Taser Training, Injury and the Tactical Mix of Police Recorded Use of Force: Evidence from London

Taser rollout rests on a two-part promise: control at a distance should replace close-contact force and reduce injury. Using 579,524 Metropolitan Police use-of-force reports from 2018–2021, we followed 6,767 officers around their first recorded Taser-trained status, which marked eligibility, not carriage. Taser became more prominent in their recorded force, while compliant and non-compliant handcuffing, baton use and several forms of restraint accounted for smaller shares of reports. Recorded subject and officer injury did not fall. The records showed selective tactical reorganisation without a corresponding improvement in the binary injury measures. Because the system that deploys Taser also shapes which encounters officers attend, how those encounters unfold and what is recorded, this pattern cannot be attributed to the technology alone.