This is a conclusion supported not only by statistics, but by the slight reportage of videos of Taser confrontations provided by the AFP under FOI legislation. The videos, which you can see above this article, also suggest that some police are putting their hands to the cameras attached to Taser machines so that the record of confrontations is patchy at best.

When police first issued Tasers, restricting their use to officers of sergeant level only, the then Chief Police Officer, Roman Quaedvlieg (now head of Customs) promised that there would be a searching internal review of every instance of their use. And, after criticism of the AFP's buying Tasers without recording devices, he announced that henceforth only Tasers equipped with video and sound recording device would be used.

The AFP now have 475 Tasers equipped with recording devices and 194 without them. When the ACT first got them, there were only 15, but there are now enough to deal with each member of a significant ACT soccer crowd. They have been used, according to an FOI request 144 times, mostly in the ACT, but also by National AFP officers, including on asylum seekers.

But the AFP FOI branch was able to find only 11 recordings of their use. It claimed that six of these were completely exempt, for fear of breaching the privacy of the persons Tasered. Three others were released in full and two were partly released.

Police have the technology to pixillate images, so as to protect privacy, and on occasions do so, for example when seeking public assistance in identifying suspects. At an early stage of discussion of requests for videos, there was discussion, by people in the branch, of this capacity and its potential in protecting identities. I had made it clear that I was uninterested in faces.

When a very limited form of access to materials in my request was granted, it appeared at first as if "privacy" concerns had been addressed by blurring out any materials in which faces appeared. But, yesterday, an AFP media spokesman said that there had been no censorship of the tapes, and images had not been consciously blurred. This suggests that when the tapes lapse into darkness, even as conversation occurs, the officer concerned has had his or her hand over the device. A cynic might wonder why and whether this had arisen as an issue in the very much redacted, but also limited in number, incident reports.

It would hardly surprise, given the approach to disclosure demonstrated, and the line by line search through every one of the materials for information to black out, that the Taser images have been supplied without any documents able to link them to any specific incidents (even if the few incident reports provided have been stripped of identification material, including details of the police involved.

As far as one can establish from listening to and watching the tapes, there was no occasion in which the person disabled was actually offering any form of violence towards, or threat to, the police officer. Mostly, indeed, they were not doing what they were told, and officers were cajoling them, in some cases with warnings about the Taser. One tape has an officer insisting that a person turn around to face the officer, and may reflect fear that the person is concealing a weapon. Not one showed an essentially belligerent attitude by the suspect, a sudden move on the police officer, or the proffering of a weapon.

Police and Taser instructions say that Tasers, which deliver a disabling electric shock and which generally cause a brief but complete loss of muscle control should not be used merely to secure compliance with orders, to facilitate arrest, or merely to bring down a fleeing suspect. They are a weapon of self defence, against a clear and present danger of assault. As are guns, capsicum sprays or batons, and none of which are intended for use as an adjunct for an ordinary, if forceful arrest.

Increasingly, however, they are becoming, in the ACT and elsewhere, an ordinary part of police equipment, and seem to be becoming a favoured weapon with difficult and unpredictable people, including drunks and the mentally ill. There have been been more than 400 incidents around the world, including in NSW and West Australia, where they have caused deaths and, in many such incidents, it has been apparent that they have been used, not for self defence, but to secure compliance, to "quieten down" a struggling but secured offender, to punish insolence or, in some cases, to "drive" a prisoner somewhat in the manner of cattle under a cattle prod.

It is impossible to know what sort of a sample of AFP or ACT AFP use this represents (or even whether any or all of them are ACT incidents). What was asked for but not supplied was all of the cases. Likewise it is hard to know whether the reports by Taser Review Committees (supposed to consist of four experienced desk officers as well as sergeants, are a fair average sample of incidents. They are certainly not all of the reports of all of the incidents, as sought, and a good deal of the material censored in them should have been disclosed.

With no evidence of a critical approach by police investigating the actions of other police, and even less of any sort of effective accountability system via FOI, they may well represent a fair sample of the complacency of the police system, and of the indifference of senior management to the raising of any questions about whether this addition of an extra weapon to the ACT police arsenal is justified.

The AFP FOI decision, made by an SES-level civilian, formerly of the AFP government branch but now working in counter-terrorism, was notified, in part, by email on Thursday, 10 days ago. But most of the video material, as a file too big to email, was posted, and was received only last Tuesday.

When I queried the limited number of videos, and asked for confirmation that all incident reviews and all Tasers (since use began in 2011) had been considered, the FOI units, which had been dealing with the request since June 25, and which took 106, instead of the supposed 28 days, to make a decision, replied that "if you are dissatisfied with the decision or feel that the searches were inadequate you may seek an internal review". I have and confidently expect, on the exasperating record of the unit's performance, that there will be similar delays before there is any answer.

Yesterday, we attempted to get some answers about the discrepancies through police public relations. But, other than the denial that masking of the video imagery had been done by the FOI branch, and in spite of the fact that answers were sought by Friday night, the police media officer sent an email at 6.08pm on Friday saying, "Unfortunately I am unable to get our response to you by today re: the query about the Taser footage. I will have it cleared on Monday. Sorry for any inconvenience. Have a great weekend."