BC Solicitor General Kash Heed recently ordered all of BC’s police, RCMP and municipal, to follow new rules for using Tasers.  The  rules came from the Commissioner Thomas Braidwood’s report from last year’s Taser inquiry, but still fall well short of an absolute moratorium, as called for by the BCCLA.

Last Friday Alberta’s Solicitor General Fred Lindsay followed suit, with Tasers to be deployed only when an officer believes “there is a real likelihood of injury to the officer, subject, or bystanders.”  The Taser is not to be used when a person is fleeing the police.  Surprisingly, using a Taser on persons in handcuffs was not ruled out, with the policy stating that “careful consideration must be given prior to the use of a [Taser] on a subject restrained by handcuffs or any other restraint”.

The policy does not state what considerations one would need to face in order to determine that someone in handcuffs created sufficient risk to a trained and fully armed police officer for Taser use to be justified.

Restrictions on use are also coupled with new reporting rules.  Police officers must now report the circumstances of every use of the Taser to the Solicitor General for assessment.  If deployment is deemed inappropriate, the Solicitor General’s office can issue warnings or remove Tasers from an officer or a police force.

Check out the new Taser policy for Alberta police issued by the Alberta Solicitor General.

Check out the CBC article.

Tags: Alberta, Creditable Conduct, Taser
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Thomas Braidwood has released his report on the public inquiry probing the police use of tasers. Braidwood concluded that tasers are useful and beneficial, but can cause death and serious injury. This finding prompted his recommendation that the police should deploy a taser only when someone is causing bodily harm or there is reasonable belief that someone will imminently cause bodily harm. Braidwood’s 19 recommendations are reproduced below.

Immediately following the release of the report, BC Solicitor General Kash Heed praised the report as “perhaps the most comprehensive examination of (tasers) anywhere in the world” and ordered all police, sheriffs and corrections officers in BC to incorporate Braidwood’s recommendations into policy and “severely restrict the use of the stun guns.” In contrast, the RCMP released a statement that effectively said the RCMP will not comply with Braidwood’s recommendations, supposedly until they have had full opportunity to review the report. This recalcitrance prompted a sharp rebuke, with Mr. Heed stating that compliance is required from all police in BC, which includes the RCMP, and that compliance was a precondition for the renewal of the RCMP’s contract in BC which ends in 2012.

Kash Heed deserves credit for asserting his authority and ensuring that the RCMP is held accountable to our provincial government and the citizens it serves. His position is unequivocal and uncompromising, stating “I am quite confident those organizations will follow the directive that was received today. I expect it to be followed.” RCMP officers are now forced to choose between following the directive issued by Heed, or flaunting the findings and recommendations of an independent provincial inquiry. Let us hope that a wave of cautious pragmatism moves through the ranks that Creditable Conduleads to compliance.

Braidwood is critical of the provincial government for “abdicating” its responsibility to establish taser standards to ensure the weapon was safe for use and used safely. While the province’s responsiveness today is praiseworthy, we must not forget that it was preceded by years of inaction and avoidance.

Tags: Braidwood Inquiry, Creditable Conduct, RCMP, Taser
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Special Constable Greg McCormick of Halifax Regional Police testified before the Nova Scotia inquiry probing the death of Howard Hyde that he did not make threats before tasering Mr. Hyde.  Counsel for Hyde’s family questioned McCormick about several audible phrases:

“You’re going to be doing the fucking dance next.”

The statement was made at the same time McCormick drew his taser.  McCormick testified that Mr. Hyde used the threatening language.  Joanna Blair, Mr. Hydes sister, did not believe Hyde made the threat: “I’m sure because I would have recognized my brother’s voice.”  McCormick also played down the nature of the threat: “It doesn’t seem threatening to me.  It’s a threatening statement, but it’s certainly not a direct threat.”

“We’re just going to cut one of those balls off.”

McCormick testified that he reassured Mr. Hyde he was going to cut the lace around Mr. Hyde’s shorts.  Although the officer did not testify as to his exact words, the word “balls”, made while he was carrying a 10 inch serrated blade, apparently referred to a knot on the drawstring of Mr. Hyde’s shorts.

“Shut up.”

McCormick denied uttering this after Hyde arrived at the station while Hyde was speaking to other officers.

McCormick acknowledged that his supplemental report was written before his notes on the incident, the reverse of standard practice.  McCormick stated that the inconsistency was due to the fact that he had not been trained in notetaking: “As far as my notebook goes, I’m not sure what goes there…  It’s not something that I really know what I should be doing.”

