Taser Guns Stunning Students

The question is being debated in dozens of communities: How did the Taser, an electric shock weapon designed to incapacitate dangerous suspects, find it's way into schools?

As CBS News Correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports

Also in Miami, a 12-year-old girl was tasered while running away from police. She says, "They did mess up."

In Chicago, an unruly, 200-hundred pound, 14-year-old boy was tasered by police, trying to calm him down. The boy went into cardiac arrest.

A Taser was used at Lakeland High School in Florida last January. There was a fistfight, Andrews says. A big crowd gathered, and Police Officer Michael Branch, worried for a teacher who had fallen, pulled out his Taser stun gun.

"I'm like, 'What just happened? Did I just get tased?' " says the student, Sola Oyelowo.

He and one other student got tasered, but not for fighting. According to witness accounts, he was "in the way" of the officer.

Oyelowo told Andrews he wasn't in the fight, only watching it, along with 150 other kids.

Oyelowo's mother, Theodora Oyelowo, says her son was hurt, and the incident shows why Tasers don't belong in schools: "That was an electrical shock onto his body that never should have happened."

Sola says he can understand "completely" why a police officer approaching a fight scene like that would need to get people out of the way. So what was wrong about his being tasered in that context? "Because," Sola responded, "he's at a school, and he's dealing with children."Lakeland High principal Mark Thomas asks, "What do they want us to do with children that are out of control? If they don't want them tased … if they don't want them arrested … what do they want the school to do with the child that will not comply?"

At a lot of schools, Andrews observes, the issue isn't whether to have Tasers, the issue is when Tasers can be used.

For instance, should a student be tasered for mouthing off, or disobeying a teacher? How about a student caught in the act of skipping school?

At Lakeland High, there was even some casual tasering. Officer Branch, who was also a baseball coach, tasered five players, on a lark.

The players, including Christopher Sale, wanted to know what a Taser felt like, Andrews says.

"It didn't really hurt that bad," Sale recalls. "It kinda felt like a bee sting, a pretty powerful bee sting."

Lakeland, Fla. Police Chief Roger Boatner says Branch was disciplined because, "He went outside of our policy."

The department said Branch declined comment.

Most frustrating to parents, Andrews points out, is the unknown risk.

Taser safety studies done on animals have never focused on children, but do claim a margin of safety.

Taser International calls the weapon "the safest use of force compared with ... baton strikes, chemical agents or canine response."

Dr. Richard Luceri, a cardiac rhythm specialist and paid adviser to the company, says the current is too low to harm anyone: "Parents, or anyone else for that matter, should know that, as used in its current form, a Taser appears to be quite safe in all subjects … even if it's a small weight child, although we do not have a large body of evidence in that group."

However, Roger Barr, PhD., a biomedical expert at Duke University, says the Taser jolt can reach the hearts of children and is potentially fatal.

So, he says, when other experts say there should be no increased risk in children, "That's incorrect. Taser's own study shows that it's incorrect. Roughly speaking, when your weight is half as much, your risk is twice as much."

But not every student is a small child.

Alan Sale, Christopher Sale's father, isn't worried one bit that his son felt the Taser's sting: "Come stand next to my son and tell me that he's a child. …Tasers are unquestionably, enormously less dangerous than night sticks or a 9 millimeter (gun)."

Theodora Oyelowo, however, says, yes, some students are six feet tall, but to her, they are children: "They're not cattle. You use electrical shocks on cattle, on animals. Not people. These are God's children."

Some Florida lawmakers are hoping to pass a measure regulating the use of Tasers in schools in their state.