In 2019, a then-Miramar College student who goes by Chieftain found himself handcuffed inside the back of a San Diego Community College District police car when he was struck by a panic attack. 

When looking back to that day five years later, Chieftain remembers the El Cajon police killing of Alfred Olango, who he said was his sister’s childhood boyfriend.

It wasn’t the first time police arbitrarily detained and racially profiled him, he said, like when an unhoused encampment sweep on 17th street landed him in jail.

In both cases, he was released without charges. 

His encounters with police are why he said he was not comfortable being identified by more than his nickname for this story.

It’s also why when he heard that district police might be outfitted with conducted energy devices – commonly known as tasers – on campus, he decided to speak publicly about his experiences.

“I’m the person the tasers would be used on, or look like him,” Chieftain, now a San Diego City College commercial music student,  told the SDCCD Board of Trustees during public comment at a meeting in October. “A lot of brown and black students go here … I’m afraid when I see the police car on campus and I gotta walk past it.”

On Dec. 5 of this year, after an exhaustive two-and-a-half-year review process to study the effects of police taser use, the district’s Police Advisory Committee voted 8-1 in favor of deploying the devices on SDCCD campuses.

This was according to Black Studies Professor Darius Spearman, the lone dissenting PAC member present at the vote.

The PAC’s recommendation will now go to the chancellor’s cabinet, which will discuss whether to bring its own recommendation to the SDCCD’s Board of Trustees for a final majority vote, Chancellor Greg Smith told City Times in a phone interview in October.

“Based on meeting schedules and the holiday break, I don’t foresee having meaningful discussions on (the CEDs) until January and February,” Smith wrote in an email when asked for a timeline for when the board might receive his recommendation.

The origins of the taser policy and the community’s response

The idea to equip district police with tasers was advanced in the beginning of 2022 on the recommendation of the SDCCD Police Department through the district’s now-phased-out Police Task Force, according to minutes of the PAC’s July 21, 2022 meeting. 

The task force, from which the current PAC was ultimately born, was formed in July 2020 in response to nationwide calls for fundamental police reform following the George Floyd murder by Minneapolis police earlier in the summer, according to board meeting minutes.

In the midst of national scrutiny over police apprehension practices, SDCCD Police Chief Joseph Ramos and the task force recommended to the administration of former-Chancellor Carlos Cortez to explore additional “non-lethal” law enforcement options, according to Ramos and the meeting minutes. 

The district then purchased 40 CEDs in July 2022 from Axos Enterprises, Inc. at the price of $1,973 each, totaling $78,925.89, SDCCD Executive Operations Officer Joel Peterson confirmed with City Times via email. 

The purchase, which was made using one-time non-instructional HEERF funds, included related equipment such as holsters, extended warranties, cartridges and an additional $1,500.00 to train four SDCCD police instructors to facilitate annual recertification without extra expenses, according to Peterson.

The taser conversation within the PAC up to this point has revolved around whether to deploy the current batch of tasers on hand.

Peterson revealed in an Oct. 3 PAC meeting, however, that the devices in SDCCD PD possession, “are now obsolete, out of calibration and cannot be deployed,” after two-year-and-half years, according to the meeting minutes. 

Peterson confirmed in an email that new CEDs would have to be purchased for SDCCD police, who carry firearms while patrolling the district’s 10 campuses, if their deployment is ultimately approved.

The PAC vote comes two months after City College’s Associated Students Government and Academic Senate – both advisory bodies in the district’s shared governance structure – took positions opposing the tasers’ deployment.

In a statement to City Times, City College ASG President and political science student Dalia Ramirez said:

“Officers want to protect themselves from the unhoused population, but we also keep in mind that some are our students. So the ability to distinguish a student from a ‘regular’ unhoused person will be hard if students hold both titles … We don’t want students to have that fear of getting tased on campus. As ASG we see this causing more anxiety, trauma and fear rather than helping the students.”

San Diego Mesa College’s Academic Senate postponed its vote on a resolution against the deployment of tasers at its Dec. 9 meeting, Chicano Studies Professor and Mesa senator Jenn Moreno told City Times via email.

The senate voted 13-12 for the deferment due to “technical flaws” over a missing citation and a run-on sentence cited by Mesa’s incoming senate president, according to Moreno.

“It feels like the more a resolution pushes for issues of social justice, the more they are blocked with technicalities, in this case, Robert’s Rules,” Moreno wrote.

The prolonged taser review by the PAC included a deliberation of the devices’ safety, their ability to reduce officer-involved shootings and whether they constituted an appropriate method of de-escalation, among other points of debate, according to PAC meeting minutes dating back to July 2022.

