Bergen County SWAT Team Introduces High-Tech Tasers

The Bergen County Police Department says its new high-tech Tasers will provide the less lethal use-of-force option, especially when responding to a growing number of calls involving people with special needs.

The BCPD rolled out 20 of the new devices at a Taser demonstration at the Bergen County Law and Public Safety Institute in Mahwah Wednesday afternoon.

“This Taser [could mean not having] to call a full SWAT team,” Bergen County Police Chief Brian Higgins said of responding to situations involving those with special needs who are at risk of hurting themselves.

“This is another avenue for us,” Higgins said.

The county’s SWAT team received nearly two-dozen calls in 2012, which is almost twice the average amount, Higgins said. Half of those calls were in response to someone with special needs.

About 24 Bergen County police officers are currently trained and authorized to use the Tasers, and the plan is to have the entire department trained sometime in the near future.

Local municipalities can call for back-up from the Taser-armed county SWAT team, but no municipalities have the authority to use Tasers on their own at this point.

According to Higgins, costs have prevented local PDs from outfitting themselves with the Tasers. Each one costs about $1,600, he said. The Bergen County Police Department used seized drug money to pay for theirs.

“Whenever [a police officer] is authorized to use his or her firearm, if they can safely use a Taser, which is only potentially lethal, that’s preferable,” Policy Counsel of American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey Alex Shalom said.

Shalom attended the Taser demonstration alongside leaders from various other community organizations.

Rich Rivera of the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey called the initiative “historical.”

While all of the organizations in attendance appeared to be in favor of the Tasers, Shalom said his support does not come without some concerns.

“At the ACLU we have concerns about Tasers, but we also recognize that there’s a place that they can be used appropriately,” Shalom said. “Our experience in other states has been that they’re often overused and misused.”

“We hope that what [the BCPD] will do is use them responsively,” he said.

To combat overuse and misuse, each Taser comes equipped with both audio and video recording capability, which is automatically activated once the Taser is turned on. Those recordings are later logged into the department’s system.

“It’s going to hold officers now more accountable for their actions,” County Officer Jason Trignano said.

The department has also decided to follow the guidelines provided by the attorney general’s office "to a tee," Higgins said.

“Let’s start with a stricter policy. [The technology is] new, it’s groundbreaking and we’re not sure where it can be used,” Higgins said. “We want to make sure that they fit right in law enforcement, and not just from the law enforcement point of view, but from the public.”