Editorial: Dziekanski death more than taser issue

July 23, 2008
Editorial: 100 Mile Nouse Free Press

Death is a private matter.

A person’s last moments are their most personal - time to say goodbye, to make amends and to savour the life flashing before dimming eyes.

Modern media has made what should be reserved for family and loved ones a public event.

Death speaks loudly.

If people need to make a statement, or shock others to action, then showing the reality of human demise is the way to go.

Watching someone die on TV or the Internet can be like looking into a possible future. People ask themselves: could that be how it will end for me?

To stress an issue, to prove a point or to get some answers, broadcast death - it is the ultimate emphasis. One only needs to look at Robert Dziekanski, the Polish immigrant who was tasered at YVR, to see how death can turn incidents into atrocities.

Before the video came out, the public thought of it as just another Tasering incident.

The film showed otherwise, and the strangled last breaths of the dying man revealed even more.

People relate to death because it happens to everyone - to die is human.

But is viewing death humane?

Besides a few cases of extroverted suicides, living creatures don’t usually go somewhere public when they know they are about to die. A family pet will lay in a corner, a terminal patient will attempt to go home - as common as it is, death is still a mysterious thing.

But some living things do not get the dignity of a secluded death.

Dziekanski did not get that luxury.

Neither did Eugene Armstrong, an American whose decapitation was posted on the Internet.

It is hard to choose between respect for the dead and knowledge for the living.

Death finds everyone - it just matters if there is a camera around when it does. With cameras posted everywhere from the street to cell phones, there’s a good chance someone will record your last breath.

Dziekanski has been laid to rest in his homeland; but the controversy surrounding his death lives on.

The faces of death

I have never seen, nor would I want to, any of the series of movies called "Faces of Death." But, I know of them and, as I watched the video of Robert Dziekanski dying before my very eyes, the thought of those movies flashed through my mind.

What has haunted me since then is that, had the world been witness earlier to others dying in much the same way as Robert did, he might be alive today. Had Canadians, in particular, been witness to the circumstances of the other 19 people who have died in Canada, perhaps we would have been repulsed into meaningful action. And perhaps some of those who have died would still be alive today.

What would we learn if we could see video of the last minutes of the lives of Terry Hanna, Clayton Willey, Clark Whitehouse, Ronald Perry, Roman Andreichikov, Peter Lamonday, Robert Bagnell, Jerry Knight, Samuel Truscott, Kevin Geldart, Gurmeet Sandhu, James Foldi, Paul Saulnier, Alesandro Fiacco, Jason Doan, Claudio Castagnetta, Quilem Registre, Howard Hyde and Robert Knipstrom?

Would we agree that taser use was justified during Clayton Willey's "altercation" at the mall? Were three taser jolts justified when Clark Whitehouse tried to flee from police on foot? What about when police arrived, tasers already drawn, to find Roman Andreichikov sitting on the couch, rocking back and forth mumbling to himself? Was it ok to shock Peter Lamonday several times when he was already on the ground? How about Alesandro Fiacco who "refused to cooperate with police?" These are only a few Canadian examples.

I know that if we could see the events leading to many of these deaths, we would finally learn precisely what happened - which may or may not jive with police accounts of the incidents. While I could not watch video of my brother's death, I do wish that others could. I know that most thinking Canadians would concur that the use of tasers was not only unjustified the night Bob died, but was likely unjustified in the majority of cases.

But seeing is believing and no one will ever get to see, for example, my brother on his back on a bathroom floor, unarmed and weighing 136 pounds - "resisting" police attempts to drag him out by holding onto inanimate objects for dear life. This while 11 trained police officers stood by as witnesses as two of their brothers in blue subdued Bob to death.

They say that after he was tasered, Bob continued to "resist." I contend that the "resistance" police often describe following taser shocks and which could be seen in the footage of Robert Dziekanski's death, is just the human body's way of resisting what it knows to be the final throes of death.

(I would not be surprised if, given the wide availability of the footage of Robert's death, it eventually ends up on a future installment of Faces of Death. I do hope that the lawyer for Robert's family pursues copyright protections on the video to prevent that from happening.)