Sergeant Gord McNevan demonstrates the use of a taser at police headquarters in Peterborough, Ont.CLIFFORD SKARSTEDT JR
The recommendations of former justice Thomas Braidwood to severely limit taser use by police apply narrowly, to British Columbia, and not even to the RCMP who do much of the policing in that province. The B.C. government responded yesterday by accepting all 19 recommendations. The RCMP said they would not immediately do so, putting them at odds with the provincial solicitor-general. But Mr. Braidwood's finding that tasers can cause "serious injury or death," and his call to dramatically raise the threshold for deployment of the 50,000-volt electric stun guns, mean the recommendations should be implemented immediately, not only by the RCMP, but by police forces in every province and municipality in the country.
After Mr. Braidwood's report, Canadian police can no longer pretend that tasers are a low-risk policing accoutrement, and therefore appropriate for use in low-risk situations. The recommendations will put an end to the ludicrous use of tasers by transit police, who in Vancouver have tasered "non-compliant" passengers. They will also put an end to the use of tasers by authorities to enforce municipal and provincial laws. They would only be used in response to truly criminal offences, and even then the bar has been raised to the point that some police forces may decide they are not worth the trouble. In which case, good riddance.
No longer can police hide behind soft, essentially meaningless terms like "active resistance" as a pretext for their use. Mr. Braidwood would have it that tasers can only be deployed either when someone is in the act of "causing bodily harm," or will do so imminently. If the recommendations are adopted nationally, as they should be, that would mean Edmonton police could not taser a slumbering, drunken man who fails to get out of a vehicle when ordered. In B.C., police could not taser an 82-year-old patient waving a small knife in his hospital bed, as also happened.
Most significantly, it would mean that a disoriented newcomer like Robert Dziekanski would never again be brutalized by policemen wielding a stun gun. The Braidwood inquiry was prompted by an amateur video of the RCMP's fatal confrontation with the Polish immigrant in October, 2007. Four armed Mounties - Canada's finest - approached the unarmed, distressed man at Vancouver International Airport, and without making any serious effort to communicate, attacked him.
Those who watched that video, in Canada and around the world, widely saw it as an act of police brutality. This perception was compounded by the failure of the officers in question to provide a credible explanation for their behaviour. The officers could have seen a man who simply needed their help. But that would have required a little patience, and a little humanity. Instead the four officers chose the easy way out. It was an option available to them under existing taser use policy. Mr. Braidwood's recommendations should put an end to that option across Canada.