Vulnerable targets

September 9, 2009
The Globe and Mail

The taser's days as a police weapon of choice are numbered. It is not only that the taser can kill, as an inquiry in British Columbia found this summer. It is that the population it is often used on, the mentally ill or drug users in the grips of the supercharged state of anxiety that some call excited delirium, are at high risk of death, according to a Nova Scotia medical panel, in a report released this week.

A weapon that can kill, a population that is on a precipice. It is a bad combination. To be fair, police have a hugely difficult job when facing a man or woman who may be high on drugs or severely mentally ill, and is out of control. But police have been too quick to rush in with the taser blazing (or zapping), arguing that it is safe - and that if people die afterward, well, it was their "underlying condition" that killed them. The police absolved themselves of responsibility.

Not so fast, says the Nova Scotia panel, set up by the health and justice ministries and chaired by Stan Kutcher, who holds the Sun Life Financial Chair in Adolescent Mental Health at Dalhousie University. It recommends that, when police recognize the agitated state in someone, they ask for backup and summon emergency health services. They are then to try to de-escalate the situation, if there is no imminent danger. They are to do so in part by removing hazardous objects and bystanders who may be increasing the agitation or noise. "Demands should be made in a non-challenging manner." Police should make offers to assist.

In other words, they should do everything that the RCMP didn't do when four Mounties surrounded a distressed Polish immigrant, Robert Dziekanski, at the Vancouver International Airport in October, 2007, zapped him five times and then sat on the back of his neck. He died within minutes, and no definitive cause of death has been established.

Police in many jurisdictions have been using the taser at low levels of risk - where people posed no physical threat. The logic supporting its widespread use has crumbled. Tasers are not safe; the studies supporting their supposed safety are iffy; police have a responsibility to exercise extreme caution with people at risk of death, and to use force only in proportion to the threat to public safety. Nova Scotia and British Columbia now insist the use of the taser must be restricted to violent situations of serious danger. The rest of the country should follow their lead.

RCMP deputy issues outright apology for Dziekanski death

May 11, 2009
Tonda MacCharles, Toronto Star

OTTAWA – The RCMP's second-in-command has issued an outright apology for the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski.

"We are very sorry for Mr. Dziekanski's death and we are committed to learning as much as possible from this terrible event," Deputy Commissioner William Sweeney told a Senate committee today.

Sweeney's apology was delivered in the absence of Commissioner Bill Elliott who was attending a regimental funeral of a Mountie killed while off-duty. It went further than either Elliot or senior B.C. officers did two weeks ago.

Asked later what actions he was apologizing for, Sweeney told reporters:

"We're very sorry that Mr. Dziekanski died. Obviously, when we go to work every,day, our men and women don't ever anticipate they're going to be in a situation when somebody has lost their life as a consequence of interventions by the police and — not that that we know all of the facts and circumstances of this event, we probably will not have all of that information until Mr. Braidwood responds to the requirement to prepare reports — but it's a very sad, tragic circumstance."

Dziekanski, a unilingual Polish immigrant, died moments after the four Mounties took charge of him in the Vancouver airport and zapped him five times with a conducted energy weapon.

Sweeney declined any more specific comment, saying "it's inappropriate" while the inquiry is under way. But during testimony, he spoke generally of how much violence officers now face, especially in the Lower B.C. Mainland, and how violent incidents can "escalate in milliseconds" and lead to results officers fail to anticipate.

Sweeney stressed the need for officers to reduce, not escalate, tensions in confrontations.

"I can say generally de-escalation is clearly something in every circumstance, every situation we find ourselves in, should be of first and foremost consideration for our members."

Sweeney also admitted that "this tragic event playing out day in and day out in the media ... has not promoted confidence in our organization, there's no question. . . When the courts are completed, we have to respond with an informed series of actions."

B.C. officers have already publicly apologized for releasing and failing to correct erroneous information about Dziekanski's confrontation with the four officers at the Vancouver airport.

Police must reach out to mentally ill

October 30, 2008
ANDRE PICARD, Globe and Mail

Last Tuesday, just after midnight, a client walked into Pro Gym, a 24-hour fitness club in Montreal's east end.

The 33-year-old man was acting strangely, muttering to himself, swearing out loud, and when he got on the treadmill to run he was wearing a bulletproof vest and sporting his police service revolver.

The club's manager called police - the facility is located across the street from station 23 - and they intervened.

The constable on the treadmill, obviously in the midst of a psychotic episode, reacted with a combination of anger and paranoia. He ran to a nearby room and locked himself in.

He then proceeded to trash the place: He threw weights at a mirror and the walls, destroyed the computers, and smashed everything he could get his hands on.

When police arrived, it was not with guns drawn. They talked to the distressed man - who has a history of severe depression - and they waited, and waited and waited. They even took the time to call his father to come in and help.

