Maori Party lays human rights complaint over Taser

The Maori Party is concerned that police will use the Taser stun gun trial to unfairly target Maori and Pacific Islanders and have laid a complaint with the Human Rights Commission.

The Taser - which fires 50,000 volts into its victim at a low amperage - will be available for 170 frontline police officers in Auckland and Wellington from today.

The Maori Party yesterday joined several other community and political groups in opposition to the 12-month trial.

"The Maori Party has raised concerns with the Human Rights Commission about the targeting of specific groups during the Taser trials, like young Polynesian men," said Maori Party MP Hone Harawira.

"We've asked the commission to recommend that the Minister of Police, Annette King, immediately suspend the Taser trial until there has been wide public consultation."

Mr Harawira and Green MP Keith Locke addressed an anti-Taser crowd of about 60 people outside Parliament yesterday.

"If the pepper spray is any indication, police will be racist in its use of the Taser," said Mr Locke, adding that 55 per cent of pepper spray victims were Maori.

He acknowledged that Maori and Pacific Islanders were over-represented in crime statistics, but "I don't think adding a Taser weapon to the police is a way to reduce that".

Superintendent John Rivers, who has supervised the development of the trial, said the Taser would be employed where it was needed, and matters of race were incidental.

He dismissed fears that police would misuse the Taser as misinformed; in the 7 1/2 years from January 1999, 48 complaints specific to pepper spray had been lodged with the Police Complaints Authority.

Meanwhile the Law and Order select committee has agreed to look at the Taser issue, but with no specific date on when that would take place.