Sergeant Gord McNevan demonstrates the use of a taser at police headquarters in Peterborough, Ont.CLIFFORD SKARSTEDT JR
The RCMP is adopting the recommendations of the Braidwood inquiry on tasers and applying them to their members in British Columbia.
The announcement, coming later today, will put the force in sync with other police forces in the province, who were ordered to adopt the Braidwood rules by Solicitor-General Kash Heed less than an hour after Thomas Braidwood laid them out as part of his ongoing study of police taser use and the 2007 death of Robert Dziekanski.
In an e-mail to The Globe and Mail, Assistant RCMP Commissioner Al Macintyre said that as of 5 p.m. Thursday he had issued an operational bulletin to the force's 6,500 members in B.C. outlining directives on adopting Braidwood rules issues by Mr. Heed.
He said he was "asking members to comply with same and consider the directive complimentary to our existing policy."
The RCMP had initially said they would take some time to decide whether and how to follow the Braidwood recommendations, though Mr. Heed had said it was a given that the force, which polices about 70 per cent of B.C. residents under an agreement with the province, would adopt them.
Mr. Braidwood's 19 recommendations include a ban on the use of tasers unless a suspect is physically harming someone or about to commit a criminal act, and a limit of five seconds for discharging the weapons.
He said the province should make acceptance of his recommendations a condition for the renewal of a contract, set to expire in 2012, to continue policing the province.
Ian Bailey