Albiol bets on new generation Tasers: Badalona will have one of the local police forces with the most electric tasers

BarcelonaThe mayor of Badalona, Xavier García Albiol, announced this Monday that the Guàrdia Urbana will incorporate up to 28 Taser guns into its armament in the coming months. In a video published on his social media, Albiol detailed that the chosen model will be the Taser T-10, a new version, with more cartridges and greater range than the Taser X2 that other local police forces and the Mossos d'Esquadra have been using since 2018, also manufactured by the American company Axon. The budgetary allocation has already passed the municipal plenary session, where the PP has an absolute majority.

The mayor has defended the purchase despite the political controversy — he assured that left-wing parties oppose it – and maintained that it is an "extremely important" tool. If the planned administrative procedures are completed, the tasers will be progressively incorporated into the force: three will arrive before the end of this year and the remaining 25 throughout 2027. According to the spokesperson for the majority union SIP-FEPOL, Joan Marc Zamora, Badalona will become one of the municipalities in the State with the highest number of Taser guns.

With this move, Badalona is ahead of Barcelona in the implementation of this type of weapon in the local police force. After a first failed attempt to approve the proposal in plenary in 2025, the government of Jaume Collboni plans to submit it to a vote again between October and November 2026, which would postpone a hypothetical incorporation of Tasers into the Barcelona Urban Guard until at least mid-2027.

In statements to ARA, the union representative celebrates a decision that "responds to an increasingly common reality": "Edged weapons and firearms are part of daily life." In this regard, Zamora defends that Tasers are an indispensable intermediate tool between police defense and firearms, especially because the Guardia Urbana does not have a consolidated intervention unit beyond the GEIP.

According to Zamora, the 28 pistols will be distributed among the officers patrolling the streets. The Badalona Guardia Urbana has about 260 officers, some of whom perform administrative or support functions and, therefore, will not carry them. The union spokesperson assures that the incorporation of Tasers was a demand from the force for "three years". "When García Albiol became mayor in 2023, it was one of the first requests we made to him: an intermediate tool between police defense and a firearm," he explains.

They warn of the risks of these weapons

Regarding García Albiol's announcement, human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Irídia question the discourse that presents Taser guns as an intermediate weapon between a baton and a firearm. Amnesty International's coordinator in Catalonia, Adriana Ribes, is blunt: "The Taser is much closer to a firearm than a baton." She also regrets that "before reaching this point, an independent assessment of the weapon's harmful nature should have been carried out" and argues that the incorporation of this type of device into a police force "must be linked to a specific operational gap that has been evaluated," and not to a trend of acquiring them "simply because they are available on the market."

Mireia Salazar, lawyer for the Irídia center, considers it "intolerable" that the Badalona council only proposes to study the incorporation of body cameras for agents carrying a Taser, as she considers them "a vital element of traceability" during this type of intervention. Salazar, who represents the family of a victim who died from a discharge from this weapon during an operation by the Mossos in Badalona in 2021, criticizes that protocols often leave a wide margin for police discretion, especially when assessing the risk or danger of the person being acted upon, which, in their opinion, can put fundamental rights at risk.

Along the same lines, Ribes insists that these weapons should only be used "in a situation of imminent risk, of imminent threat of death or serious injury, which cannot be contained with another less extreme option." Therefore, he considers it essential to have an instruction that establishes "when they can be used, in what contexts, and what prior steps must have been exhausted".

Protocols and cameras

The Badalona City Council assures that agents will receive training through the Institute of Public Security of Catalonia (ISPC), but Amnesty International considers that this will not be enough: "Training in decision-making and first aid is also needed." The entity's coordinator in Catalonia, Adriana Ribes, recalls that Taser guns have caused deaths in other countries and warns that "they cannot be used against minors, pregnant women, people with heart conditions or with mental health problems." In this last case, she calls for particularly strict protocols because people suffering from psychotic episodes are one of the groups in which the most serious injuries and deaths have been recorded.

In the same vein, Irídia jurist Mireia Salazar expresses particular concern about the use of Tasers on people with mental health problems and argues that these situations should be addressed "from a health perspective and not a police one." Finally, Salazar also warns about the shortcomings in the control mechanisms of local police forces: she recalls that the Mossos d'Esquadra have the Internal Affairs Division (DAI), while many city councils do not have equivalent bodies to investigate possible misuse of these weapons. In her opinion, incorporating "potentially lethal armament" without these oversight mechanisms increases the risk of human rights violations.