Santa Clara County to allow Tasers in jails with limits

Santa Clara County leaders have agreed to arm sheriff’s deputies in the jails with Tasers despite a year of protests from civil rights activists and community groups. 

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved the purchase of 75 Axon Tasers with a 3-1-1 vote, but with certain use conditions. Deputies can’t fire more than four Taser shots at someone — except when deadly force is authorized — and the Sheriff’s Office has to report regularly on how often the weapon is used and whether it’s been used effectively.

Supervisors Joe Simitian, Sylvia Arenas and Cindy Chavez voted in favor of the rollout, couching it as a smaller pilot program than the 300 to 1,100 Tasers Sheriff Bob Jonsen sought earlier this year. Supervisor Susan Ellenberg, who has consistently opposed the weapon’s deployment, was the lone no vote. Supervisor Otto Lee abstained and said he’s unwilling to deploy the weapon on a predominantly mentally ill jail population, though he supports use of Tasers out in the field. The county lacks enough treatment beds, which over the years has led to mentally ill people being booked in the jails.

The board did not have the four votes necessary to fund the weapon through forfeited assets, leaving open the possibility that county officials will pay $445,000 for the weapons with taxpayer dollars. 

While Jonsen initially proposed equipping deputies with Tasers in both the correctional and field patrol settings, he attributed most of his sense of urgency to the jails. He argued that fights between inmates using makeshift shivs and knives are an increasing concern and that eventually someone will die. 

“One of the things you’ll hear this afternoon is that these Tasers can be deadly in their use. I’m not going to ask you to ignore that, nor am I going to ask you to ignore the fact the incidents we’re talking about preventing are deadly in and of themselves, and we don’t have tools sufficient enough to stop those attacks from occurring,” Jonsen told supervisors. 

The sheriff’s office presented several reasons why it believes jail fights have become more common, including increased out-of-cell time for inmates as mandated by federal consent decrees stemming from a 2015 lawsuit that exposed the county’s unconstitutional and inhumane use of solitary confinement.

Chavez defended the necessity of those mandates, even if they’ve given rise to other issues. 

“We are moving so many things in the right direction and they do have unintended consequences,” she said at the meeting.

The sheriff’s office — even under Jonsen’s predecessor, Laurie Smith — has tried and failed for seven years to get county leaders on board with Tasers. Officials and critics have long voiced concern about the fatal risks of using an electrical current to incapacitate someone, especially when the sheriff’s own use of force data shows mostly Black and brown civilians on the receiving end. But the department this year has argued the Taser 10 is Axon’s latest and safest yet.

The sheriff’s oversight office, run by a private contracted law enforcement monitoring company known as OIR Group, approved the department’s pilot policy for using Tasers earlier this year. It sparked debate between civil rights activists and county officials over what true oversight of Jonsen’s office means — and whether OIR Group’s refusal to take a stance on Tasers in principle positions the group as Jonsen’s rubber stamp.  

Simitian defended OIR Group on Tuesday, arguing the perception stems from a night-and-day difference between Jonsen’s cooperation with the oversight office and his predecessor’s.  

“My observation, frankly, is that it’s the other way around — it seems to me the current administration has been more adept at listening to what (the oversight office) has to say about recommendations,” Simitian said at the meeting. 

Nearly 40 people showed up to speak publicly on the proposal, most of them in opposition. 

“If you look at the warnings by Axon — the corporation that would benefit from the county buying Tasers — it says it can’t be used on those that are medically vulnerable, those with mental health issues,” Raj Jayadev, founder of the civil rights group Silicon Valley De-Bug, said at the meeting. “That is precisely who the population of the jail will be.”

Contact Brandon Pho at [email protected] or @brandonphooo on X, formerly known as Twitter.