Police to get 10,000 more Taser stun guns

LONDON (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of police officers across England and Wales are to be allowed to use high-voltage Taser stun guns, the government said on Monday.

Funding will be provided for police chiefs to buy an extra 10,000 of the weapons -- which are designed to temporarily disable a suspect -- after a year-long trial in 10 police forces, a home office spokesman said.

Under the pilot, non-firearms officers were given special training to use the stun guns to deal with potentially violent suspects. Previously, use of Tasers had been restricted to just 6,500 authorised firearms officers.

Home Office Minister Alan Campbell told BBC radio the stun guns would only be used by specialist officers under strict guidelines and would not be routinely used by neighbourhood police officers.

"We don't expect them to be the weapon of choice," he said, adding that independent medical advice received after the pilot had found there was a very low risk of death or serious injury.

Campbell said Tasers had only been used 93 times in the more than 600 occasions they had been deployed over the last year.

The weapons temporarily disable a suspect by firing two barbed darts trailing electric wires. Human rights groups oppose their widespread use because they have been linked with dozens of deaths in the United States and Canada.

Human rights group Amnesty International said it was concerned officers would not receive sufficient training in the handling and use of the weapons.

It said that according to research that over 320 people had died after being hit by a Taser in the United States since 2001.

"They must be kept in the hands of specially trained officers who have received months of on-going training and more importantly know not just how to use them but also when to use them," Amnesty spokesman Oliver Sprague told BBC television.

(Reporting by Tim Castle, editing by Kate Kelland)