RCMP Watch

(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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(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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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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Paul Rutherford (Winnipeg Sun) - Nothing irritates me more than the immediate calls for cops’ heads as soon someone dies by their hands.
The second guessing of police officers’ actions is usually immediate and without foundation.
It’s often fuelled by the lack of or the carefully censored information released by the police themselves.
Case in point: Tuesday’s death [...]

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Winnipeg, MB (Canadian Press) - A 17-year-old youth who died after being hit by a Taser was a suspect in a theft, police said Wednesday.
An officer deployed an “electronic control device” when the teenager refused to comply with repeated directions to put down a knife, said Const. Jacqueline Chaput.
“That poses a threat to the officers, [...]

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(CTV.ca News Staff) -  A man died Tuesday after police used a Taser to subdue him, in what is believed to be the first such case in Winnipeg.
Witnesses told CTV Winnipeg the unidentified man, reportedly in his 20s, had been wielding a knife. But police spokesperson Const. Jacqueline Chaput would not confirm that report.
She said [...]

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(CBC News) - RCMP officers involved in the Taser-related death of Robert Dziekanski were also affected by the tragic incident and in need of support, B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell said Friday.
Campbell made the comments a day after CBC News published internal RCMP e-mails that indicated the premier was “highly complimentary” of the police force, despite [...]

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(Canadian Press) - The RCMP’s commissionner says recently released internal memos do not contradict the force’s publicly stated desire to investigate a controversial death related to the use of a Taser.
CBC News says that some of the RCMP e-mails it obtained through the Access to Information Act show a disdain for public scrutiny [...]

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