The standoff with the armed man lasted more than four hours. During that time, the constable fired his service revolver eight times into the ceiling and walls. Still they waited.

Finally, the man opened the door of the room where he had barricaded himself, still brandishing a weapon. He was shot with rubber bullets that knocked him over but didn't hurt him because he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

The officer was then disarmed, subdued and transported to hospital, where he received psychiatric care.

Contrast this with the high-profile case of Robert Dziekanski, who died after an encounter with the Mounties at Vancouver International Airport just over a year ago.

The 40-year-old Polish immigrant was ranting and raving, and turned over a table. He was confronted immediately by RCMP officers.

Police knew that Mr. Dziekanski was not armed - he had been through airport security and had waited for hours in a lounge because of an immigration snafu before "acting up."

With limited knowledge of English, and visibly distraught, he almost certainly did not understand what was being said to him. Mr. Dziekanski posed no danger and was, at worst, a nuisance. Yet he was confronted by four police officers, zapped with a taser and died.

A long-delayed public inquiry into his death - headed by retired B.C. Court of Appeal judge Thomas Braidwood - is now slated to begin in January. While it will focus on the appropriate use of tasers, the inquiry should examine something else: The appropriate response to people with mental illness.

Screaming, pacing, ranting, muttering, damaging property and uttering threats are antisocial acts that police witness every day. One study found that at least one in four police calls involved a person with mental illness. These are acts not only of the indigents and drug abusers who are fixtures of our urban landscape, but of working people and professionals such as police officers and electricians who suffer from mental-health crises.

One of the biggest challenges of policing - and public health - is how to respond to such acts by people who are frightened, irrational and pose a greater danger to themselves than to others.

But the contrast between the two incidents - one in a Montreal gym and another in the Vancouver airport - one year apart is striking. We need to ask ourselves why the police response was so markedly different and what we can learn from the outcomes.

The most obvious answer is that, in the first example, the person suffering from mental illness was a police officer.

The responding officers saw him as a colleague, perhaps a friend, who was in trouble. They saw him as a human being who was sick, not as a criminal. As a result, Montreal police acted admirably. They practised a method known as de-escalation - a fancy word meaning "waiting for a person to calm down."

Mr. Dziekanski, on the other hand, was an anonymous figure, another guy ranting and raving in public. He was in an airport - an institution that symbolizes society in a hurry, and a place where obsession with law and order prevails.

Sure people with untreated mental illness can be bothersome, disruptive and discomforting. But they are not criminals; they are sick.

Surely our response to their pain can be a little more sophisticated than bashing down doors, handcuffing and arresting them or, as happens too often, shooting them with rubber bullets, jolts of electricity from a taser or real bullets.

The weapons that need to be used are ones that police don't draw on often enough: patience and empathy.

When tasers go wrong

July 26, 2008
By: James Turner, Winnipeg Free Press

Are police too quick to turn to the supposedly non-lethal weapon?

IT'S abundantly clear that 17-year-old Darryl Turner's last day on Earth was a bad one. Watching the last moments of his life unfold on silent surveillance-camera footage is stark evidence. On the publicly available footage, Turner, a dreadlocked youth from Charlotte, North Carolina, storms about the small grocery store where he works as a cashier. He pushes over a merchandise display in anger.

It's believed he's in trouble with the store's management for not paying for something he had for lunch that day.

It's the afternoon of March 20, and the boy is fuming. He's seen confronting the store's manager, even throwing something at his boss in a rage. Police are called, and an officer arrives. Jerry Dawson, a 15-year veteran of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, briskly enters the store, his hand already reaching for his Taser. Police said the officer issued commands for the youth to stop.

Turner continues to move around, walking past the officer, which is when the stun gun is fired, striking the boy directly in the chest. The teen is unarmed. At first, he shows no sign of being incapacitated. He continues walking away from Dawson. Then the teen collapses on the store's carpet. Attempts to revive him are unsuccessful.

A medical examiner's autopsy and toxicology report on the boy's death released to the Free Press shows he had no intoxicants in his system.

Download the medical examiner's report from North Carolina

The official cause of death is a heart attack precipitated by his agitated state and the use of the Taser. A recent review of the officer's conduct determined that although the use of the weapon was justified, he had jolted the boy for too long.

Dawson was recently handed a five-day suspension without pay by a police review board that determined his Tasering of the teen twice -- once continuously for 37 seconds, and another for five seconds -- went beyond what was necessary or proper under police policy.

He will not face criminal charges.

The police department told reporters in Charlotte that "the initial use of the Taser is not in question," and the weapons have been effective in reducing injuries to suspects and officers. Police also said if Turner had complied with officer demands, the weapon would not have been needed.

In an interview with the Free Press Thursday, the family's lawyer, Ken Harris, said it's not yet decided if a civil suit will be launched against police or Taser International, the company that manufactured the stun gun used on Turner.

