London police Taser use continues to increase as use of force figures hold steady overall

The rate of London Police Service (LPS) officers using force remained largely unchanged last year compared with 2024, while new data shows officers are increasingly relying on Tasers to de-escalate confrontations.

An annual report presented to the London Police Service Board on Thursday outlines how often officers used force in 2025, why force was used and where those incidents occurred.

The report shows officers filed 368 use-of-force reports in 2025, up from 337 the previous year.

"While the number of use-of-force reports increased by [roughly] eight per cent ... the proportion of calls for service that resulted in a use-of-force report remained essentially unchanged," said London police Insp. Angela Johnson.

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According to Johnson, police responded to 71,036 calls for service in 2025, up from 67,938 in 2024. Use-of-force reports were filed in 0.46 per cent of calls last year, compared with 0.45 per cent the year before.

The report says force was used against 477 people across 330 separate incidents. The number of reports exceeds the number of incidents because multiple officers were involved in some cases.

Johnson said officers attempted to de-escalate situations before using force 91 per cent of the time in 2025, up from 86 per cent in 2024.

"While de-escalation remains a core principle of police training and response ... there are situations ... that may require officers to act immediately," Johnson said.

Police also filed 21 additional use-of-force reports involving animals.

What counts as use of force?

Ontario officers are required to complete a use-of-force report when an officer:

• Draws a handgun in the presence of a member of the public.
• Points a firearm at a person.
• Discharges a firearm.
• Uses a weapon on someone.
• Draws and displays a Taser to someone with the intention of achieving compliance.
• Points a Taser at someone.
• Discharges a Taser.
• Uses force on someone, including through the use of a horse or a dog, that results in an injury requiring treatment. This only applies as long as the officer is aware that the injury required treatment before going off-duty.

Type of force used

LPS officers drew and pointed their guns, rifles and Tasers more times last year than previous years.

By far, the most commonly used category of force in 2025 was pointing firearms, with 252 occurrences compared to 230 in 2024.

Rifles were pointed 127 times in 2025, but never discharged.

Handguns were drawn a total of 135 times in 2025, pointed in 125 of those instances, and were not discharged at all in 2025.

Tasers were used 186 times in 2025 compared to 150 times in 2024, the report said. Of the times Tasers were used, they were discharged 46 times.

"The low discharge rate confirms the [Taser] is an effective tool for de-escalating subject behaviour," the report notes, attributing the increase in Taser use to an effort to equip all officers with the devices.

In 2025, police used physical control to apprehend subjects 45 times — far less than the 93 times they did so in 2024, and something they say could be attributable to wider Taser availability.

Why police say they used force

The report notes that of the 477 unique people force was used against in 2025, the overwhelming majority — 388 — were believed to have access to a weapon.

More than half of those instances involved the belief that the subject had access to a handgun.

That's slightly more than in 2024, when 369 individuals were thought to have a weapon nearby when police used force.

In terms of the situations police were in when they used force, the largest number of reports came from weapons calls, with 140 instances noted to be related to weapons calls in 2025.

The report notes that Tasers, handguns and rifles were all most commonly used in incidents involving weapons, and in the execution of warrants.

Race, location

Race-based data attached to the report notes that the numbers stayed relatively unchanged from 2024 to 2025 in terms of the perceived racial identity of the subject.

61 per cent of incidents involved people officers perceived as Caucasian. 11 per cent involved people officers perceived as Middle Eastern, and 14 per cent were perceived as Black.

Eight per cent of people officers used force against were perceived to be Indigenous, up from four per cent in 2024.

Like in 2024, the downtown and Old East Village areas remained hotspots where officers were more likely to report using force.

The full report can be found here.