which was launched late last year<\/a>, saw tasers issued to frontline uniformed garda\u00ed in Store Street, Pearse Street and Kevin Street garda stations in Dublin, as well as at Waterford.<\/p>\nThe programme is now being expanded to Limerick and is being extended for a further six months.<\/p>\n
So far, 167 gardai have been issued with tasers.<\/p>\n
Garda\u00ed said that since December 2025, tasers were used 15 times and of these there were three discharges, five where the taser was drawn and armed and seven where a person had the taser’s laser pointed at them.<\/p>\n
In seven cases, there was an arrest and charge. One person fled the scene and was not caught, while three others were detained under the Mental Health Act.<\/p>\n
One person was also taken to hospital, but garda\u00ed said this was not “related to the use of Garda force”.<\/p>\n
In one situation, garda\u00ed were called to a report of domestic violence, where a woman said that she and her son had been assaulted by her former partner, including both having been bitten by him.<\/p>\n
The man became aggressive when garda\u00ed approached him, but stood down after one of the garda\u00ed drew their taser from its holster. He was then arrested and subsequently charged.<\/p>\n
Deputy Commissioner, Security, Strategy and Governance, Paul Cleary said the pilot programme has “demonstrated the effectiveness of the taser as a de-escalation tool”.<\/p>\n
“It has also been welcomed by garda\u00ed and local garda management as providing additional protection to our personnel who have to deal with a wide variety of potentially violent situations on a daily basis,” he added.<\/p>\n
All garda\u00ed with tasers undergo a three-day training course, and tasers are only deployed where garda\u00ed are using body cams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A taser pilot programme introduced by garda\u00ed last December is to be extended for a further six months…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-499018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}