What's really striking about Turner's death is how little time the veteran officer seems to spend assessing the situation or talking to Turner to try calming him.

Fast-forward to last Tuesday, when 17-year-old Michael Langan died after being Tasered by police behind 871 William Ave. after they found him brandishing a knife, and the same issue arises.

Did police do enough to de-escalate the situation before shocking him?

The boy's father, Brian Minchin, said Winnipeg homicide detectives told him the boy was "zapped" once, fell to the ground and his heart stopped. "They asked him several times" to put down the knife, which had a blade about eight centimetres long, Minchin said.

"He just started carrying a knife," Minchin said.

Not every police agency is an unabashed fan of the stun guns, and controversy surrounds what Amnesty International has called "a slippery slope" towards the Taser's increased use, and sometimes abuse, by police.

In the U.S., 11,500 law-enforcement agencies use conducted-energy devices such as the Taser. More than 250,000 of the stun guns are in active use, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. In Canada, 73 police agencies use the weapons.

The American Justice Department warned in a June report on Taser use that "there may be circumstances in which repeated or continuous exposure is required, but law enforcement should be aware that the associated risks are unknown.

"Therefore, caution is urged in using multiple applications," the report said.

In England, where police have undertaken an extensive campaign to reduce the "epidemic" of stabbings in recent months, the Metropolitan Police Authority has moved to combat the problem as its top priority.

However, the vast majority of beat constables don't carry guns or Tasers, instead relying on their batons and pepper spray when dealing with a threat. Officers are required to radio for a special-response unit if an armed response is required.

However, 10 police forces in England -- including the 31,000-officer Metropolitan force -- began a year-long pilot project late last year after the British Home Office approved the increased use of the weapons by officers not in specialty firearms units.

Halfway through the test project, the weapons are being used more often.

The Home Office said in May that Tasers were used 252 times between September 2007 and the end of February. The weapons were discharged in only 31 situations, meaning they were most often used to coerce suspects into standing down when threatening officer or public safety.

Last year, Winnipeg police used or unholstered their Tasers 173 times. They were discharged or touched to a suspect to cause "pain compliance" 103 times.

Compliance with police orders by talking suspects down from their actions and not using force is the mantra of English policing, according to experts and a British Home Office spokesman.

Tim Matthews said this week that historically, English people have shown an aversion to weapons -- a cultural preference that's always influenced how police operate.

"The policy in this country has long been that the police should not generally be armed. That gives a character to our policing that we should not readily give up," Matthews said. "A traditional bobby on the beat, if he needs support, he calls a unit on the radio." The use of weapons by English police is rare, Matthews said. "It must always be a last resort."

A recent paper published by University of Exeter professor Brian Rappert further describes the key difference between North American and British use-of-force policies. "In the U.S., most agencies have in place a use-of-force continuum, (but) in the U.K., the preference is for a less prescriptive 'conflict-resolution model,' " he writes.

What this suggests is that in some places, the belief is that a threat should often be quelled by talking first and shooting later.

Winnipeg police said Thursday that each situation is different and each requires officers to use their own educated judgment. "Ideally, de-escalating is the ideal situation, but they're trained to recognize if a force application is warranted to protect themselves or another person. (If it's warranted), then they're justified in doing so," said Const. Adam Cheadle of the officer safety unit.

It's not known yet what caused Langan, a boy standing 5-foot-6 and weighing 145 pounds, to die. The provincial medical examiner, Dr. Thambirajah Balachandra, said it could take months for additional tests to be completed before an official cause of Langan's death can be determined.

Police Chief Keith McCaskill said that historically, there's been "a number" of cases where officers have used their Tasers when dealing with suspects armed with weapons, including knives, and serious injury didn't occur.

"If the device wasn't there, a firearm would have been the only other option available to officers."

The CMHA weighs in on tasers

June 2008

Issue
Canadian Mental Health Association, Ontario is concerned about the use and safety of Tasers, as well as the propensity of law enforcement officials to deploy Tasers on people experiencing a mental health crisis or demonstrating signs of emotional distress.

Background
Conducted energy weapons (CEWs), commonly referred to as Tasers, were introduced to Canadian law enforcement agencies starting in 2001. Tasers are hand-held weapons that send a jolt of electricity intended to stun and temporarily incapacitate an individual's motor nervous system. The charge is delivered through a pair of wires, weighted with barbed hooks, that can be fired from up to 10.6 metres away and will penetrate clothing up to five centimetres thick.1

The Taser is one of several use-of-force weapons that police officers may use to subdue or restrain an individual, to reduce the risk of injury or death to both the individual and the responding officer. The Taser is often represented as an alternative to the use of lethal force by police.

