RCMP Watch

Alleged assault incident occurred last August in Summerland
A Summerland RCMP officer has been charged following a complaint about an arrest last summer.
Cpl. Andre Turcotte is facing two charges; one count of assault and one count of confining, imprisoning or forcibly seizing a person.
He will make his first court appearance on Aug. 20 in Penticton Provincial [...]

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Robert Remington (Calgary Herald - Editorial) - Among the many things taught to cadets at the RCMP training depot in Regina is risk assessment.
“As a police officer, your role in an intervention is to ensure that the public is safe,” reads one of the Mounties’ training manuals. It continues:
“Police safety is essential to public safety. [...]

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(Regina Leader-Post) - It’s been touted as an alternative to police guns that will save lives, but the Taser is itself under fire following a series of deaths and controversial incidents.
In particular, a bystander’s video of the final moments of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, who died after being Tasered by RCMP officers at Vancouver airport [...]

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Oliver Moore, Halifax, NS (Globe and Mail) - Two young black men who say they were racially taunted by off-duty police and then abused by uniformed officers filed a formal complaint yesterday against Halifax Regional Police.
Nathaniel Fells and William Drummond were joined at police headquarters by dozens of protesters, a handful of whom stayed while [...]

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Davene Jeffrey (Chronical Herald) - More than a year after a South Shore Mountie fired her service pistol nine times through a wall after a dispute with her ex-boyfriend, the force punished her by suspending her from work without pay for 10 days, an RCMP spokesman said.
The penalty handed to Const. Adree Zahara was confirmed [...]

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(Globe and Mail - Editorial) - If there’s a medal reserved for courageous police boards, the Saskatchewan Police Commission deserves it. It has stood up against police orthodoxy nearly everywhere in Canada to voice honest doubts about tasers. “There’s a grave danger of them being abused,” chair Michael Tochor said yesterday. He also expressed doubts [...]

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Regina, SK (Canadian Press) - Regular municipal police in Saskatchewan will not be issued tasers because of safety concerns over the conducted energy weapons, the province’s police commission announced Friday.
“After questions about the safety of the equipment arose, accompanied by the public inquiry in British Columbia … the commission believed it was not prudent to [...]

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Chad Skelton, Vancouver, B.C. (Vancouver Sun) - Most shootings by RCMP members do not meet the force’s own standards for the use of deadly force, according to an internal RCMP report obtained by The Vancouver Sun.
According to the report, of the 30 RCMP shootings nationwide in 2006 (the most recent year for which data was [...]

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Lyn Cockburn (Edmunton Sun) -  How many have to die? Are 10 enough? How about 15? What if the number reaches 20?
It has and for all we know somewhere in Canada the 21st person is about to die after police use a stun gun on him.
The 20th was 17-year-old Michael Langan in Winnipeg who on [...]

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Petersfield, MB (Winnipeg Free Press) - Nine months after she alleges four RCMP officers held her down in a jail cell and Tasered her three times, this 17-year-old girl lifts the bottom of her cotton shorts, revealing pale scars on her thigh from where the weapon reportedly shocked her.
The teenager and her parents are in [...]

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