After a campus police officer shot a student with a 9 mm handgun Feb. 8, Florida Atlantic University launched an investigation into the possibility of arming officers with non-lethal Tasers in addition to guns. The Brown Department of Public Safety is currently undergoing a similar investigation into Taser feasibility on campus.
The FAU shooting took place at 12:34 a.m. in a parking lot where campus police were called following a disturbance that occurred inside Indian Rivers Tower, a dormitory on campus.
Zachary Carroll, a 21-year-old junior at FAU, was reportedly smashing cars and acting violently when two campus officers arrived.
"They confronted him and gave him verbal commands, but he refused to comply. He kept walking towards the officers, at which time he lunged at the closest officer and at least one shot was fired," said FAU Police Chief Bill Ferrell.
Carroll, who, according to a CBS news report, was shot in the shoulder and hand, underwent surgery at Delray Medical Center in Delray Beach, Fla., and has since been released.
The officer who shot him, 26-year old Mary Ann Douglas, "feared for her life," Ferrell said. She is currently on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of multiple investigations by the Boca Raton police department and the FAU police department into the incident, which Ferrell said is standard procedure.
The 37-person FAU force is currently equipped with batons, pepper spray and semi-automatic handguns, but Tasers may soon be added.
"We've gone as far as contacting a couple companies and we had a contractor last week come in and do a PowerPoint presentation," Ferrell said. "We also had demonstrations where several officers volunteered to be tased."
Mark Porter, chief of police and director of public safety at Brown, said the University is also discussing the possibility of purchasing Tasers. When Porter arrived at Brown in April 2005, there was some talk of arming officers with Tasers, but an extensive study was not conducted, he said.
"We're still reviewing the facts to see if Tasers would be a device that we would use here, and I think that review is going to intensify over the next few months," he said. "I've been reviewing some of the uses of Tasers with other police departments throughout New England." He added that he read several reports about the FAU incident.
Tasers can be implemented only in addition to firearms, Porter said, because one of their drawbacks is they cannot be utilized if a suspect is using deadly force.
"Because it's not lethal, it might not be the most suitable weapon in that situation," he said of potentially fatal circumstances. He added, however, that there were many "non-deadly force situations" where "you would want the officers to employ Tasers."
Both Porter and Ferrell said that Tasers would probably not be issued to every campus officer but to only a select few who would receive special training. Ferrell said he has to decide whether or not every officer will be forced to carry a Taser.
"Everyone doesn't want to (carry Tasers) for different reasons and I'm not quite sure at this point if I'm going to make them all get Taser-certified," he said.
Ferrell said he is uncertain whether Tasers would have helped Douglas in the Feb. 8 shooting.
"Things may have been different if we had the Tasers, but we don't know. We just have to move forward," he said.
Porter echoed the sentiment. "(Carroll) was noncompliant. He refused to obey the commands of officers," he said, "but I don't know if Tasers would have helped or worked in that situation because each situation is different."
Carroll was charged with several felonies as well as two accounts of aggravated assault, according to a report by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. He was suspended by FAU.