According to a recent backgrounder by the CBC, Tasers are being used by 73 law enforcement agencies across Canada. Most mid-size police forces use these stun guns between 50 to 60 times a year on average, reports the CBC, based on figures compiled by the Canadian Police Research Centre.1 The RCMP has 2,840 Tasers and has trained 9,132 officers to use them. They have been deployed more than 3,000 times since December 2001, in either drive stun mode (when electrodes on the Taser transmit electrical energy on contact with a subject's body) or in full deployment (when darts are fired at a subject).2 Following a pilot study by the Toronto Police Service, Ontario's Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services approved the Taser for use by Ontario police services in January 2005. In 2007, Tasers were used 264 times in Toronto, in either drive stun mode or full deployment,3 up from 97 times in 2006.4 The Taser was used an additional 140 times in 2007 as a "demonstrated force presence," a deterrent measure where a spark is generated or the laser sighting system activated without any contact to the subject.

It is estimated that there have been 270 deaths worldwide, including 17 Canadian deaths, proximal to Taser use since 1999.5 It is not possible to accurately count deaths, as there is no independent central registry in existence to monitor incidents and adverse events, and there remains controversy, as there is no conclusive proof that Tasers directly cause death. Many police services, coroners and researchers are suggesting Taser-associated deaths may be related to a condition referred to as "excited delirium," but no conclusive evidence has yet been established. The Canadian Police Research Centre describes excited delirium as a potentially fatal state of extreme mental and physiological excitement that is characterized by extreme agitation, hyperthermia, hostility, exceptional strength, and endurance without apparent fatigue.6 This condition was first described as early as 1982, when investigators were examining unexplained deaths due to physical restraint by police.7 It has been hypothesized that excited delirium generates an extreme state of physiological arousal that places individuals at greater risk of death.

The symptoms associated with excited delirium, while not a true mental health condition included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), appear to be similar to some of the behavioural symptoms exhibited by individuals experiencing a mental health crisis.

Ontario's Use of Force Continuum
All police officers in Ontario must have basic training in use of force. The Ontario Use of Force Model (2004) directs that officers shall continuously assess each encounter and select the most reasonable option for action, relative to the circumstance.8 The use of force continuum provides guidelines to incremental increases in use of force. The five stages of the continuum are: officer presence, verbal communication, physical control, intermediate weapons (using non-lethal chemical, electronic or impact weapons on an individual) and lethal force (using any force likely to cause permanent injury or death).

Ontario's Use of Force Model does not make allowance or offer guidance to police officers when encountering individuals who may be experiencing a mental health crisis and by virtue of their condition may not appear cooperative, due to hallucinations, delusions or other symptoms. However, other options are available, and mental health crisis intervention is the preferred approach for police to de-escalate such encounters.

Excessive Use of Force
Complaints have been issued against the RCMP and other police services claiming deployment of Tasers to subdue or gain compliance. The Commissioner for Public Complaints Against the RCMP has identified that Tasers are being used to subdue resistant subjects who do not pose a threat, and has referred to this expanded and less restrictive use as "usage creep."9

In January 2007, the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority Police Service announced that it would arm police patrolling Vancouver's TransLink public transit system with Tasers.10 After reviewing ten cases of Taser deployment on the transit system, accessed under freedom of information legislation, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association identified four cases where there appeared to be no significant threat to individual or public safety. One case involved the use of a Taser when the suspect attempted to flee for fare evasion.11 This practice is concerning and may set a precedent in other provinces.

Each police service in Ontario is currently governed by different protocols and policies concerning the number of times a Taser may be deployed. However, the Canadian Police Research Centre noted in their 2005 study that "...police officers need to be aware of the adverse effects of multiple, consecutive cycles of CEDs [Tasers] on a subject..."12


Taser Use Is Not Publicly Reported
There are no comprehensive national or provincial records regarding how many police officers are carrying Tasers. Most police services are not publicly reporting incidents involving Taser use and outcomes.

Amnesty International indicates that international standards and codes of conduct for law enforcement officials prescribe that the deployment of non-lethal weapons require standard evaluation and control of use protocols.13


Research on Tasers Suggests Caution
Research on the safety of Tasers has primarily been conducted on animals, rather than humans. When research has been conducted on humans, they have been deemed medically healthy. While Tasers may be used without injury on some individuals, there are vulnerable populations on whom Tasers should be used with caution. A 2004 review of Taser technology by British Columbia's police complaint commissioner indicated that risk factors for death by Taser include drug-induced toxic states (cocaine, alcohol, etc.) and "acute psychiatric decompensation."14

In reviewing the available literature, the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP examining RCMP use of Tasers determined:

...that there is a distinct lack of research nationally and internationally that thoroughly examines the connection between CEW use, excited delirium and the likelihood of death. Medical research is still in the early stages of reviewing this condition. What little is known of this condition suggest the need for a more conservative course of action with respect to the deployment of CEWs against vulnerable populations (people experiencing mental health crises, those suffering from drug toxicity and those exhibiting symptoms of excited delirium). The research suggests that these populations have a higher likelihood of death, not necessarily as a result of the use of force or restraint employed, but because of the mental or medical condition of the person at the time of police intervention.15
A May 2008 review published by the Canadian Medical Association Journal contradicts previous assertions that "stun guns" manufactured by Taser International and others are unlikely to impact with deadly force. The authors reference three independent investigations that have found that stun guns may, in some circumstances, stimulate the heart and potentially result in adverse consequences.16 They recommend that additional research with human subjects is required.

