Connecticut State Police Roll Out New Tasers with AI Cameras

MERIDEN, CT—The 10 barbed electrodes in every cartridge used in the new Tasers carried now by every Connecticut State Police trooper gives them eight more chances than they used to have to subdue a suspect without using lethal force, Trooper First Class Dale DeGaetano said.

DeGaetano first triggered a high-pitched siren from the device during a demonstration Wednesday at the Connecticut Police Academy. He then raised the Taser and its green laser shined a dot at the stomach area of a mannequin about 20 feet away.

DeGaetano fired the Taser and a single barb, followed by an almost imperceptibly thin silver wire, shot out. With almost no hesitation, DeGaetano shot a second barb into the mannequin's leg. The Taser let out a single, long tone, indicating the weapon sensed that a circuit had been closed and the suspect potentially was subdued.

"With an individually targeted probe, you have nine opportunities after that first probe to get a change in behavior," DeGaetano said.

The demonstration comes on the heels of two Hartford police shootings in nine days that caused the deaths of two men involved in confrontations with officers. People protesting those shootings in Hartford on Wednesday called for a review of police training. Most Connecticut cities require police officers to carry Tasers, but Hartford does not.

The troopers' new Tasers are part of a 10-year, $120 million contract between the Connecticut State Police and Arizona-based Axon Enterprise, providing not only the weapons, but also new body-worn cameras with integrated AI and a suite of virtual reality training simulations.

For months, DeGaetano has been training troopers on the use of the new Tasers, which he called "a very ' Groundhog Day' experience."

"Whereas your traditional Tasers are shooting simultaneously, two at a time, and you have a maximum of two cartridges, this Taser has individually targeted probes, one at a time, giving the user the ability to place a probe safely in places that are most advantageous to create that neuromuscular incapacitation," DeGaetano said.

Older generations of Tasers had only a single shot of two barbs, with a range of about 20 feet, delivering 50,000 volts. If that didn't work, for whatever reason, then more lethal options would be deployed.

The new Tasers, called Taser 10, fire one 1,000-volt barb at a time, ideally first in the abdomen and then in an extremity, creating distance between the two barbs and an electrical circuit that triggers muscle contraction.

"What they did with that lower voltage is they create an intensity that allows it to stimulate muscle and create a neuromuscular incapacitation, that gives you a really good change in behavior," DeGaetano said. "It's putting somebody into a lock-up."

If the trooper misses the target or the barb hits a shielded area, there are eight more opportunities.

"We've had at least a half dozen to a dozen uses in the first four months or so across the state, and I've been able to see most of them personally. I've looked at the usage of it, just because I'm intimately intertwined in it," DeGaetano said. "We have not had, as of this date, a use that didn't lead to a good outcome, which is a safe outcome."

The Tasers also contain an accelerometer, allowing the device to know when it is raised. DeGaetano said "it's like a small laptop with the ability to be a conducted energy weapon system."

When the Taser is recharged, its data is automatically sent for collection, so it can be compared against what the trooper's body-worn camera captured.

"It allows good time stamping of when something is drawn from the holster, when it is raised, when it is turned on and obviously when it's deployed. It's going to keep little breadcrumbs about that," DeGaetano said. "These are just things that help paint that picture and keep a good evidentiary collection."

The new body-worn cameras can translate to and from 50 different languages, and though it's not instantaneous, it is a significant improvement from what troopers previously had available.

"We were hoping you have cellphone coverage to actually be able to make a phone call to something called the language line and get someone on the phone," state police Capt. Ryan Maynard said. "People aren't always necessarily wanting to talk on the phone, depending on what it is we're there for."

The translation option "gives us the ability to also get information faster," Maynard said. "If somebody's in distress, or even if it was a medical emergency, it allows me, rather than taking and diverting my attention, I can speak to them and all they have to do is talk."

The $120 million contract with Axon provides not only the hardware itself, but also data storage and a platform on which that data can be accessed.

"There's unlimited cloud storage. We own the data," Maynard said. "Even if we decide to no longer be with Axon, however we want to do that, we will always have access to that data. It's our data."

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