ESW Standards Collaborative Interest Survey

Dear all,

Thank you all for attending the recent (21 Jan 2011) Electroshock Weapon (ESW) workshop that was held at NIST in Gaithersburg, MD. The objective of the meeting, “to discuss the need for standardized methods of testing the proper operation and performance of ESWs,” was successfully met. We also had fruitful discussions regarding the necessity of other standards relevant to ESW use. Although not unanimous, there was a clear majority opinion among the workshop participants that standards would benefit the ESW stakeholder community.

We, at the Law Enforcement Standards Office (OLES) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), are willing to continue to foster this communication in support of our stakeholders, namely the law enforcement and corrections agencies that use these devices. To this end, we would like to determine what ESW-related topics are worthy for continued discussion and how and if you would like to participate. Based on our workshop discussions, the following topics were noted:

1. Standard test methods for measuring the output of ESWs.

2. Performance requirements for operating and using the ESW – these would be requirements established by law enforcement and corrections to allow them to effectively use ESW. This activity would including identifying the performance parameters, establishing acceptable limits (if applicable), and developing new or adopting existing test methods.

3. Performance requirements limiting harmful exposure – these would be the threshold limits above which there is some likelihood of harm to a person. This activity would require understanding the mechanism of interaction of an ESW with a human, understanding the variability of this interaction within the human population, establishing acceptable degrees of harm to an individual, establishing an acceptable likelihood of harm in the population, and then determining threshold limits for the general population.

4. Training and policy guidelines and/or standards.

5. Ensuring ESWs meet manufacturer claims and/or to-be-developed standards (this is conformity assessment)

Please indicate your level of interest by completing the table below using a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response. To ensure everyone understands the headings, this is what they mean in the context of this table:

Topic – one of the five listed above

Important – a topic that is important to you and/or your organization

Continue – the group assembled at the workshop, or a subset, should pursue this topic

Monitor – you like to be informed of any activity in this topic but not participate

Contribute – would you like to participate in any activities of this topic

Topic	Important	Continue	Monitor	Contribute
1
2
3
4
5

Note: Each column and row should have an indication of ‘yes’ or’= ‘no.’

6. Would you like to share your workshop registration information (name, title, company, address, phone number, e-mail address) with the other workshop participants?

7. Would you think it useful for NIST to establish a collaboration web site to provide discussions, uploading of documents, etc? This will be contingent on the review of your inputs (per last sentence of above paragraph).

NOTE: This questionnaire contains collection of information requirements subject to the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA). Notwithstanding any other provisions of the law, no person is required to respond to, nor shall any person be subject to penalty for failure to comply with, a collection of information subject to the requirements of the PRA, unless that collection of information displays a currently valid OMB Control Number.  The estimated response time for this questionnaire is 10 minutes.  The response time includes the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information.  Send comments regarding this estimate or any other aspects of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing the length of this questionnaire, to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Attn., Nicholas Paulter, [email protected], 301-975-2405.

OMB Control No. 0693-003

Expiration Date: 10/31/2012