Shocking experience
Sebastian Moraga/ Columbia Basin Herald<br>Moses Lake Police Reserve Officer Randy Moore, center, awaits to be shot with a Taser gun during a training session at the MLPD Friday. Moore was among the handful of officers hit with the five-second, 50,000-volt, non-lethal gun used by law enforcement agents to incapacitate people.
Moses Lake police Taser training, 'the longest five seconds of your life'
MOSES LAKE — Whoa!! Aaaaaaaa!! AaaaaAAaaaaAh!!! Aaaaaaaah!!!!
In case you were wondering, that is the sound of 50,000 volts hitting your body. On a good day.
On a bad day, just ask reserve officer Stacy Boyd.
"It's the longest five seconds of your life," he said, after taking part in the Taser training at the Moses Lake Police Department.
Taser is the name of the gun-shaped, non-lethal weapon of conducted energy, used to incapacitate subjects by shooting wired probes onto their bodies. The probes then release 50,000 volts, overriding the subject's central nervous system and locking their muscles.
Sgt. Dave Sands taught the training in the basement of the MLPD Friday, where he tried to put at ease the minds of his worried troops before the Tasering session. It can't kill you, he kept saying over and over. Even if you have a pacemaker or are wet.
"A defibrillator is 100 times stronger than a Taser," he said.
That did little for them, but there they stood, one by one, with a person holding each of their arms, their back to the Taser-holding Sands, waiting for him to shoot and secretly hoping to equal the feat of one Capt. Jim Jenkins, the only man on the MLPD's record to have taken on the 50,000 volts without making a sound.
One by one they went … and one by one they screamed. Rick Rodriguez came closest, not making the slightest sound until the very end, flat on his stomach and the probes sticking on his back like toothpicks.
"Your record is broken," Chief Dean Mitchell told Jenkins.
The others? Well, let's just say they earned the respect of all who were witnesses to the training. Not one of them went down quietly and some had mouths that would put George Carlin's to shame, but after the five seconds were over, they stood up and walked it off, some with blood trickling down their backs.
"It takes the fight out of you," said officer Alan Barrowman, the first one to go under the volts. "It was like holding an electric fence."
"It's like a mule kicking you," said Boyd. "I wanted to jump out of this building."
Sands, who has been Tasered twice, was impressed with his troops, all of whom now have little red marks on their backs, the only physical memento of their shocking experience.
"They did good," he said. "It's all part of the experience." An experience they would gladly not repeat again.
"A Girl Scout selling cookies would have kicked my butt," Barrowman said.