Hyde stopped breathing after being tasered by Special Constable Greg McCormick.  Howard Hyde was revived by officers but died 30 hours later, reportedly after a struggle with corrections officers.

Read more in the Chronicle Herald.

Tags: Death In Custody, RCMP, Taser
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Last week saw the start of an inquiry in Nova Scotia probing the in-custody death of Howard Hyde. Hyde died shortly after he was Tasered by Special Constable Greg McCormick of the Halifax Regional Police in November, 2007.  In a turn resembling the Dziekanski inquiry, evidence has challenged officers’ accounts of events.

Constable Jonathan Edwards has recanted statements after contradictory evidence surfaced.   Edwards had previously stated that a booking officer warned Hyde he would be tasered if he failed to cooperate. No such warning appeared in a video recording of the incident.  Edwards also changed his story by admitting to using McCormick’s incident report to prepare his own after he had denied it.  Kevin MacDonald, who is representing Hyde’s family at the proceedings, noted that identical statements were used in both reports.

Special Constable Shannon Coombs has testified that Hyde became agitated after McCormick drew a 10 centimetre curved, serrated blade to cut a string on Hyde’s shorts.  This appears to contradict a previous statement by Coombs that she did not have a good view of what happened.  MacDonald suggested to Coombs that she could not see the device, to which she responded: “No, I did see him hold it, I did not see him use it”.

Howard Hyde, who suffered from schizophrenia and harboured a deep fear of the police, assaulted his common-law partner, Karen Ellet, after failing to take his medication.  While being booked at the police station, he attempted to flee.  Hyde was tasered during an ensuing altercation with police, and the entire incident was captured on camera.  Hyde was taken to hospital but was soon returned to police custody.  Howard Hyde died in his jail cell 30 hours after the initial incident.

Many have questioned whether psychiatric care would have been more appropriate than police detention. Ms. Ellet has stated that Hyde “was treated as a prisoner, not as a mental-health patient.” Nova Scotia’s medical examiner has  ruled Hyde’s death was the result of “excited delirium”, a term with much controversy in the health profession as it only appears as a cause of death in police-involved deaths and it is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Watch the inquiry live.

Tags: Death In Custody, RCMP, Taser
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The Braidwood inquiry was thrown into an uproar today after a Department of Justice lawyer representing the RCMP made a late disclosure of an email exchange between two senior RCMP officers just as closing submissions were about to begin. The BCCLA is a participant at the inquiry.

The email was an exchange between the two most senior officers in the “E Division” of the RCMP, and suggests that the four RCMP officers went into the airport planning to taser Mr. Dziekanski before they even saw him. At the inquiry, the four officers denied that they had discussed a plan in advance of arriving at the airport.

The email, however, suggests that one or more of the officers told their superiors around the time of the incident the exact opposite. Further, the email suggests that they contemplated using the taser not in accordance with RCMP policy and training.

The e-mail from Supt. Dick Bent to RCMP Assistant Commissioner Al Macintyre, dated Nov. 5, 2007, said: “Finally, spoke to Wayne [Rideout] and he indicated that the members did not articulate that they saw the symptoms of excited delirium, but instead had discussed the response en route and decided that if he did not comply that they would go to CEW (conducted energy weapon).”

The issues raised by the email are highly relevant and go to the very core of the inquiry’s mandate. The public deserves a full explanation of the email’s contents and its drafting, and significantly, why it wasn’t disclosed many months ago. Further, the public’s confidence in the RCMP has been shaken and we need assurances that the RCMP is disclosing all relevant materials.

Inquiry Commissioner Thomas Braidwood said that he was “appalled” that the RCMP had not disclosed the information months ago, and ordered that the inquiry be postponed so that the contents of the email could be investigated. He stated that further evidentiary hearings may be required.

Commission counsel Art Vertlieb, who outlined the e-mail suggested that it may be necessary to recall the four officers to testify again. The senior RCMP officers involved in the email exchange likely will have to testify as well. The e-mail, written on Nov. 5, 2007, was disclosed only this week by the federal Justice Department to commission counsel.

The late disclosure of this document has disrupted months of work. We’re shocked that the email wasn’t disclosed to the commission and participants months ago, and call upon the RCMP to provide the public with complete assurances that full disclosure has been made. The public has the right to know why the RCMP did not disclose the email until after the four officers testified.

