ST. LOUIS COUNTY — The county police will equip all uniformed officers with Tasers in the coming weeks, using $276,900 in grant money to more than double its number of the electroshock weapons.

The department is purchasing 312 Tasers at $799 per weapon, plus cartridge and training costs, according to officials and a memorandum filed with the St. Louis County Council.

County officers currently have 302 Tasers assigned to officers, including crisis-intervention and patrol officers. The additional purchase will allow all uniformed officers and some detectives immediate access to the weapons.

A Taser is designed to briefly incapacitate a person up to 21 feet away by firing two barbed darts that carry 50,000 volts of electricity through wires trailing behind. Tasers are used by thousands of law enforcement agencies, including many in the St. Louis area.

Last summer, police in the city of St. Louis used $95,000 to buy additional Tasers. That department now has 151. Police in St. Charles, Clayton Florissant, Collinsville and a number of other communities in the region have used the weapons for years.

St. Louis County police are using part of a federal grant, which is separate from stimulus funds that many police departments are seeking to hire more officers.

Decisions on which departments will receive those funds will not be made for another month or two, officials said.

Many police officers appreciate Tasers as a generally nonlethal way to control violent suspects with minimal injury to anyone.

The devices have been used in several cases in which suspects died of what medical examiners later said was something else.

Samuel DeBoise, 29, was shocked twice by St. Louis County officers in July in the 6100 block of Lake Paddock Drive. DeBoise died later in the day, but the medical examiner's office said the Taser did not cause his death. DeBoise, who had schizophrenia, died of "excited delirium" because of an acute psychotic episode, according to the medical examiner.

At least six other people have died after being shocked by Tasers over the past four years in the St. Louis area, and medical examiners have said the deaths were mainly the result of other factors, such as pre-existing health conditions, an agitated state or the presence of drugs or alcohol.