Home > Canadian taser death sparks calls for police review

Canadian taser death sparks calls for police review

by Open-Publishing - Friday 16 November 2007

Police - Repression Canada-Québec

By Simon Santow

Tasers, or stun guns, are meant to be a substitute for lethal force. Every police force in Australia at the moment is either conducting trials of taser guns or already using them officially.

But an incident in Canada has again raised questions about their safety.

A Polish man who had just arrived at Vancouver Airport died when Canadian police tasered him into submission. Two bursts of 50,000 volts into the man were enough to kill him.

Robert Dziekanski had not been drinking and was not under the influence of drugs.

But the 40-year-old from Poland was behaving erratically soon after arriving in Canada on his first ever flight from Europe.

Paul Pritchard used his video camera to film inside the terminal building in Vancouver.

"I was just filming for the sake of an entertainment standpoint," he said.

"Once they tasered him, you hear this bloodcurdling scream. I still think about it.

"All of a sudden, the mood in the whole airport, everybody is watching it, it definitely changed. You see him hit the floor and you see him on the ground shaking and screaming and it’s brutal."

Several officers from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police used their stun guns on Mr Dziekanski.

"He was never threatening, I mean, I never felt danger from him," Mr Pritchard said.

"There was no threatening gestures or anything toward us. There’s a woman that goes right up to him at one point, five feet away, and tries to calm him down.

"I mean, he was acting irrationally but in my opinion he was acting scared."

Police spokesman Dale Carr says it would be a mistake to rush to judge the video evidence.

"It’s only one piece of evidence and it’s one person’s view," he said.

"It’s through the viewfinder of one individual. There are many other people that we have spoken to."

Review

A review of the rules governing the use of stun guns will now be held in Canada.

It would be easy to dismiss this incident as "only in North America", but that ignores the fact the weapons are now in use across Australia.

Some states and territories are trialing their use or restricting the weapons to elite tactical units.

In Western Australia they are now being issued to general duties officers, the force their taking delivery of 1,500 stun guns just a few months ago.

A stun gun was used by police in Queensland this morning to subdue a man who struggled with officers at a Brisbane tavern and then later at a police station. But no-one died in the incidents.

Australian Council of Civil Liberties president Terry O’Gorman warns of the hidden dangers of police relying on so-called non-lethal force to keep offenders at bay.

"Tasers represent a shift from policing by consent with the community to paramilitary policing," he said.

"They have no role and it’s time that their use in western democracies was seriously reviewed.

"They’re proving popular because if you give police a particular addition to their armoury, they will use it to, more frequently than they’re supposed to.

He says capsicum spray is an example of what he means.

"When it was introduced variously around the country five to eight years ago, the selling point from police ministers was it will be used instead of a police officer having to draw his gun," he said.

"Now capsicum spray is being used around the country every day in ordinary, mundane situations.

"The same is starting to happen with the taser gun in Australia. There was an incident in Queensland last year where the taser gun was under trial where a middle-aged woman ... carrying out a demonstration on a particular issue, was hit with a taser."

New South Wales

The New South Wales Police Minister David Campbell is under pressure from that state’s union to extend the use of stun guns beyond the special operations group.

"Tasers are used more widely by police forces in other states of Australia," Mr Campbell said.

"The New South Wales Government, the New South Wales Police Force want to learn from their experience and we’ll look at the experience in other jurisdictions.

"I know that we’ve got 50 of the devices deployed but there would be more than 50 officers who have had the training.

"They might use them in a ... situation where the public order and riot squad might be called to back up a particularly serious domestic violence situation, they might use them there."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/16/2093588.htm