This finding is especially significant given increased cardiovascular vulnerability among people with serious mental illness. People with a mental illness appear to be at greater risk of developing irregular heartbeats (arrhythmia)17 and coronary heart disease.18 In addition, people taking antipsychotic medication have been found to have a 2.4 times greater risk of sudden cardiac arrest and death.19

Crisis Intervention Approaches for People with a Mental Illness
Some people with a mental illness who are in crisis will come in contact with police officers. Section 17 of Ontario's Mental Health Act, R.S.O. 1990, gives police officers the authority to bring someone to a medical facility for assessment if the officer has "reasonable and probable grounds" to believe a person has acted in a "disorderly manner" if the person is believed to have a mental disorder, has threatened or attempted to harm themselves, has behaved violently or caused someone to fear bodily harm, or has shown an inability to care for themselves.20

A number of barriers have been identified that pose challenges to police dealing with people who have a mental illness.21 These include not having advance information from dispatch that the person may have a mental illness, or what they might expect upon arrival at the scene. More fundamentally, lack of adequate education about mental illness is a reality that impacts police officers' ability to carry out their work with this vulnerable population. Police require customized training regarding how to identify situations involving mental illness, as well as how to communicate and intervene so as to minimize the use of force and maximize the likelihood that individuals with a mental illness are able to access the services they require. Evidence suggests that identifying a specific group of police officers to receive training and respond to mental health crisis is most beneficial, as these individuals will then have the mandate to utilize and update their skills on a regular basis.22

Some police services in Ontario have received training and participate in mental health crisis intervention teams. These teams consist of police officers and mental health workers acting together to respond to individuals experiencing a mental health crisis. This partnering offers the expertise of both professions.

There are a variety of ways in which the police and the mental health system can work together to manage first-response situations, in which the police are called to deal with an incident involving a person who appears to be mentally ill:

Comprehensive advanced response model: all police officers receive training related to working with individuals with mental illness and are expected to be able to handle most situations.

Mental health professionals co-response model: mental health professionals from another agency with whom the police have some kind of working agreement would respond to a police call at the request of the police, generally after the police have responded and assessed the situation.

Mobile crisis team co-response model: the police and the mental health workers are co-employed, sometimes by having mental health workers employed by police services and sometimes by having police officers seconded to community mental health agencies.

Crisis intervention team (CIT): specially trained officers respond to problematic situations. These officers are assigned to other duties (such as traffic patrol) from which they may be pulled as needed.

Telephone consultation model: police have a toll-free number to a mental health unit or hospital psychiatry floor which is staffed 24/7, which they may call for advice and direction whenever there is an incident.23

The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police has prepared guidelines for police programs and services for people with mental illness and the mental health system, that include, but are not limited to, developing effective and compassionate crisis response.24


Recommendations from the Canadian Mental Health Association, Ontario Regarding Conducted Energy Weapons (Tasers)

June 2008

A group of specially selected officers in every police service in Ontario be trained in mental health crisis intervention and other appropriate de-escalation techniques.
Police services in Ontario co-develop and participate in mental health crisis intervention teams to serve the needs of their community.

Police services in Ontario limit their use of Tasers to situations where the alternative would be use of deadly force. Tasers are only used as a last resort and after all other de-escalation techniques have proven unsuccessful.

Police services monitor and publicly report the incidence and outcomes of Taser use.
Independent research is conducted into the safety of Taser use, including the effects on persons experiencing a mental health crisis.

References
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, "Taser FAQs," CBC News Online, May 13, 2008, www.cbc.ca.

Canada, "RCMP Use of the Conducted Energy Weapon (CEW): Interim Report," Commission for Public Complaints Against the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, December 11, 2007, www.cpc-cpp.gc.ca.

Toronto Police Services Board, Minutes of the Public Meeting, March 27, 2008, www.tpsb.ca.

Toronto Police Services Board. Minutes of the Public Meeting, April 26, 2007, www.tpsb.ca.

Bruce Stuart and Chris Lawrence, "Report on Conducted Energy Weapons and Excited Delirium Syndrome," Royal Canadian Mounted Police, October 29, 2007, www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca.

