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ItemRecalibrating Minimum Force: Some Unintended Consequences of Tom Swift's 'Electronic Rifle'(Springer Nature, 2024-05-23)This chapter explores some significant impacts of ‘electro-shock’ weapons on the practices and accountability of police. It argues that the introduction of conducted energy weapons (CEWs or ‘Tasers’) has resulted in the recalibration of the traditional policing principle of minimum force. Using evidence from a range of jurisdictions, we explore the way CEWs replace low-level and intermediate force options, rather than the use of deadly force they were initially marketed to reduce. We suggest that the adoption of this type of weapon fractures police conceptions of the use of force continuum. This results in a shift away from ensuring ‘coercive’ force as both threat of use of force and the actual use of force are minimised in model police practice towards the mission to appear ‘non-lethal’, or at least less ‘injurious’. While CEWs carry less risk of serious physical injury when deployed as compared with firearms, the increasing rates and normalisation of threatened use of force and associated threats of severe pain and injury in policing practice comprise a form of ‘weapons creep’ and carry a concomitant risk to police–community relations. We argue the widespread adoption of CEWs in policing has reinforced long-held concerns about ‘weapons drift’ and has consequently impacted police legitimacy for some observers and further served to materially subvert interpretations of the principle of ‘minimum force’ as a useful measure of the reasonableness of police use of force.