The Boston Police Department is spending millions of dollars as part of a plan to equip all of its patrol officers with Tasers — a shift in policy and priorities for a department that rarely deployed the stun guns before.
The department will spend $8.5 million to buy 1,500 Tasers over the next five years, according to a contract with manufacturer Axon. Until now, it had 70 Tasers, exclusively assigned to special operations units. The purchases come even as violent crime in Boston is near record lows, and as Mayor Michelle Wu recently cautioned city departments to tighten their equipment budgets in preparation for possible federal funding cuts.
The decision to invest in Tasers is based on the experience of the specialized units, which have used them in the field since 2015, Police Commissioner Michael Cox said in a statement to the Globe. The Globe obtained the Axon contract through a public records request.
“The successful use and de-escalation by those units, particularly when responding to mental health related calls, highlighted the need to provide access to these tools to our front line officers,” Cox said. “We want to equip our personnel with additional options to handle the many complex situations they face on a daily basis without causing serious harm whenever possible.”
The Boston Police Department did not respond to specific questions about the budget implications of the contract. Boston City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune and Councilor Henry Santana, chair of the city’s public safety committee, were asked about the cost and use of the equipment, but their offices said they were not available for comment due to ongoing budget hearings.
Of the 1,500, the department has already acquired 260 new Tasers, with the eventual goal of equipping all its officers.
The rollout places Boston in step with most municipal police departments, which have already made Tasers part of their standard kit, said Bruce Champagne, a Utah-based retired police officer and use of force instructor who works as an expert witness on police procedure in federal court cases.
“They’ve only grown more accepted as time goes on,” Champagne said. “Boston is maybe a little behind the national trend.”
One factor driving Taser adoption is their perceived utility for officers confronting people in emotional crisis — a scenario that all too often ends in tragedy. In Massachusetts, more than half the people shot by police since 2016 were mentally ill, a Globe analysis found in 2023. In some cases, family members called 911 seeking help for their loved ones, not expecting the encounter to turn violent and in many cases deadly.
Officers have grown to value Tasers as a useful tool for resolving those kind of unpredictable encounters, said Michael Bradley, executive director of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association.
“They can be particularly effective in reducing injuries to both officers and subjects, especially in cases where physical confrontation might otherwise escalate,” he said.
Axon has long touted studies that have found Tasers reduce the risk of injury for the officer and others compared to other uses of force, and are unlikely to cause serious medical harm.
But civil liberties groups and advocates for the mentally ill have questioned those claims, particularly for people who are already in poor health. In 2019, Reuters documented 163 cases in the US where medical examiners found that Taser shocks contributed to death, often in combination with existing heart disease, overexertion, or intoxication.
“We know that when mental health is managed through policing, sometimes it can be very dangerous and lead to escalation,” said Ivy Moody, a staff attorney at the Quincy-based Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee. “A Taser isn’t a gun, but it can be a lethal weapon when it comes to folks who have comorbidities.”
Carlton Williams, a Boston-based attorney and police reform advocate, said he is skeptical that equipping officers with Tasers will make police encounters safer for mentally ill people. He called the suggestion that Tasers are safer “a great theory in the abstract.” The more officers that have Tasers, he argued, the more that will use them.
”In practice, in almost every jurisdiction people have looked into, people use it as an increase in force,” Williams said. “Are people going to step down force they would have used, or are they going to step it up?”
In 2021, Boston police issued new rules of engagement emphasizing de-escalation when responding to mental health calls. Officers with the department’s street outreach unit, who have specialized training on responding to mental health matters, have in turn trained hundreds of other officers in crisis intervention.
The agency’s Taser policy says that unless lethal force is justified, officers are barred from aiming at the head or neck, or targeting people who are driving, climbing a fence, in a body of water or otherwise at high risk of injury if stunned.
Overall, Taser use by police in Massachusetts, including warnings and actual stuns, declined each year from 2018 through 2021, according to a 2023 report from the state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, the most recent statewide review that has been completed. In Boston, officers fired Tasers during eight incidents from 2019 through 2024, the police said.
The Boston Police Department is purchasing the Taser 10, Axon’s latest version of the stun gun. The new model, released in 2023, features an increased range of 45 feet, a 10-probe magazine, and digital tracking of deployments, according to the company.
Tasers have become ubiquitous in police arsenals since 1999, when Axon, then named Taser International, introduced its first advanced model — capable of shocking a target’s muscles into immobility.
“Most major police departments in the country have adopted Tasers,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
At the turn of the millennium, 500 law enforcement agencies used Tasers, The New York Times reported; by 2020, 93 percent of American enforcement agencies authorized their use, according to a congressional report. Axon’s Taser division brought in $818 million last year, more than triple its 2018 sales total, according to SEC filings.
Boston police have used Tasers in two incidents this year, Detective Sergeant John Boyle wrote in an email.
On the evening of March 28, officers responded to a report of a man acting erratically on a corner across the street from the Forest Hills bus terminal. He did not appear to be armed, but he shoved officers who approached and said they’d have to “shoot him” to get him to move, according to a police report.
Four officers stood around him, one carrying an application to hospitalize the man against his will. An ambulance was waiting, but the man wouldn’t get in. After 15 minutes of de-escalation attempts, one officer unholstered his Taser, gave two warnings and fired, according to the police.
The incident is being investigated by the police Firearm Discharge Investigation Team, in accordance with department policy.
Another incident took place on April 8, when officers attempted to break up a fight between two dogs in Hyde Park. Minnie, a pit bull, had her jaws around the neck of Lolita, a French pocket bully; an officer tased Minnie “to save Lolita’s life,” according to the police report. Both dogs were taken to an animal hospital.