Drazen Manojovic et al., "Review of Conducted Energy Devices," Canadian Police Research Centre, Technical Report TR-01-2006, August 22, 2005, www.cprc.org.

M. Pollanen, D. Chiasson, J. Cairns and J. Young, "Unexpected Death Related to Restraint for Excited Delirium: A Retrospective Study of Deaths in Police Custody and in the Community," Canadian Medical Association Journal 158, no. 12 (1998): 1603-7.

Ottawa Police Service, "Use of Force Annual Report - 2007," February 19, 2008, www.ottawa.ca.

Canada, "RCMP Use of the Conducted Energy Weapon (CEW)."

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, "SkyTrain Transit Police to Get Tasers," CBC News Online, January 22, 2007, www.cbc.ca.

British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, "Letter to the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner for British Columbia, Re: TransLink Police Use of Tasers," April 17, 2008, www.bccla.org.

Manojovic et al., "Review of Conducted Energy Devices."

Amnesty International, "Canada: Inappropriate and Excessive Use of Tasers," International Secretariat, May 2007, www.amnestyusa.org.

British Columbia, "Taser Technology Review and Interim Recommendations," Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner, September 2004, www.opcc.bc.ca.

Canada, "RCMP Use of the Conducted Energy Weapon (CEW)."

K. Nanthakumar et al., "Cardiac Stimulation with High Voltage Discharge from Stun Guns," Canadian Medical Association Journal 178, no. 11 (2008): 1451-57.

J.G. Reilly et al., "QTc-Interval Abnormalities and Psychotropic Drug Therapy in Psychiatric Patients," The Lancet 355, no. 9209 (2000): 1048-52.

D.L. Evans et al., "Mood Disorders in the Medically Ill: Scientific Review and Recommendations," Biological Psychiatry 58, no. 3 (2005): 175-89; D.C. Goff et al., "A Comparison of Ten-Year Cardiac Risk Estimates in Schizophrenia Patients from the CATIE Study and Matched Controls," Schizophrenia Research 80, no. 1 (2005): 45-53.

W.A. Ray et al., "Antipsychotics and the Risk of Sudden Cardiac Death," Archives of General Psychiatry 58, no. 12 (2001): 1161-67.

Ontario, Mental Health Act, RSO 1990, c. M.7.

Canadian Mental Health Association, British Columbia, "Study in Blue and Grey. Police Interventions with People with Mental Illness: A Review of Challenges and Responses," December 2003, www.cmha.bc.ca.

R. Dupont and S. Cochran, "Police Response to Mental Health Emergencies: Barriers to Change," Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 28, no. 3 (2000): 338-44.

Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, "Working Together - How?" Canadian National Committee for Police/Mental Health Liaison (no date), www.pmhl.ca.

Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, "Contemporary Policing Guidelines for Working with the Mental Health System," Police-Mental Health Subcommittee, July 2006, www.pmhl.ca.

Public sold a phony story on taser safety, use

May 21, 2008
PAUL WILLCOCKS, Special to The [Prince George] Citizen

VICTORIA -- Two things have jumped out from the provincial inquiry into Taser use.

First, the public has been misled at best, lied to at worst, about the safety of Tasers and the way they would be used.

And second, that civilian oversight of police is a myth in B.C. Government's claims that it sets policy on Taser use and most other police activities are empty.

I was an advocate for Tasers after a pilot project here in Victoria in 1999. They were pitched as a great tool that could make things safer for police and public.

At the end of a six-month trial, one of the officers enthusiastically cited examples from the nine times the Taser was used zap someone.

One case involved a naked, crazed man coming at officers with a long metal spike and deer antlers. If the Taser hadn't been available, he might have been shot. Another involved a deranged man determined to leap up the window in his 12th-floor apartment. Police tasered him in the nick of time. (The officer who provided the examples and pushed to have the weapon approved received stock options from Taser International two years later for his work on a holster design.)

The police convinced me the weapon offered a safer alternative than other options in some cases. The claims were always about taking down armed attackers or dealing at a safe distance with suicidal or dangerous people, something not possible with pepper spray.

More importantly, they convinced then attorney general Ujjal Dosanjh. But Dosanjh told the inquiry this month he was misled about the way police would use Tasers.

Kevin Begg, assistant deputy minister in the Solicitor General's Ministry, referred to "slippage" in Taser use. Instead of taking the time to de-escalate a situation, police are just zapping people who don't co-operate. Begg isn't an armchair quarterback; he was an RCMP officer for 23 years. And he, too, was an initial supporter, describing the Taser as "a very valuable alternative to shooting someone with a firearm" when the pilot project was launched.

But that's now how the Taser has been used. The provincial inquiry was ordered after the death of Robert Dzienkanski at Vancouver's airport. Video evidence showed police made no effort to defuse the situation.

