© Press TV
The London mayor's office has revealed that they are allocating an annual £817,864 to equip the police with more than 6,500 Taser guns so that all police response teams in the capital are armed with the weapons.
The revelations made after a question by Jenny Jones, Green Party London assembly member, from the mayor's office for policing and crime, follow several cases of Tasers' misuse by officers including on totally innocent people.
"Last October police in Lancashire Tasered a 61-year-old blind man after mistaking his white stick for a samurai sword," Jones said.
A few weeks earlier, James McCarthy, a 22-year-old man from Liverpool, was left critically ill in hospital following a disturbance at Albert Dock after a night out with friends.
The incident came after Flying Squad officers also used a Taser on a 17-year-old boy by in Turnpike Lane in September.
The user of Tasers into everyday weapons for unarmed British police officers has been a pet project of the current Metropolitan Police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe.
The police are now planning to increase the total number of officers using Tasers from 12,000 to 36,000 across England and Wales.
This comes as activists including lawyers have launched their own efforts to pressure officials into limiting the use of Tasers.
Sophie Khan, a solicitor-advocate who is the director of the first legal action group in England and Wales helping people take action against the police, has announced her organization named Police Action Centre (PAC) is investigating the user of Tasers by British police since they were first issued to non-firearms officers in 2008.
Khan has so far revealed embarrassing Taser uses, which are left unreported, including a case in which the police hit a mentally ill man on a roof with a Taser and the muscle spasms led to him falling off the roof as well as a case in Birmingham where a disabled man was Tasered after police demanded him to leave his mobility vehicle that he couldn't.
"Their use is too wide and too loose. There needs to be more control and restraint; training needs to be looked at, otherwise we are in a situation where police are breaching article 3 of the Human Rights Act and the state is responsible for such breaches," Khan said.
Latest figures show police force in England and Wales have used their Taser guns more than 1,500 times in the year to March 211.
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