RCMP Watch

Suzanne Fournier (Vancouver Province) - Vancouver pathologist Dr. John Butt warned yesterday that despite the fact “there are deaths due to the Taser,” its use is “exploding” among police forces in the absence of strict-usage rules or monitoring.
Butt, a former coroner and chief medical examiner with 45 years’ experience, told the Braidwood Inquiry into Taser [...]

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Vancouver, B.C. (Canadian Press) - The RCMP learned much from the incident last fall at Vancouver airport where a Polish immigrant died after being Tasered by RCMP and the force will “answer to what happened on that day,” the force’s assistant commissioner said Thursday.
“It was tough for us, very tough,” Asst. Commissioner Al Macintyre told [...]

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Neal Hall, Vancouver, B.C. (Canwest News Service) - The electrical shock from a Taser stun gun used by police could cause cardiac arrest, a Vancouver heart surgeon testified Tuesday at a Taser inquiry.
“One can conclude the risk of death from a Taser is small but not insignificant,” Dr. Michael Janusz, a heart surgeon at Vancouver [...]

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Ben Gelinas (Edmonton Journal) - The responsibilities and conduct of off-duty RCMP Const. Gord Kroeker were questioned today after St. Albert officers alleged he tried to interfere in their investigation of a bar bathroom mugging.
An internal disciplinary hearing was told that Kroeker was with friends April 1, 2006 at a St. Albert bar called the [...]

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Anne Sutherland (Montreal Gazette) - A Laval des Rapides couple who were the first people in Canada to be charged with human trafficking have fired back at the Crown, the Laval police and the RCMP with a $5-million civil lawsuit claiming damages for wrongful arrest and mental anguish.
In May 2007, Nichan Manoukian and Manoudshag Saryboyadjian [...]

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(CBC) A coroner’s inquest into the death of an American man shot by the RCMP in the B.C. Interior two years ago will begin June 2.
Donald Dwayne Lewis, 43, died on Aug. 13, 2006, following an altercation with a Williams Lake RCMP officer near McLeese Lake, off Highway 97.
Presiding coroner Shane DeMeyer and a jury [...]

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Marianne White (Canwest News Service) - While the RCMP is on the hot seat at the inquiry probing the use of Tasers in British Columbia following the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, documents from the Mounties show their use of stun guns has more than doubled across Canada between 2005 and 2007.
According to documents [...]

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(Halifax Herald) - The grieving mother of Robert Dziekanski, the Polish immigrant who died after being Tasered by Mounties at Vancouver’s international airport last fall, last week told a B.C. public inquiry into Taser use that the incident has “shattered” her faith in the RCMP.
Police forces across Canada which use Tasers should be paying close [...]

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Toronto, ON (Canadian Press) - The RCMP are challenging an order that it give a cadet expelled from the force another chance to join and pay him $500,000 in damages. In an application for a judicial review, the RCMP argues the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal was wrong to find the force discriminated against Ali [...]

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Truro, N.S. (Canadian Press) - An RCMP officer was granted an absolute discharge today on a fraud charge in Nova Scotia provincial court.
In passing sentence in Truro, Judge Robert Stroud said Ron Lamb has an unblemished record as an officer and has been under considerable strain while on suspension. The 48-year-old officer at the RCMP’s [...]

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