Earlier this month police zapped an 82-year-old man, who needs oxygen just to walk, as he lay in a Kamloops hospital bed. He was delusional because he couldn't catch his breath and refused to drop a knife with a three-inch blade. But he wasn't enough of a danger to prevent an RCMP officer from approaching close enough to press the Taser against his stomach and zap him three times.

And Vancouver's transit police have tasered people, including fare evaders, for being "non-compliant." That policy, changed last week, highlights the underlying problem.

As the death toll mounted, B.C.'s Police Complaints Commissioner did a review of Taser use and recommended clear limits. People had to be "actively resisting" officers before they could be hit with the electric charge. The Solicitor General's Ministry claimed the new policy was in place. But all it did was send a one-page letter to police chiefs. As the transit police confirmed, the policy was widely and blatantly ignored. (Transit police even ignored a call to testify at the public inquiry until Solicitor General John van Dongen ordered the force to appear.)

Anyway, the policy is irrelevant for most British Columbians. About 70 per cent of them are policed by some 8,000 RCMP officers. The force does not accept any civilian oversight and refuses to allow the provincial government to set policies.

The Taser is still a potentially valuable tool. But seven people have died in B.C. after being the weapon was used on them; more than 300 in North America. Police continue to insist there is no risk, and use it accordingly. Many continue to reject the notion of civilian control or oversight.

It's a dangerous combination.

Footnote: Taser International continues to insist the only risk from using the weapon is that the victim might fall and be injured and tells police to use it on that basis. This week, two cardiologists told the inquiry the stun guns could "almost certainly" cause heart attacks.

Think inquiry will end taser use? Not likely

May 10, 2008
GARY MASON, Globe and Mail

Prediction: Years after retired judge Thomas Braidwood has wrapped up his current inquiry into the use of tasers, the controversial weapon will still be in the holsters of police officers all over Canada and being blamed in people's deaths.

Why do I say that? Because after listening to a week of testimony at Mr. Braidwood's public inquisition in Vancouver, it's hard to imagine him not lining up behind Paul Kennedy, chairman of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, who has already looked into this matter and determined there is a continuing role for the taser to play in law enforcement.

Albeit, a more restricted one.

Mr. Braidwood is a bright man who, as a top judge in B.C. until his retirement in 2005, handled some of the most complex and controversial cases in recent years. In many ways, he was the perfect person to head an inquiry into a matter so socially charged. But I'm already beginning to wonder what he's going to tell us that we don't already know.

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So far, the inquiry has heard independent experts on the effects of electricity on people say that the chances of a taser causing death are small but not impossible. And that until far more research is done in this area we are, to some extent, "groping in an environment where we don't have all the facts," as one of the experts told the inquiry.

We already knew both those things.

The inquiry also heard from a former Mountie, now a top bureaucrat in the B.C. Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor-General, who said RCMP officers are reaching for their tasers too quickly, before using techniques to de-escalate confrontations. Like we needed anyone to tell us that. We've all seen the video a million times now of the RCMP tasering Robert Dziekanski.

We heard that the taser was originally approved for use on suspects who were violently aggressive or armed, but that justification for firing the gun has since "slipped" down the use-of-force continuum. Now it's being used to help take down those even mildly resisting arrest.

We knew that too.

And we also heard from family members upset that a loved one was tasered who shouldn't have been.

There have been lots of those people on the news in recent months too.

So what, then, is the point of this probe? Will it break new ground? Unveil shattering new secrets about the instrument that have been rattling around the closets at Taser International? I don't think so.

This inquiry was called mostly to do one thing: quell the angry masses. If there had been no video of Mr. Dziekanski's death after being tasered by the RCMP, there would no inquiry today. But after the video surfaced and the world was justifiably outraged, an inquiry was the logical and politically expedient route for the B.C. government to take. It allowed the government to be seen to be doing something to "get to the bottom" of the many questions that surround taser use in Canada.

Even if it knew the inquiry could never do any such thing.

At best, I think Mr. Braidwood will end up affirming many of Mr. Kennedy's earlier findings.

As the complaints commissioner said in his December, 2007, report, there needs to be far more research conducted into the effect of tasers before we'll have anything near to a complete picture of its impact on people. And the RCMP and police forces have a pivotal role to play in providing the information needed for that necessary research to take place.

I think Mr. Braidwood will agree with that view and perhaps recommend formalizing this exchange of information in some way - maybe root it in law.

I'll also be surprised if Mr. Braidwood doesn't advocate a much more restrictive and narrowly defined set of guidelines for taser use - just as Mr. Kennedy did but never got.

It needs to be much harder for a police officer in this country to blast someone with 50,000 volts of electricity. As a weapon, the taser can't be considered the equivalent of pepper spray or a riot baton as it is now. It needs to be viewed as a weapon a notch from a gun.

There is no chance Mr. Braidwood will recommend banning the weapon outright.

