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When Tasers Fail: New Devices Lead To Fatal Police Shootings In Texas

APM Reports

Police officers nationwide use Tasers as a less lethal alternative to guns. The idea is to be able to stop someone – usually an unarmed but violent person – without having to kill them.

Taser use is sometimes controversial. Lawsuits alleged that the electroshock weapons killed rather than subdued people.

But what happens when Tasers don’t effectively subdue the person? Police officers in both San Antonio and Houston experienced the consequences of the Taser's failure. Texas Public Radio and Houston Public Media partnered with Reveal and APM Reports to analyze data showing that officers rated newer-model Tasers as less effective than older ones.

Consequences Of Failure

On April 20, 2017, San Antonio Park Police Officer Cristobal Martinez was patrolling on the city’s West Side when he spotted what looked like a man assaulting a woman.

According to police reports and the officer's body camera, Martinez approached the pair. The man was Ray Valdez. He walked alongside his common-law wife. Martinez called out to Valdez, who ignored him and continued to walk away.

Martinez pulled out his Taser X26P and pointed it at Valdez. The device's red laser dot glowed in the middle of Valdez's chest. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife. Martinez ordered him over and over again to drop the weapon.

Valdez charged at the officer, and Martinez pulled the Taser trigger, launching probes at the man's body. The officer expected the probes to deliver enough voltage to incapacitate Valdez.

But Valdez was not incapacitated. Instead, he dropped to his knees, rolled on the ground, dislodged the probes and charged again at Martinez.

As he moved, Valdez reared back with his arm cocked back to throw his knife at Martinez, and so the officer opened fire, striking him once in the torso. Valdez was pronounced dead later that night.

The entire exchange lasted only 30 seconds.

Other SAPD units arrived to support Martinez and secure the scene. Police Chief William McManus stood before the TV news cameras and told the public what he knew.

“From what we are hearing, the officer did everything right. He tried to intervene," McManus said. "He went to use his Taser first. That was ineffective, and [so he] resorted to the use of his firearm.”

'Quality Is Crucial'

Why did the Taser fail? Had the Taser performed the way manufacturer Axon promised it would perform, Martinez would've pulled the Taser trigger, and the probes would've struck Valdez. He would've fallen to the ground, and his body would've stiffened as the voltage locked up his muscles. Valdez would not have been able to resist Martinez and certainly not been able to attack him a second time. Martinez would not have had to resort to gunfire. Valdez would not have died.

In a slick science fiction-styled promotional video for Taser model X2, Axon officials were not shy with their boasts about the quality and dependability of their star product.

“Everything we’ve learned about officer and suspect safety has come down to this," the video's narrator explained. "Meet the X2 – the next generation of Taser electronic control devices.”

“Quality is crucial in our devices," said Rick Guilbault, Axon's vice president of training, "because when an officer needs our device to work, it’s gotta work every time, or someone going to get injured or killed.”

A year-long investigation by APM Reports found that in some police departments, police rated Tasers as ineffective almost half the time. And the problem is happening with the newer Taser models, which were designed with a reduction in power.

The models X2 and X26P emit about half of the electrical charge of the older models.

'That Shock Factor'

SAPD training officer Juan Mandujuno stands by the Taser.

"It's the most-used weapon in this department," he said. "We tend to use it about 230 times a year."

Mandujuno told Texas Public Radio the Taser worked even when officers didn't pull the trigger. "People don't want to get tased," he said. "So when you tell somebody to 'settle down or you're going to get tased,' they tend to comply."

But Mandujuno admitted that when an officer does need to pull that trigger, the Taser doesn’t always deliver enough stun.

"I do get some that had told me, 'hey, I tried to take this individual that was coming at me, and this person we hit, we put both probes in his chest. And he took the charge and pulled out the probes, and we were in a fight.'" he recalled. "Now, has that been a lot? No. I think I've had four people telling me that in a year, compared to 230 Taser applications."

Mandujuno said a lot that can go wrong when an officer Tasers someone. The officer can be too close or too far away. If the suspect wears baggy clothes, that can dampen the shock. Or, he explained, the suspect could be so enraged that they fight off the stun.

"People think that the Taser alone is enough to take you down," he said. "But I'd be honest with you — a lot of times, it's that shock factor. People don't know how to react when they're locked up. They go into that panic mode. So if the more you're exposed [to it], you know how it feels, the more you're able to fight through it."

Recent Examples

Mandujuno said a Taser jolt may not stop a determined suspect, and at least two recent incidents in San Antonio and near Houston underlined the consequences of that vulnerability.

In mid-May, a San Antonio police officer tried to apprehend a suspected burglar in a South Side neighborhood.

Witnesses who saw the incident said the officer fired the Taser. The suspect collapsed but then quickly recovered. He attacked the officer and badly beat her. The suspect fled, and other officers apprehended him.

SAPD spokesperson Michelle Ramos explained the incident: "There was an altercation. The officer did try to tase the suspect. [The suspect] did assault the officer.” Ramos also detailed the officer's condition: “She did sustain a concussion — facial fractures — and that’s why the charges were upgraded to aggravated assault on a police officer.”

In Baytown, a city near Houston, a police officer tried to arrest a woman on outstanding warrants. Theincident escalated, and the officer used his Taser. The woman dropped to the ground but then she grabbed the Taser and actually used it on the officer. The officer fired five shots, and the woman was pronounced dead at the scene. A bystander filmed the confrontation with a cellphone.

Had the Taser worked as promised, these encounters might've ended very differently.

In a statement, Axon said more information was needed on why the Tasers failed.

Despite the controversy, the company continued to promote the Taser as a state of the art device that saves lives because it gives a law enforcement officers a non-lethal means of subduing a suspect.

To learn more about what Reveal and APM Reports found about Tasers in Houston, San Antonio and other cities, read the special report.

David Martin Davies can be reached at dmdavies@tpr.org and on Twitter at @DavidMartinDavi