DENVER — The Denver Police Department broadened its use-of-force policy to allow officers to use Tasers in more circumstances for 10 days last month, then reversed course and rescinded the new policy after the city’s police watchdogs criticized the move.

The police department loosened its policy on April 14 to allow officers to use Tasers to shock suspects when suspects are engaging in defensive resistance — an about-face from the department’s years-long approach of allowing Taser use only when suspects take aggressive action against others, Denver Independent Monitor Lisabeth Pérez Castle wrote in a 10-page report released Thursday.

The police department rescinded the new policy on April 24 after members of Denver’s Citizen Oversight Board on that day criticized the change and the police department’s apparent failure to seek community input during the board’s regular meeting with Chief Ron Thomas.

The policy was “published in error,” and was rescinded when that error was discovered, police spokesman Doug Schepman said in a statement Friday. The department will consider feedback from the Office of the Independent Monitor and respond to the monitor’s recommendations as it continues to revise the Taser use-of-force policy going forward, he said.

Julia Richman, a member of the Citizen Oversight Board, said she appreciated the department putting the brakes on the change and said doing so was necessary for police to comply with city law.

“Backtracking was the only right thing to do in this case, so that they can actually do what is required of them,” she said.

The new policy would have allowed officers to use Tasers when suspects are “displaying only defensive resistance,” according to the report from the Office of the Independent Monitor. That would include physical actions to prevent an officer’s control — such as curling into a ball — as well as flight or attempts to flee from officers, according to the monitor’s report. Schepman said Friday that using a Taser on a fleeing suspect would still be prohibited under the proposed new policy.

The department’s original, and now still current, Taser use-of-force policy was put in place in 2018 after months of discussion with stakeholders and community members. It allows officers to use Tasers only if suspects are taking aggressive actions – that is, assaulting or threatening to assault others in a way that was likely to cause imminent injury.

The broader approach under consideration would give officers the authority to use Tasers on “substantially more community members,” Pérez Castle said.

“That could lead to more harm at the hands of law enforcement for the community, it could lead to additional liability for the city, and it is a step backward from the demands of the community,” she said.

Police officials moved to change the Taser guidelines after the department upgraded its equipment to a newer type of Taser with new capabilities, Thomas told members of the Citizen Oversight Board during the April 24 meeting.

The newer model Taser carries a maximum 1,000 volts instead of 50,000 volts, can reach 45 feet instead of 25 feet and can carry 10 cartridges instead of two, Schepman said Friday. The newer model is not capable of operating in “drive stun mode,” a pain compliance technique in which an officer presses the Taser directly against a person’s body.

“Our policy team did some research and identified that DPD was an outlier in having active aggression be the threshold by which a Taser activation is appropriate,” Thomas said during the April 24 meeting. “What that results in is greater opportunity for injury for suspects and officers. The proposed changes to the policy include reducing the threshold one level to defensive resistance so that officers are able to more quickly engage and get individuals under control without the risk of injury to suspects or officers.”

The monitor’s review found that of 23 law enforcement agencies it surveyed across the country, including in the 20 largest U.S. cities, nine required the suspect to show active aggression or pose an immediate safety threat to others before an officer could use a Taser. Eleven agencies allowed officers to use Tasers if the suspect exhibited active resistance or posed a threat to others. Another three departments had “lower or ill-defined standards,” according to the report.

The Office of the Independent Monitor received only five days’ notice of the policy change, and the police department implemented the policy before receiving the watchdog’s feedback, Pérez Castle wrote. That could be a violation of city ordinance, which requires police officials to give the monitor’s office “reasonable notice” to review and make recommendations about proposed policy changes before adopting the changes, she wrote.

Richman said the police department’s approach to this policy change echoes how police leadership sought to broadly change officer discipline without community input last year.

“This is just one more example of the disregard for the function and legal requirements that surround the OIM needing to review policies,” Richman said. “It disregards the concerns and opinions of the community. …The current policy was the (result) of a lot of discussion with the community, and the active aggression level was the result of a lot of community feedback. So this change isn’t just some quick modification, this is a change that goes against the collaboration with community and the recommendation of the community that had long been standing practice.”

Tasers, which deliver an electrical charge that can cause pain and immobilize a person, can be used safely but can also cause serious injury or death. Lawsuits over such deaths have cost Colorado cities and counties millions of dollars in recent years.

Colorado Springs agreed to pay $3.2 million to settle a lawsuit in 2025 after a police officer shocked a man eight times with a Taser while the man resisted being handcuffed in 2018. The man died. Larimer County settled a lawsuit in 2024 for $5 million after a sheriff’s deputy shocked a man with a Taser as he fled onto Interstate 25. The man was hit by a passing car and killed as he lay incapacitated in the road.

Qusair Mohamedbhai, whose law firm handled the Larimer County lawsuit, said Friday that Denver’s proposed new policy is “extremely dangerous.” He noted that Taser use also tends to rapidly escalate a situation, rather than deescalate it.

“When tasers are ineffective, for whatever reason – maybe there is only one prong that hits – we find there is an immediate escalation to firearms,” he said.

The Denver Police Department has over the past decade routinely disciplined officers for using Tasers on suspects who were not acting aggressively, according to the monitor’s report, including incidents in which officers tased a restrained man who resisted being handcuffed and tased a man who was running away.

The report made a number of policy recommendations around Taser use, including that the weapons continue to be restricted to incidents where suspects take aggressive action, and that the police department formalize a procedure for public input on such changes.

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