In an interview with City Times, Ramos, a 36-year police veteran and one of the principal proponents of the taser deployment, said CEDs are an industry best practice that acts as a de-escalation tool to replace impact weapons in police apprehension scenarios. 

“Rather than having to use a more serious use of force, let’s say a baton strike or even a punch, the taser is believed to be less harmful where there’s no lasting damage, like tissue damage,” Ramos said. “It would keep officers from having to struggle with those that we’re trying to apprehend, especially if there’s a markable size difference.”

Ramos sought to dispel the idea that the devices are meant to reduce officer-involved shooting scenarios but maintained that they serve as a less lethal de-escalation tool.

“If somebody were shooting at you, you would not use a taser. If someone were stabbing you, you’d probably go straight to your firearm,” Ramos said. “(The taser is) not necessarily designed to keep you from having to use your firearm. It’s just another tool that is less damaging to a suspect and safer for everybody who’s involved.”

The battle between academic studies vs. industry-oriented studies

A drawn-out discussion unfolded at PAC and City College academic senate meetings about the legitimacy of studies published by law enforcement agencies and taser manufacturers that were presented by Ramos and other proponents.

That led to the Subcommittee for Research of Taser Use to be unanimously formed in November 2023 to search for and evaluate independent peer-reviewed taser studies to consider if there was sufficient credible evidence to justify arming the SDCCD police with the extra weapon.

“It ran into some challenges, because a lot of what’s available out there was conducted by manufacturers like the brand Taser (now Axos Enterprises),” Smith said. “(Axos is) very supportive of (tasers), and there’s an obvious financial interest there.”

The subcommittee highlighted four studies, which it presented in its 33-page findings in February, acknowledging the complexities surrounding taser use by law enforcement.

Part of its conclusion found that, “Continuous research is needed to fully understand the long-term effects of tasers and their impact across various situational and racial contexts.”

One study reviewed by the committee concluded the following:

“While less-than-lethal technologies like TASERs offer potential benefits in reducing the need for deadly force, their effective and ethical use is contingent on addressing operational, training, policy, and legal challenges. There is a critical need for balanced, evidence-based approaches in implementing these technologies, coupled with robust regulation and oversight to ensure public safety and maintain public trust in law enforcement practices.”

PAC Community Representative Patrick Velasquez’s analysis of another study presented his conclusion with an acknowledgment of the educational context of the potential deployment:

“From my service on the SDCCD Police Advisory Committee for well over a year, it seems to me that relatively few circumstances occur on SDCCD campuses that are appropriate for Taser use, and those might be best addressed by other nonlethal methods that have less potential to kill or severely injure subjects.” 

Peterson later announced that the district hired an independent consultant, Secure Brands Management, to complete its own analysis on taser use.

Despite the subcommittee’s emphasis on avoiding industry-oriented studies, the Peterson-commissioned study was based on information gathered from police departments and campus safety offices at the University of California, California State University, and California community colleges and districts.

According to its website, the SBM provides comprehensive risk management solutions and “offers expertise, objectivity and ethical principles to safeguard the integrity of every endeavor”.

Secure Brands also included data gathered from police and safety offices at other California K-12 schools and over 100 colleges and universities nationwide, as well as from the California Police Chiefs Association and the legal department of Axon Enterprises.

Based on the report’s findings and recommendations, Secure Brands considered that because of “the overwhelming use of CEDs by institutions of higher education, the continued non-use of CEDs by the San Diego Community College District may label them a statistical outlier and potentially increase liability to the district.”

Spearman, who introduced the resolution that City College Academic Senate passed, characterized Secure Brands as a “PR firm” and described its involvement in the review process as “frustrating.”

“It presents a picture that’s contrary to what the findings of the subcommittee were, and obviously has very different criteria as far as how the data was gathered and assessed,” Spearman said at a September senate meeting report.

After the findings of the Secure Brands investigation were presented to the PAC in September, the PAC moved to make its recommendation on Dec. 5.

Though it’s uncertain when the chancellor will present his recommendation to the board, the next SDCCD Board of Trustees meeting will be held Dec. 19. 

The Mesa College Academic Senate website isn’t updated to show its next meeting date or agenda.

Students like Chieftain can make their positions know at either of the above public meetings.

“I’m in favor of using that money from tasers to support the farm or the programs that we already have,” Chieftain told the board. “I know campus safety is important … so I walk my professor to the car … but, yeah, it’s a challenge.”