As much as we were all repulsed by what happened to Robert Dziekanski, and upset over recent reports that cops are using tasers to apprehend so-called "non-compliant" transit passengers in the Vancouver area, the use of tasers under many, many circumstances is a better alternative to lethal force. The minimal element of risk represented by the taser is dwarfed by its ability to save far more lives than it will ever take away.

For better or worse, tasers are here to stay.

Tasers used too often, senior official says

May 8, 2008
Suzanne Fournier, The Province

Mental-health advocates are calling for a "carefully selected first-call crisis response" core of police officers who can respond 24/7 to mental-health crisis calls.

A medical doctor, a police liaison lawyer and the executive director of the Canadian Mental Health Association all told the Braidwood inquiry into Taser use yesterday that police need to be trained in the use of "non-threatening, de-escalation techniques" instead of resorting to impact weapons, including the Taser.

CMHA consultant Dr. Nancy Hall told the inquiry that police "command and control" tactics seldom work with mental-health crises "and can potentially cause more harm than good."

Hall said police need to be trained in verbal skills and other techniques already in common use in prisons, social-work settings, hospitals and psychiatric hospitals.

She noted that a recent B.C. study by the CMHA found that 60 per cent of those in a mental-health crisis get treatment through a hospital emergency ward, and 30 per cent of those people are taken there by police.

The CMHA estimates there are 130,000 people in B.C. that fit the medical diagnosis of having severe addiction or mental illness that is both serious and persistent, a condition called SAMI in medical texts.

Yet police mental-health training at the Justice Institute of B.C. is typically just one three-hour class in six months on how to intervene with people with mental problems, said Hall, calling for at least a 40-hour integrated training program.

Hall and CMHA police liaison Camia Webster also criticized the increasing use of Tasers in lower-risk situations.

Kevin Begg, an assistant deputy minister in the Solicitor-General's Ministry and a former police officer, said Tasers are being used too often, adding that a record should be kept of their use.

"I am very concerned about slippage in Taser use, where it is being increasingly used in lower-risk circumstances," he said. "We believe an appropriate threshold for its use must be established."

Retired judge Tom Braidwood is inquiring into Taser use by police, sheriffs and corrections officers.

Overwhelmed cops rush to taser, watchdog says

April 4, 2008
Glenn Bohn, Vancouver Sun

VANCOUVER - The B.C. Civil Liberties Association says police officers are turning to high-voltage Taser guns because police departments are overwhelmed by problems with mentally ill people on the streets.

"The reality is that police are, in fact, put on the front lines to respond to these individuals," executive director Murray Mollard told a parliamentary committee Friday in Richmond. "No one else will. And we demand a heck of a lot of our police. That's why they deserve our respect and support."

Mollard pointed to a Vancouver police report, Lost in Transition, which reported that about 30 per cent of all city-wide calls to police involve people whom officers believe are suffering from poor mental health.

The February report pointed to a troubling trend: in 1999, there were 360 incidents when individuals were arrested in Vancouver under provisions of the Mental Health Act; last year, there were 1,744.

Mollard said beat cops in the Downtown Eastside used to have the time to talk to people and de-escalate potentially violent situations without using a Taser or gun.

"Are we demanding too much from our police, such that we are providing an incentive for them to respond too quickly and in ways that they use technology to get around age-old technologies to get around problems such as basic communication?" he said.

Mollard was one of the speakers at a House of Commons public safety and security committee inquiry into the use of Tasers in Canada. The committee held its second and last day of hearings Friday at Vancouver International Airport, where last October four RCMP officers responded to a report about a "very belligerent" passenger who threw a computer screen and terminal on the floor. Police zapped Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski with a Taser. His death was captured by a traveller's video camera and later posted on the Web, triggering expressions of shock and condemnation from around the world.

Online U.S. retailers are selling "not for export" Tasers, starting at $400 US.

The device is manufactured by Taser International Inc., an Arizona-based company that sells the weapon around the world, including to the RCMP and many municipal police departments in Canada.

More than 11,000 U.S. law enforcement agencies have Tasers. According to Amnesty International USA, more than 290 people have died in the U.S. after being Tasered.

This week, Taser International stocks climbed five per cent after it signed a deal to sell Tasers to consumers at Sports Authority, which has more than 200 stores in the U.S.

Lawyer Cameron Ward, who said Tasers are also being sold like Tupperware at events in private homes in the U.S., said he respects the dangerous work that police do.

"I don't pretend to minimize the risk of harm," Ward told the committee. "I simply say this: Before the Star Trek-type Taser 50,000-volt weapon came on the scene, police officers were able to subdue people who needed medical attention, without having 336 of them [worldwide] drop dead, inexplicably. We have to be, I think, wary, from a public safety standpoint, of sophisticated new technological solutions to old problems."