SHELBY - May 26, Shelby Village Council voted to replace the police department’s eight-year-old Taser units (Taser is an acronym for Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle) and upgrade to eight “like new” TASER 7 units being offered for sale by the Dearborn Heights Police Department at a cost of $3,691.90.
Replacement of the aging units was scheduled in the village’s 2028-29 Capital Improvement Plan, however, the current units are no longer supported by the manufacturer, Village Administrator Phil Morse’s memo to council read. The decision to move up this purchase came after a recent incident when one of the department’s Tasers was deployed and the necessary incident data download failed.
“Right now my only other option is the TASER 10, at $6,000 each. They include a lot of features we don’t really need here in Shelby,” Chief Dean Roesler said.
He reported the used TASER 7 units will come with new power packs, 16 live cartridges, six training cartridges per unit and appropriate holsters for $500 each. “The TASER 7 came out three years ago and has much better technology than the Tasers the department currently uses.”
The goal, Roesler said, is to assign a Taser to each officer, thus cutting down on the number of “spark checks” in a 24-hour period, which diminishes the batteries sooner. “I think it's a pretty good deal, and they are projected to last another five years,” he said.
An additional $691.90 will purchase a charging bank for all six of the units. The “new to Shelby” TASER 7 units are under manufacturer warranty through June 2027 and will be supported by the distributor, Axom Enterprise.
It is expected the old units will be saved until the next upgrade and be sold as a package deal, possibly through International Aid, which provides this type of equipment to other countries.
