It looks like an in­nocu­ous iPhone but in re­al­i­ty it is a taser in dis­guise. It is ad­ver­tised as giv­ing peace of mind while shop­ping or trav­el­ling know­ing the user will have the abil­i­ty to po­ten­tial­ly re­pel an at­tack­er or rapist.

The taser is avail­able for sale on­line for $750, a stun gun dis­guised as a flash­light for $400 as well as pep­per spray which is al­so sold dis­creet­ly in sev­er­al brick and mor­tar es­tab­lish­ments rang­ing from $75 to $300 de­pend­ing on size.

While they are il­le­gal in T&T, women are buy­ing per­son­al pro­tec­tion de­vices such as tasers and pep­per spray in the af­ter­math of what hap­pened to bank em­ploy­ee Shan­non Ban­field whose body was dis­cov­ered at IAM and Com­pa­ny on Char­lotte Street, Port-of-Spain, on De­cem­ber 8, 2016.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian on Thurs­day, at­tor­ney-at-law Jonathan Bha­gan, who, in De­cem­ber start­ed a pe­ti­tion for the le­gal­i­sa­tion of non-lethal weapons to help peo­ple de­fend them­selves against rape and oth­er crimes on change.org said: "These are ex­treme­ly im­por­tant to help stem the epi­dem­ic of vi­o­lence against women, how­ev­er ac­cord­ing to se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Paul-Daniel Na­hous women still re­quire self-de­fense train­ing to ef­fec­tive­ly utilise any non-lethal weapon.

"We need to le­galise non-lethal weapons for every­body, women and men.

"Women should have ac­cess to pep­per spray and pos­si­bly tasers with­out any le­gal reper­cus­sions.

"Right now the law pre­vents them from hav­ing pep­per spray and they could be ar­rest­ed for it."

He said any new steps to­wards help­ing cit­i­zens, es­pe­cial­ly women, pro­tect them­selves will be much eas­i­er than Par­lia­ment mem­bers drag­ging their feet with their roti pol­i­tics.

Bha­gan, who is one of the di­rec­tors of the Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Abused and Bat­tered In­di­vid­u­als (OABI) and le­gal chair­per­son of the Caribbean Com­mit­tee against Sex Crimes, said while tasers, stun guns and pep­per spray would make no se­ri­ous im­pact on cut­ting T&T's mur­der rate in half, they will save ap­prox­i­mate­ly two dozen lives a year.

The rea­son be­ing, he said, was that many at­tack­ers and rapists want an easy tar­get. If they be­came tem­porar­i­ly blind­ed or in­ca­pac­i­tat­ed and en­coun­tered re­sis­tance they tend­ed to move on to some­one weak­er.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of AE Tac­ti­cal, a law-en­force­ment prod­uct sup­pli­er, Luke Hadeed said that while tasers and pep­per spray were not per­mit­ted for re­sale iun T&T, ba­tons, small knives and tac­ti­cal flash­lights were avail­able legal­ly to pri­vate cit­i­zens.

He said how­ev­er these will take some train­ing to use and the com­pa­ny had been of­fer­ing train­ing in the form of de­fen­sive tac­tics and ba­sic self de­fence counter-mea­sures to civil­ians apart from se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies.

He said a high-in­ten­si­ty tac­ti­cal flash­light can tem­porar­i­ly blind or stun an ad­ver­sary or at­tack­er when used to strike.

Di­rec­tor of Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Abused and Bat­tered In­di­vid­u­als (OABI) Sh­er­na Ben­jamin said it was the du­ty of the state to pro­tect all of its cit­i­zens and to cre­ate so­ci­eties through a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort, sup­port and part­ner­ships where cit­i­zens feel per­son­al­ly safe, se­cure and where hu­man rights were up­held.

She said how­ev­er she could not con­done the sell­ing or pur­chas­ing of such prod­ucts for use with­in T&T as they were il­le­gal and she can­not sup­port the break­ing of the law no mat­ter how no­ble the cause.

Ben­jamin said she had many con­cerns re­gard­ing this push for le­gal­is­ing pep­per spray and oth­er self-pro­tec­tion prod­ucts.

She ques­tioned whether a li­cence be re­quired for the sale or pur­chase of self-pro­tec­tion prod­ucts, train­ing for in­di­vid­u­als to use such prod­ucts ef­fec­tive­ly with­out dam­ag­ing them­selves, how to lim­it the ac­cess of school gangs ac­cess to the prod­ucts and the mea­sures to pre­vent crim­i­nal el­e­ments from pur­chas­ing these items lo­cal­ly even though some type of li­cens­ing mea­sures may be im­posed.

She al­so asked if le­gal­is­ing these prod­ucts would put women in more dan­ger be­cause the per­pe­tra­tor's mind­set would now change to be­come more ag­gres­sive to­wards women and girls or would it de­ter their neg­a­tive ad­vances?

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, head of com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, Ellen Lewis, said tasers, stun guns and pep­per spray were il­le­gal.

She said these pro­hib­it­ed weapons would re­quire changes to the law if their use were to be per­mit­ted.

Lewis said pep­per spray and like items were nox­ious sub­stances and if used on per­sons can re­sult in crim­i­nal charges un­der the Of­fences Against the Per­son Act.