24 TUSD Safety Officers Will Carry Tasers And Wear Body Cams

TUCSON, AZ – At its Monday board meeting, the Tucson Unified School District approved $200,000 in funding to suit up 24 school safety officers with body-worn cameras and Tasers. Though TUSD’s formal Taser policy development is still pending, Jeff Coleman, TUSD school safety director, recommended at the meeting that Tasers not be fired at a student unless deadly force is warranted during a particular incident. Instead, the Tasers are to be used primarily on trespassers.

“It’s for the 24 central school safety officers who respond to issues at the campuses around the clock, every day of the year,” Coleman explained at the meeting according to reports from KGUN. “For instance, nights and weekends, we respond to about 2,500 alarm calls, so that’s the people I’m talking about. Calls of people outside the fence looking in, just people that they don’t know who they are, walking around the schools, those are the types of calls that we go to every day somewhere.”

TUSD has already armed 20 of the district’s 24 safety officers, who go to different schools when needed, with guns. The Tasers the 24 will soon be armed with are meant to serve as an “intermediate weapon,” according to Coleman as reported by the Arizona Daily Star.

To begin the Taser program, two of TUSD’s 24 school safety officers will complete an accredited 16-hour training course. Those two officers will then train the other 22. After all safety officers are trained on Taser usage, they will need to complete another 6 to 8 hours of training each year.

The body-worn cameras will be activated during enforcement activities, investigations and when school safety officers respond to a call.