TASERS: An Option for Australian Transit Guards

The Australian Government is thinking about providing transit guards with TASERS after violence occurred on the Armadale train line.

The police minister also revealed details of Operation Rail Safe for the troubled line in Parliament yesterday after he was accused of breaking a promise made in 2008 to increase the number of police on the rail network.

Plainclothes police and drug-detecting dogs will be on trains Friday and Saturday nights from November 25, focusing on the 2.15 a.m. and 4 a.m. services from Perth to Armadale. Uniformed officers will remain on trains for the entire journey while additional officers will be placed on stations to patrol and monitor those passengers leaving the train.

With the employment of police TASERS officers will be able to effectively gain control of a situation if violence were to take place on the train line again in the future. Nowadays, it’s not uncommon for police to have use of these tools.

Reports show that with them there is a decrease in the amount of injuries sustained by an officer and a suspect, which demonstrates how effective these tools are in the police force. Not only are they safe to use, but because they are extremely effective there is no need for contact to come between an officer and the individual targeted.

This means that harm inflicted is no longer a question, which in turn means that more officers will be able to do the job they have been trained to do instead of taking time off work to recover from injuries they received while working.

It’s not everyday that a self defense device that has been designed with safety in mind is created. However, when it has been it should come as no surprise that people want to use it for their protection and the public’s safety.

Without the use of such a device there would be officers and members of the public utilizing other devices for their safety which could bring about lethal results. Instead, the use of a TASER does not come with that risk, which is why they are often turned to.

Not every situation requires brute force, so simply knowing that officers have the use of these devices instead means that they can tackle a situation without harm coming to people in a timely manner.