Charlotte-Mecklenburg police began putting Tasers back into officers' hands on Wednesday, a $1.83 million effort the department says will make the electric stun guns safer for officers and residents.

Police took the devices off the streets six months ago, during a week when one suspect died after being shocked with a Taser and another suspect's family won a $10 million lawsuit for his Taser-related death.

In September, the Charlotte City Council voted to spend $1.83 million for 1,600 of the new Taser X2 stun guns. CMPD is the second department in the country to get the weapons, according to police.

Major Sherie Pearsall, who heads the department's training bureau, said the weapons are safer.

"There's not 100 percent certainty, but we're confident that we have brought forth a weapon that will be safe for our officers and safe for the people we're using them on."

The new Tasers still shoot out 50,000 volts of electricity to incapacitate suspects, but have features to prevent officers from possibly injuring or killing suspects. Most importantly, they automatically cut off after five seconds, even if the officer continues pulling the trigger. In the past, people have died in incidents where an officer held down the Taser trigger too long.

Officers can also push two buttons on the Taser and make the stun gun spark - an act police believe can intimidate some suspects into complying. The X2 also can hold two cartridges at a time, letting officers shock two suspects without reloading or to attempt to shock a suspect again if an initial attempt fails.

Use of the department's nearly 1,200 Taser X26 stun guns was suspended on July 21. The day before, police were called to a light-rail station along Old Pineville Road after a report of a man beating and choking a woman. The suspect was identified as Lareko Williams.

The first officer to respond fired his X26 Taser just as Williams was about to strike the woman again, police said. Williams became unresponsive, police said, and the officer called for help. Williams died about an hour later.

Williams' death came a day after a federal jury awarded $10 million to the family of Darryl Wayne Turner, the 17-year-old who died after a CMPD officer shocked him with a Taser in 2008. The jury found that Taser International failed to warn that the weapon could cause cardiac arrest. In that case, police said the officer violated policy when he shocked Turner for about 37 seconds. The city of Charlotte denied wrongdoing, but it paid $625,000 to Turner's family.

After Williams' death last summer, all the department's Tasers were collected from officers, tested and inspected, police said. About a month later, police announced they'd finished a monthlong internal review on Taser use but that officers would not carry the devices until a second, outside review was completed. Then police moved to buy the newer model.