Just as surely, hit by a taser is 99.9% better outcome than getting a bullet hole in your body.

Are there statistics that show taser use decreased the number of bullets fired/hitting civilians by the police? I find conflicting results. https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/police-use-force-impact-... (2011):

A new study suggests that less-lethal weapons decrease rates of officer and offender injuries

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/18/theres-no-evidence-tasers-re... (2018):

“We find no substitutions between Tasers and firearms,” Professor Jeffrey Grogger told CNBC. The study reviewed 36,112 use-of-force incidents in Chicago

Tasers do still kill people. And the threshold to using them is a lot lower than a gun.

any physical altercation carries the risk of death or serious injury. do tasers have an especially bad risk vs. use threshold?

The alternative to taser use is not necessarily physical altercation.

If you didn't have a taser you might be inclined to get really good at negotiating with people. You might be less inclined to try to dominate a situation.

a taser is just one point along the use of force continuum. police are trained to always maintain a tactical advantage when confronting someone, but to only go as far along the continuum as is necessary. obviously they don't always do this correctly, and they are granted a lot of leeway when they mess up. it's unclear to me how removing a midpoint along the continuum would reduce instances of excessive force, unless there's something specifically bad about the taser.

it seems to me that it would be better to focus on the negotiation skills themselves; people won't bet their life on skills they don't feel confident in. or better yet, raise the bar for what justifies a confrontation in the first place. the cops who killed freddie gray didn't even have a charge in mind when they decided to pursue him. they chased him just because he ran away.

>> it's unclear to me how removing a midpoint

No, remove everything beyond the taser too for the front line cop.

Your immediate reaction would surely be “that’s crazy”. Maybe. Maybe not. It’s not going to happen though so no point fretting the details.