By KAREN JENSEN AND PETER TORSTENSEN
news@ColumbiaMissourian.com

Neither law enforcement nor private citizens are permitted to own or carry Tasers in Denmark.

“For the moment, we are satisfied with the tools we have at our disposal,” said Michael Engell Olsen, deputy chief superintendent of the National Commission of the Danish Police. He plays a leading role in selecting weapons for the country’s law enforcement officers.

“We have just started using pepper spray and right now we have no need for further force,” he said.

Olsen said that he is skeptical of claims that the Taser represents an acceptable alternative method of applying force, expressing concerns over unintended deaths resulting from use of the weapon.

“In the Danish police force, we are not interested in authorizing a weapon of which we do not have sufficient knowledge,” he said. “We do not even know if it is lethal or not.”

“It is important to the Danish police to investigate the full effect of a weapon before authorizing it,” said Ib Henricson, a former public prosecutor and an associate professor at University of Aarhus in Denmark.

Henricson, who teaches international and Danish police justice, is author of “Politire” (police justice), a book about the principles that are involved in executing police authority in Denmark.

He gives pepper spray as an example. It took Danish authorities 10 years of study before they authorized the use of pepper spray by Danish police. Still, pepper spray continues to be a highly debated topic in the Danish media.

“It’s not only the potential effect of the weapon that concerns Danish law enforcement officials,” Henricson said. “Their caution is also a result of the ‘Danish mentality,’ one that includes a high regard for human rights.”

“The Danish police have to take into consideration both the legal rights of the masses as well as the perpetrator’s right to humane treatment with the use of the least possible amount of violence,” he added.

Police officers in Denmark observe three basic principles when it comes to the use of force: It must be absolutely necessary, it must be the least violent means available to accomplish its purpose and it must be proportional to the violation.

Both Olsen and Henricson said police cultures in Denmark and the United States are different, and that accounts, at least in part, for the way each country perceives the need for Tasers. Those distinctions result from variations in crime rates and the types of challenges that officers confront.

“Denmark is a small and relatively peaceful country. Some of the problems the American police officers face in the major cities are not problems here,” Olsen said. “We don’t have the same severe gang crime we see in many of the big American cities.”

Olsen also noted that American police officers often work alone while Danish officers always work in pairs. Since Danish citizens are not allowed to own guns, the likelihood that officers will face an armed suspect is much lower.

Even the way Danes train police dogs is different. In Denmark, they are merely taught to restrain suspects, whereas in the U.S., dogs are trained to attack.

Yet Tasers are not unknown in Denmark. Since 2006, members of the Danish military police have had the weapon as a part of their equipment when they go abroad to assist Danish troops in military actions.

“We needed an intimidating force that could incapacitate people. Our job is not to shoot people dead but to make sure that they are safe,” said Hans Vedholm, a communication officer in the Danish military police. “In our opinions, the Taser yields that kind of force.”

As far as Vedholm knows, however, Danish police have not deployed a Taser on any international mission.