Wake County school board members may push for a uniform policy governing the use of force by law enforcement personnel stationed on school campuses - an effort that comes to the fore days after a Cary police officer used a stun gun to subdue a schoolgirl.

The school system allows municipal police officers to patrol schools throughout the county. The county's thinking is simple: Police - not educators - should handle unlawful activity. Wake leaves decisions about enforcement methods, equipment - and the collection of data and records about use of force by police - in the hands of individual police departments.

But because practices vary from department to department, the county is left with a patchwork understanding of the use of force in its schools. Take the use of Tasers.

Wake isn't entirely clear which weapons police carry in their schools. "Town police are responsible for deciding what weapons to carry," said Greg Thomas, a Wake schools spokesman.

The county also doesn't document how often school resource officers use force on students and therefore doesn't know how many of its students have been subdued by a stun gun.

Sometimes the police don't know either. Cary, for instance, doesn't keep data on the number of times Tasers are used in its schools, Deputy Police Chief Barry Nickalson said.

Ron Margiotta, chairman of the Wake school board, said Thursday that the school system could benefit from a consistent standard for school resource officers. The recent Taser case in Cary, he said, "could trigger it so change could happen a lot sooner."

On Monday, Cary police officer Frank Schelah used a Taser to break up a fight between an eighth-grade girl and a 12-year-old boy at West Lake Middle School. Schelah is the school resource officer there, meaning he patrols the school and talks with students about public safety.

"What the female student did was grab the male student and put him in a choke-hold," Nickalson said. The girl had such a size advantage over the boy that she suspended him in mid-air, Nickalson said. The girl wouldn't comply with Schelah's orders to release the boy. After trying to free the student, Schelah fired a Taser at the girl. "We had to intervene, basically to save his life," said Nickalson, who did not witness the fight.

Cary is the only western Wake County town to have used a Taser on a student, according to police officials in Cary, Apex, Holly Springs, Fuquay-Varina and Morrisville.

Cary officers, who have used Tasers in schools since 2005, are restricted from using the weapons on the elderly and the "very young" - unless the person is acting in an aggressive or threatening manner or appears to be capable of injuring the officer.

Nickalson estimated that Cary police use Tasers once or twice a month. But it's rare when a student is a recipient of the shock. Rarer still when it's a young student. "This is the only time that I can recall that we've used [a Taser] in middle school," said Nickalson, a 21-year veteran.

The incident is being investigated, per department protocol. Schelah declined to comment. "All indications are that he followed procedure," Nickalson said.

The girl was taken to the hospital for observation.

Charles Langley, West Lake's interim principal, said there were no injuries.

Stun guns such as the ones made by Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Taser International were invented as a non-lethal alternative to handguns.

Instead of discharging a bullet, Tasers send electricity through metal prongs that attach to a person's skin or clothing. The jolt immobilizes a suspect by disrupting the voluntary control of a person's muscles so officers can detain them without injury. If the device is properly used, the suspect regains control of their movement as soon as the electrical current is stopped.

A 2007 study by Dr. William Bozeman, a Wake Forest University medical researcher, found the devices are generally a safe alternative to a gun. In 99.7 percent of nearly 1,000 cases, Bozeman, who conducted the study for the National Institute of Justice, said those who were shocked suffered mild injuries such as scrapes or bruises or nothing.

Still, stun guns have their critics - especially when it comes to their use in schools.

"Schools are supposed to be warm, nurturing places that promote open learning, creative thinking and healthy adolescent development," Jason Langberg, a lawyer at the Advocates for Children's Services in Durham, wrote in an e-mail last week. "Putting Tasers in the hands of uniformed law enforcement officers who patrol school hallways creates an atmosphere of control, dominance, fear, terror, mistrust and alienation."

At a July 29 meeting, Langberg asked a Wake school board task force to consider barring school resource officers from carrying guns or Tasers on campus. The request was among a slew of recommendations aimed at reducing student suspensions in the county. The board is reviewing most of the system's discipline policies.

Langberg's Taser recommendation wasn't a top priority at the time, said John Tedesco, a school board member who is the chairman of the task force. On Wednesday, Tedesco, whose district includes West Lake Middle, said Wake should start paying more attention to the use of force on students.

"I felt better knowing that the small child wasn't choked to death," Tedesco said. "Maybe it's not about using the Tasers, but more about training."

School board member Keith Sutton, vice chairman of the task force, also indicated that the Cary incident could prompt further Taser talk. "We don't want to make a knee-jerk reaction," Sutton said. "I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it."