Record of part(s) of the body a conducted energy device (CED) makes contact with when discharged

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.22.022900

I note you seek access to the following information:

1) Does your force record which part(s) of the body a conducted energy device (CED, e.g. TASER) makes contact with when discharged?

2) If so, I would like the number of instances where one of your officers has hit or made contact with an individual’s chest area with a CED/TASER from 1 January 2019 until the 1 January 2022. If this requires effort to separate the results or you do not have data for that exact date range, please send the raw data.

3) Can I also have total number of times that a CED/TASER has been discharged by your officers from 1 January 2019 until the 1 January 2022? NB: ‘Discharge’ should include all instances of firing, as well as the use of drive-stun and angle drive-stun functions. As before, if this requires effort to separate the results or you do not have data for that exact date range, please send the raw data.

Decision

I have today decided to disclose the located information to you in full.

Please find below information pursuant to your request above.

Q1 - Does your force record which part(s) of the body a conducted energy device (CED, e.g. TASER) makes contact with when discharged?

Yes, the MPS does record which part(s) of the body a conducted energy device (CED, e.g. TASER) makes contact with when discharged.

Q2 - If so, I would like the number of instances where one of your officers has hit or made contact with an individual’s chest area with a CED/TASER from 1 January 2019 until the 1 January 2022.

The number of times a CED / Taser has made contact with an individual’s chest area during the period requested:

Area	Barb 1	Barb 2	Total
Chest - Left, Right and Centre	927	240	1167

  Please note, there are some caveats to the above provided information.

1 or both of these tactics might be used in the same incident hence duplicate unique reference numbers.

If more than 1 CED use is recorded per form, we only report on the highest severity. This means the attached dataset figures may differ from official publication.

This data shows CED Fired / CED Angle Drive Stun only – there may be other tactics used in the same incident but these are omitted from the attached dataset.

Q3 - Can I also have total number of times that a CED/TASER has been discharged by your officers from 1 January 2019 until the 1 January 2022?

The number of times a CED / Taser has been discharged in the period requested:

Month	2019	2020	2021	Total
Jan	67	97	81	245
Feb	64	71	58	193
Mar	78	100	64	242
Apr	57	116	46	219
May	67	119	67	253
Jun	68	64	70	202
Jul	83	82	45	210
Aug	83	84	57	224
Sep	78	79	53	210
Oct	68	72	65	205
Nov	86	80	59	225
Dec	78	74	45	197
Total	877	1038	710	2625