North Down Councillor Peter Weir has welcomed the decision of the Northern Ireland Policing Board to approve the use of electric tasers by the PSNI.

The decision was taken at the meeting of the Policing Board last week.

Mr Weir, who is a member of the Policing Board, said tasers are used by every police force in the British Isles and have rightly been recognised “as a useful and valuable tool in the fight against crime”.

“Considering the only circumstances in which tasers can be deployed is when a police officer would ordinarily have to deploy a firearm, it seems entirely logical to support their introduction for use by the PSNI,” he said.

“Would the opponents of tasers rather that police officers were forced to use handguns in every situation where a taser should be used or perhaps they would like to make it impossible for the police to use necessary and proportionate force in order to defend innocent members of the public?”

The decision to back the issuing of the 50,000 volt stun guns to specialist PSNI officers followed a six-month pilot programme by police from January this year.