone to call for backup, the arrest of the subject, or to take him/her into custody. Sniper coverage is used often in these situations, and standard procedure for officers or operatives (or citizens taking part in a citizen's arrest) is to call for heavily armored backup while maintaining cover themselves. In the wake of active shooter scenarios, some law enforcement agencies have switched to moving in on the suspects, to prevent the gunmen from harming civilians. Therapeutic interventions or diplomatic techniques may be used to talk down the suspects or identified threats and assailants.
   The first modern remote drug delivery system was actually invented by scientists at the University of Georgia in the 1950s, and was the direct predecessor to the Cap-Chur equipment used worldwide for decades.
  
  In Kenya in the early 1960s, a team headed by Dr. Tony Pooley and Dr. Toni Harthoorn discovered that various species, despite being of roughly equal size (for example, the rhinoceros and the buffalo), needed very different doses and spectra of drugs to safely immobilize them.
  
  Section::::Characteristics.
   These methods may be useful when assault-boarding a boat being used by unauthorized or suspect divers, or arresting them onshore, but not often otherwise.
  
  BULLET::::- Mace (spray) and pepper spray and teargas may make an unequipped surface swimmer drown, and are useless against a swimmer with a diving mask and breathing set whether he is in or out of the water.
   BULLET::::- November 22, 2011, Scotland Neck, North Carolina, Roger Anthony, 61, died a day after being tasered whilst cycling. Police had been called after the deaf man had fallen off his bicycle. The caller said Anthony appeared drunk, and may have hurt himself.
  
  BULLET::::- 2012
  
  BULLET::::- March 18, 2012, Honeymoon Island, Florida, James Clifton Barnes, 37, was struggling but in handcuffs when tasered by Kenneth Kubler, a marine deputy. He stopped breathing, and died a few days later.
   From 2014 to 2017, the Western Australian government retained the option to deploy drum lines under certain circumstances under its "imminent threat" policy. They were deployed in the event of the appearance of a shark or sharks which present a possible threat to public safety. Following the abandonment of seasonal drum line deployment plans in September 2014, drum lines were deployed to kill sharks in Western Australia on at least three occasions.
   Concerns about the use of conducted electrical weapons have arisen from cases that include the death of the Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski in the Vancouver, BC airport where he died after the RCMP officer, in spite of his training, repeatedly stunned him with a Taser. The report by forensic pathologist Charles Lee, of Vancouver General Hospital, listed the principal cause of death as "sudden death during restraint", with a contributory factor of "chronic alcoholism".
   In Recife, Brazil, the number of shark attacks was reduced by 97% when long lines and drum lines were deployed — in the Recife program, some of the sharks were caught on drum lines and then moved away from the shoreline.
  
  In 2017 the Queensland Government stated that "Current evidence indicates traditional capture methods (ie Shark nets and Drum lines) remain the most effective measures to reduce the risk of shark attack".
  
  Section::::Opposition.
   BULLET::::- June 6, 2011, Oakland Park, Florida, James Doe, 31 years old, 130 pounds, is tasered while handcuffed and locked in the back of a power cruiser; he was kicking the doors and windows. He becomes unresponsive, and is pronounced dead at Florida Medical Center.
  
  BULLET::::- June 28, 2011, Northolt, United Kingdom, an 82-year-old was hospitalised for several days after his arrest.
  
  BULLET::::- August 6, 2011, Cincinnati, Ohio, an 18-year-old attending summer classes at the University of Cincinnati was struck by a campus officer's stun gun and died of cardiac arrest.
   Former chief commissioner of Victoria Police Christine Nixon has suggested that Cassidy's death prompted further community debate about the use of Tasers by Victoria Police. In 2010 Tasers were trialed in Bendigo and Morwell "because of the high use of OC spray, incidents involving people with a mental illness, sieges and instances where offenders have used weapons." In 2016 Tasers were made more widely available to Victoria Police. Deputy Commissioner Wendy Steendam said "What Tasers do for our members is to actually offer them another option in resolutions of incidents where they're having violent confrontations or where people are attempting to self-harm."
   A similar incident occurred in Sydney, Australia, to Roberto Laudisio Curti, a 21-year-old tourist from Brazil. He died after repeated Taser application even after being physically apprehended (by the weight of several police officers lying on top of him compressing his chest and making it hard to breathe. He was pepper sprayed at the same time). The Coroner was scathing of the "thuggish" behaviour of the police. The repeated use of several Tasers was considered excessive and unnecessary.
   However, in the United States, a water or oil based pepper spray is more common than CS. This allows for the possibility of a Taser being used after an individual has been subjected to pepper spray without the concern for a fire.
  
  Section::::Training.
  
  Section::::Training.:Military.
   BULLET::::- August 18, 2010, Dublin, California, Martin Harrison, a 50-year-old Oakland man being held in Santa Rita Jail, died after being shocked twice by a Taser during a fight with deputies. The fight occurred on Monday night, and he died in a hospital about 5 a.m. Wednesday.
   Section::::Less lethal alternatives.
   Therefore, such effects are not as reliable as physiological effects at stopping people. Animals will not faint or surrender if injured, though they may become frightened by the loud noise and pain of being shot, so psychological mechanisms are generally less effective against non-humans.
  
