I've never had any fleeing experience with the police, but I base my preference to be tasered on a different sort of experience with police-grade pepper spray. I was standing with a group of cops in the back of a county courtroom one afternoon (this was when I was employed by the fire department as a paramedic). We were all waiting to testify in a case about a car accident we'd worked. One of the stupidest of the cops, at the request of a bystander to see if he was carrying real pepper spray, pulled his canister off his belt and sprayed a blast of it into a trash can we were all standing nearby. I and one other paramedic took the hardest hit of it because we were closest to the trash can and got some of the backsplash spray droplets, and I've never felt anything more miserable. It was like being on fire.

They ended up adjourning early for that day to clear the courtroom, which filled with fumes and had to be quickly evacuated. The cop got a 21-day reprimand (unpaid time off) and then was fired after he came back and his actions were reviewed by the review board. My partner medic and I had to be taken back to the fire station and be washed off by our colleagues and then given oxygen, which didn't help the burning lungs much.

I have had a unique fear of pepper spray ever since. And of stupid cops, too.