RCMP Watch

Omar El Akkad, Ottawa (Globe and Mail) - The mother of a Polish immigrant who died after being tasered by RCMP officers arrived on Parliament Hill Wednesday to speak to a house committee about the incident that grabbed the attention of Canada and the world.

Dressed in a simple black dress and accompanied by her lawyer, Zofia Cisowski walked past a phalanx of reporters and photographers to take her seat before the committee.

Walter Kosteckyj, Ms. Cisowski’s lawyer, spoke first to the committee, saying the RCMP has never corrected an assertion they made immediately after the fact that officers did everything in their power to speak to Robert Dziekanski before tasering him.

“The tape shows it took 24 seconds” from when the officers arrived to when they tasered the man, Mr. Kosteckyj said.

The lawyer added that arming police officers with tasers and allowing them to do what they wish takes away from the public’s trust in the police.

“It’s got to stop here.”

Mr. Kosteckyj asked what the RCMP would have told Canadians about the incident had it not been taped.

The lawyer slammed what he described as a pattern of “benign neglect” on the part of various agencies, including the Canadian Border Services Agency. He asked why a CBSA agent never bothered to enter Mr. Dziekanski’s name and simply find out where the man was.

“This guy was a lost soul,” he said.

Mr. Kosteckyj described a scene where a mother pleads with airport authorities to help her find her son, not knowing he was only a few feet away in a secure airport. The lawyer blasted airport authorities for announcing Mr. Dziekanski ’s name on a public system that doesn’t broadcast in the secure area.

When it came time for Ms. Cisowski to speak, she did so in slow, broken English. She simply asked the committee one question: didn’t the rcmp have a responsibility to check on her son and do what they could to help him after he was tasered and until the paramedics came.

Ms. Cisowski spoke for less than a minute. She is suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, and the day previous would have been her son’s 41st birthday.

Mr. Dziekanski, a Polish immigrant, died within minutes of being tasered at Vancouver International Airport last October. He had spent hours waiting in a restricted area for his mother, who waited several hours just outside in the public area. The two never found each other.

Eventually, four officers, responding to a report of a man with erratic behaviour destroying property, entered the arrivals area and tasered Mr. Dziekanski less than 30 seconds later.

The disturbing scene was caught on tape by another passenger, and quickly made headlines around the world. Shocked viewers watched Mr. Dziekanski’s final moments and responded, almost universally, with outrage.

The incident sparked a series of inquiries across the country, not only into what happened to Mr. Dziekanski, but also into the greater use of “conducted energy weapons” such as tasers.

More controversy ensued earlier this month when the CBSA disclosed that it had accidentally erased hours of surveillance images of Mr. Dziekanski. The images show the Polish immigrant wandering around the international-arrivals terminal of the airport before he began acting erratically, leading to a confrontation with Mounties, who used tasers on him. Mr. Dziekanski died shortly afterward.

The CBSA has offered no explanation for why the tapes were erased.

The RCMP has repeatedly defend its use of tasers, including in testimony before parliamentary committees. The force claims the device can defuse a potentially more violent situation, because officers can fire the device from a distance, subdue an individual and place handcuffs on them. However the RCMP has been widely criticized for its handling of the taser file, including its reluctance to release previously public information about its use by the force. RCMP Commissioner William Elliott admitted earlier this week that the force has not done a good job disclosing information about taser use, and will try to improve.