  Section::::Penetration.
   BULLET::::- Tasering a surfaced diver would either be insulated off by his rubber diving suit, or may make him panic and drown, including making him lose his scuba mouthpiece if any. Any electric-shock weapon can be shorted out by water, and also the usual design of taser's firing range underwater would be a few inches.
  
  BULLET::::- Bean bag rounds, rubber bullets, pepper balls, and similar would be stopped in a few inches by water.
   BULLET::::- August 6, 2013, Miami, Florida, Israel Hernandez, 18 years old, died after being shocked with a taser in the chest after Miami Beach police spotted him painting graffiti on an empty building. It was later confirmed that the cause of death was sudden cardiac death produced by the shock from the taser.
  
  BULLET::::- October 24, 2013, Edmonton, Alberta, Unidentified, 39-year-old man, died after being shocked with a taser by the Edmonton Police Service.
  
  BULLET::::- 2014
   A tranquillizer gun (also spelled tranquilizer gun or tranquilliser gun), capture gun or dart gun, is a non-lethal air gun often used for incapacitating animal targets via drugs usually referred as "tranquilizers". These guns shoot darts with a hypodermic needle tip, filled with a dose of tranquilizer solution that is either sedative, comatosing or paralytic, which once injected will temporarily impair the target's physical function to a level that allows it to be approached and handled in an unresisting and thus safe manner. Tranquillizer guns have a long history of use to stun wildlife when they are in a place where they pose a threat to others and themselves without having to kill the animal, or used to capture wildlife risking serious injuries to both the hunter and the target. They are also used for recreation, which animal rights groups protest against. Tranquillizer darts can also be fired by crossbow or breath-powered blowgun.
   For thousands of years various peoples have used poisoned arrows (for example tipped with curare), to incapacitate animals before killing them, but the modern tranquillizer gun was invented only in the 1950s by New Zealander Colin Murdoch. While working with colleagues who were studying introduced wild goat and deer populations in New Zealand, Murdoch had the idea that the animals would be much easier to catch, examine, and release if a dose of tranquillizer could be administered by projection from afar. Murdoch went on to develop a range of rifles, darts, and pistols that have had an enormous impact on the treatment and study of animals around the world.
   BULLET::::- November 18, 2007, a 20-year-old man in Frederick, Maryland fell unconscious and died also right after being tasered.
  
  BULLET::::- November 2007, USA. Christian Allen incident:
  
  On Sunday 18 November 2007 in Jacksonville, Florida, Christian Allen, 21, was pulled over by police because his car radio was too loud. After a struggle he and a passenger escaped on foot, an officer gave chase, caught Allen and tasered him at least three times. Allen died later in custody.
   Section::::Shark culling in other jurisdictions.
  
  As of 2019, shark culling currently occurs in Queensland, New South Wales, KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) and Réunion (France), and in each of those jurisdictions, lethal devices (shark nets and/or drum lines) are used to kill sharks — New South Wales uses only shark nets, while Queensland uses both shark nets and drum lines. All of these regions use the term "shark control" for their culls. The current culls in these regions have been criticized by environmentalists, who say killing sharks harms the marine ecosystem.
   In 2015, the Washington Post reported that in the 11-month period from January to November 2015, 48 people died in the United States in incidents in which police used Tasers, according to police, court and autopsy records.
  
  A study published by the "American Journal of Cardiology" found that California police departments that introduced Tasers experienced significant increases in the numbers of in-custody sudden deaths and firearm deaths in the first full year following deployment. The rates declined to predeployment levels in subsequent years. No significant change in the number of officer injuries was found.
   Section::::History.
   In 1970 to 1980 trained dolphins killed 2 Russian frogmen who were putting limpet mines on a US cargo ship in Cam Ranh bay in Vietnam. Subsequently, Russian PDSS frogmen were trained to fight back against trained dolphins. In an incident on the coast of Nicaragua PDSS frogmen killed trained anti-frogman dolphins. Arrival of seems to make the trained animal threat less.
  
  Animals, unlike ROVs etc., need to be fed and kept in training whether they are needed at work or not, and cannot be laid aside in a storeroom until needed.
  
  Section::::Anti-frogman weapons.:Remote-controlled underwater vehicle, as weapon.
   BULLET::::- April 16, 2009, Robert Mitchell, a 5-foot 2-inch 110 lb 16-year-old with a learning disability, was tasered and died after fleeing a vehicle in which he was a passenger during a routine traffic stop.
  
  BULLET::::- 2010
  
  BULLET::::- May 21, 2010, Tybee Island, Georgia, an 18-year-old man with autism is injured after being tasered by police.
  
  BULLET::::- July 2010, A stand-off in Rothbury between British police and armed fugitive Raoul Moat ended after two tasers were discharged, possibly causing Moat to pull the trigger to end his own life. An inquest is ongoing.
  