Grace Pastine is the Litigation Director and is counsel for the BC Civil Liberties Association at the Braidwood Inquiry

The transcript of the email as read at the inquiry is below.
(more…)

Tags: Braidwood Inquiry, Death In Custody, RCMP, Robert Dziekanski, Taser
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An independent investigation has been called in the United Kingdom after a cell phone video surfaced of a man being Tasered and punched by officers in Nottingham.  The way the case is being investigated highlights the advances that the United Kingdom has made in regards to independent oversight.

In Canada, allegations of misconduct would be investigated by the police, most likely the same police force accused of the misconduct.  Only in Ontario, and soon Manitoba, does an independent civilian investigative agency exist in Canada: the Special Investigations Unit.  Independent police complaint commissions in Canada can order an investigation, but in numerous instances the responsibility has fallen upon the BC Civil Liberties Association and other human rights groups to initiate complaints and make the results public.  Investigations of BCCLA complaints typically take 2-3 years.

In the UK, after the video surfaced, human rights groups successfully lobbied for the Independent Police Complaints Commission to investigate the incident.  The IPCC can choose to supervise a police investigation or conduct the investigation themselves.  Some IPCC investigators are former police officers, but police personnel are legally prohibited from becoming commissioners. The IPCC was established to make investigations more open, timely, proportionate and fair, although most complaints are passed to the force for self-investigation.

The IPCC, like the Special Investigations Unit in Ontario, has been accused of having a police bias.  Ombudsman of Ontario and former SIU Commissioner Andre Marin conducted an investigation and determined this to be the case.  Independent investigative bodies such as the SIU and the IPCC are by no means perfect.  However, Mr. Marin has himself stated that even a flawed SIU is vastly superior to self-investigation.

The UK and Ontario use a model that can work, and any flaws can be remedied.  The standard system of self-investigation in Canada, overseen by agencies with limited powers and no investigative authority, simply does not and will never work.

In other news, the High Court of England and Wales has outed Nightjack, a popular police blogger, as Detective Constable Richard Horton of the Lancashire constabulary.  Horton’s blog offered an inside view of policing and was acclaimed by critics and the public alike, even winning an Orwell Prize for political writing.  The blog has been removed by the author as a consequence of the case.

The Times tracked down Horton and sought to publish his identity, asserting it was in the public interest.  Horton filed an injunction, arguing that he is likely to face disciplinary charges for revealing confidential information about prosecutions within the force.  The High Court ruled that bloggers have no “reasonable expectation of privacy”, as blogging is a public activity.  Horton has since received a written warning from the force for breaching professional standards, and may face further consequences.

The popularity of Horton’s blog highlights the public’s interest in policing, and now that insider perspective is gone, perhaps never to be replaced due to the consequences that Horton now faces.

Tags: International, Taser
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Following municipal forces in BC and the RCMP, municipal and First Nations police forces in Alberta have pulled the old M-26 model of Taser out of service.  Testing has proven that the model has a very high failure rate, in that it does not perform according to specifications.

Check out the story in The Province.

Tags: Taser
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A 55 year-old woman is in critical condition after being Tasered by a VPD officer in the Downtown Eastside.  Reportedly, she was threatening officers with a knife and advancing on them, but the officers did not deploy the device until a man intervened and attempted to disarm the woman.  She hit her head in the subsequent fall and is in critical condition with a brain injury.

Putting aside whether the use of the Taser is justified in this situation, it is often overlooked in discussions of Taser safety that injuries can occur not only because of the shock, but also from the subsequent fall.

Check out the story in The Province.

Tags: Taser, VPD
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Commissioner William Elliott yesterday offered his apology for Robert Dziekanski’s death on behalf of the RCMP.  The apology comes more than a year and a half after Mr. Dziekanski’s death in custody.

Along with an apology, Elliott addressed BC’s order to the RCMP to pull the old M-26 Taser model from service after tests have shown them to be unreliable.  The failure rate is approximately 80%.  Elliott responded by recalling all M-26 models across Canada, which amounts to approximately 1500 units.  The models will be put back in service when they are independently tested, repaired and retested.

The BC Civil Liberties Association has called for a moratorium on Taser use until all in-service units have been independently tested for safety and reliability and national policy has been developed on their use.

Check out the story in The Province.

Tags: Death In Custody, RCMP, Taser
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