St. Paul approves Tasers for police department

The St. Paul City Council voted 6-1 to approve the purchase of additional Tasers for the St. Paul Police Department. A measure to use the funds for summer youth crime-prevention programming instead narrowly failed, The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports.

The vote means that the Tasers would arrive just before the Republican National Convention, which will be held in the Twin Cities Sept. 1-4, but Police Chief John Harrington “assured skeptics the stun guns won’t be used willy-nilly for crowd control or to prod passive protesters into paddy wagons.”

The department will purchase the 234 Tasers with funds from drug seizures. That would add to the 140 Tasers that the department currently has available.

The Pioneer Press reports that Tasers were used by the St. Paul Police Department 121 times in 2007, 174 times in 2006 and 173 times in 2005.

Related: St. Paul to purchase Tasers just in time for RNC