Police receive TASER training

The Comanche Police Department received new TASER guns recently and officers and reserve officers received training in their use last Friday.

For some, it was a more painful experience than others. Four officers, including police chief Bill Straily and officers Skylar Ralls, John McDevitt and Ronnie Branch got on the business end of the training by volunteering to get tased.

“With the way police are viewed these days and just for more things to go to before we have to go to use lethal (force),” Straily said. “We have pepper spray, we have batons and now tasers before we have to go to deadly force if that’s the case. I want my guys to have as many options on their belt as they can before we have to go to deadly force.”

The city council approved the purchase of the taser guns.

“After that, I discovered the training was changed because TASER actually sold their company to a company called Axon,” Straily said. “We had to deploy two real-life tasers at a target, so I went to local businesses to get the funding to purchase the TASER cartridges to shoot the targets two times and Delbert’s and Thompson’s Pharmacy helped us purchase them.”

The cartridges for the guns are one-time use and costs about $50 each.

Straily knows first hand how a suspect does not want to be on the receiving end of a TASER.

“It’s not a fun experience,” Straily said with a chuckle. “It’s not something you want to do every day. It’s definitely pain compliance. It locked my whole body up. It just hurts. It locks the suspect up to where you can get a hold of him if you need to. It hurts from head to toe.”