Like all good government agencies, my department has the management theory of leadership by knee-jerk reaction.  Our department had an incident happen where an Officer deployed a Taser from inside the vehicle on a fleeing suspect as the Officer drove alongside.  It was actually a good Taser depoyment given the totality of the circumstances but the mgmt didn't like 'how it looked' and compared it to a 'drive by' and are now reviewing our policy on Taser deployment.  Does any of your departments restrict the type of deployment method that the Officer uses?

So that there is no rampant speculation, here is the story:

Day shift Officers were dispatched to a home burglary in progress that was called in by a neighbor that was watching the burglars.  When the Officers arrived, two suspects fled from the residence.  One suspect was carrying the loot and was captured almost immediately.  The second suspect fled through the neighborhood and before a perimeter could be set was able to stay ahead of the Officers.  Both suspects were juveniles and had cut school to burglarize some homes in the area.  The second suspect headed back towards his school to get away.  As the suspect was running across the school's large grass 'yard' the Officer pulled alongside the suspect in his marked patrol car and ordered the suspect to stop.  The suspect kept running and after several orders to stop, the Officer deployed his taser as the suspect was running.  The taser hit the suspect and took him down.  The Officer got out and cuffed him.  Pretty straight forward except that the suspect was a juvenile and he got scuffed up from sliding on the ground after being Tased.  The suspect was fast and by the time the Officer would have stopped his car, gotten out and pursued on foot, there is no guarranty of a capture.

Our policy outright says that we shall not deploy a taser from inside a vehicle. Said that before we even got them.
Really supposed to strongly evaluate our decision to tase a running suspect as well.

Though my department is big into doing the right thing, for the right reasons. If you can articulate why it was the right thing, then it's been made clear that any policy can be disregarded by any deputy. It's about articulating those reasons in your report.

For our department it would be a matter of explaining that this was a felony suspect, was outside of the perimeter set up, was very fast, that the suspect was ordered to stop verbally and continued to run (this is the active resistance my department requires to use the taser). Would definitely want to talk about alternatives that were considered and why they fell short. Then what precluded sticking to policy (suspect was fast, stopping the car and getting out would have created too large of a gap to deploy the taser immediately, and catching up to the suspect on foot was very unlikely). Do that and you'd probably be good to go at my department, even though policy says no.

OMG!  That is some funny sh!t.  I would have loved to have seen that.  

We don't have a "no TASER from vehicle" policy.  But I wouldn't be surprised if we were told tomorrow that the policy had changed.  We are going through CALEA accreditation right now and everything is being re-written.

Quoted: Like all good government agencies, my department has the management theory of leadership by knee-jerk reaction.  Our department had an incident happen where an Officer deployed a Taser from inside the vehicle on a fleeing suspect as the Officer drove alongside.  It was actually a good Taser depoyment given the totality of the circumstances but the mgmt didn't like 'how it looked' and compared it to a 'drive by' and are now reviewing our policy on Taser deployment.  Does any of your departments restrict the type of deployment method that the Officer uses? So that there is no rampant speculation, here is the story: Day shift Officers were dispatched to a home burglary in progress that was called in by a neighbor that was watching the burglars.  When the Officers arrived, two suspects fled from the residence.  One suspect was carrying the loot and was captured almost immediately.  The second suspect fled through the neighborhood and before a perimeter could be set was able to stay ahead of the Officers.  Both suspects were juveniles and had cut school to burglarize some homes in the area.  The second suspect headed back towards his school to get away.  As the suspect was running across the school's large grass 'yard' the Officer pulled alongside the suspect in his marked patrol car and ordered the suspect to stop.  The suspect kept running and after several orders to stop, the Officer deployed his taser as the suspect was running.  The taser hit the suspect and took him down.  The Officer got out and cuffed him.  Pretty straight forward except that the suspect was a juvenile and he got scuffed up from sliding on the ground after being Tased.  The suspect was fast and by the time the Officer would have stopped his car, gotten out and pursued on foot, there is no guarranty of a capture.

My department, nor any of our surounding agencies, even address this in policy. Hopefully they do not read arfcom.

Ours does not say anything regarding deploying from a vehicle, but we are not allowed to Tase fleeing suspects. If they stop and continue to not obey commands, they are fair game. Sorry can't be more help.  

Our policy.

We have 1 chief and 1 capt. who are the only ones "authorized" to use tasers in our dept.  

Quoted: Our policy. We have 1 chief and 1 capt. who are the only ones "authorized" to use tasers in our dept.

Is that for discipling officers? :)

-d