ESCANABA -- Police officers have many tools in their crime-fighting arsenal.
Carrying a taser while on the job increases safety for the officer and makes people think twice about putting up a fight.
“It's just another tool for the officers to use,” explains Lieutenant Phil Griebel of the Delta County Sheriff’s Department. “It helps to rectify the situation without having to use physical force."
This non-lethal tool can incapacitate a full grown man with just one, five second electrical burst.
And the officers at the Delta County Sheriff's Department would know. This video from around eight years ago shows them getting tased.
“It hurts,” Griebel said. “We've all been shot by it. Basically what it does is it stops you from moving. You can't fight through it."
But the officers don't just carry the tasers when they're out patrolling the roads. Corrections officers at the jail also have them in their office in case there's an unexpected assault.
Officers in close contact with inmates in the jail don't carry guns or tasers on their belts, only mace.
“They don't carry them in a cell block with them,” Griebel said. “They pull them out if they have an inmate that's giving them a hard time and wants to fight or is in a cell. They have a little bit of a different environment than we do."
The seven tasers at the Sheriff's Department are battery-powered and shoot out two hooked barbs. The taser is still very effective, even when fired from up to twenty-one feet away.
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