FARMINGTON — Deputies with the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department will be getting new Tasers to help fight crime.
County commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to accept the recommendation of Chief Deputy Steven Lowell to go with the Taser Assurance Plan to buy 15 digital Taser X26Ps with holsters and download cables. The company will give the department one additional Taser, an electroshock weapon, as part of the contract.
The total cost will be $14,838.20 over a period of five years. When the fifth year is up, the company will give the department 15 new Tasers, Lowell said.
The department’s current Taser fleet is past their expiration dates, he said.
The department had nine XP Tasers, but two of them died, he said.
There are six Tasers on the road with deputies, but there are not enough for each full-time deputy to have one.
As of December, the company is no longer going to make or support the version of the Tasers the deputies use, he said.
Detective Stephen Charles said that often he and his brother, Detective Kenneth Charles, are first on the scene of an incident. Last week, there was an incident where a suicidal subject had a gun. If the brother of the person hadn’t wrestled the gun away, Charles said he would have had to use deadly force to get it away from him because he didn’t have a Taser. The Taser would have had temporarily disabled the person.
Having 15 Tasers will allow the Criminal Investigation Division deputies to carry a Taser, he said.
Everyone will have one, and with the additional one the company is going to give them, there will be a spare, Lowell said.
The new Tasers will be more rugged and better able to handle water if they are exposed to it, Charles said.
By the end of the five-year plan, the department will have spent less than $1,000 per unit, Lowell said.
dperry@sunjournal.com
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