RCMP Watch

Jim Bronskill and Sue Bailey, Ottawa (Canadian Press) - The RCMP has repeatedly zapped people with Tasers in a steadily rising percentage of multiple-stun cases despite an internal policy that warns numerous jolts may be hazardous.

A CP CBC-Radio-Canada investigation of more than 3,200 incidents in which Mounties fired the powerful stun guns in the last six years shows officers used the Taser multiple times in almost 43 per cent of cases.

In about one out of six incidents, the RCMP applied the stun gun three times.

In 31 cases, the suspect was zapped seven or more times.

The findings, the most extensive public analysis of RCMP Taser use to date, come as the national police faces growing pressure to resort to the 50,000-volt weapons only when defusing serious clashes with truly violent or armed suspects.

Paul Kennedy, commissioner for complaints against the RCMP, will release a report today.

Kennedy is expected to pointedly reiterate his interim call late last year for a much tighter rein on Mountie Taser use. An imminent Commons committee report is likely to echo the recommendation.

Kennedy’s probe is among a flurry of investigations following public outrage over the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, who died after being stunned twice with an RCMP Taser and pinned to the floor of the Vancouver International Airport.

Dziekanski was one of more than 1,375 people the Mounties zapped repeatedly in confrontations from 2002 through 2007, the analysis shows.

In almost two-thirds of these cases, the suspect was unarmed.

About a dozen red sores covered Curtis Wasylenko’s back and buttocks after he was stunned by the Mounties several times — he lost count — one night in Kelowna, B.C.

A heated spat with cab company employees in November 2004 led to a parking lot confrontation. Wasylenko, then 21, says he was only defending himself from attack. When police showed up they demanded he stop struggling and threatened to Taser him.

Don’t even think about it, Wasylenko told the RCMP officer. “And the second I finished that sentence he shot me with the Taser. The feeling of it, was I literally couldn’t fight the shock anymore and I felt my heart . . . all I could feel was my heart all of a sudden and it just started to slow down. It felt like I had the wind knocked right out of me, I couldn’t breathe.”

Wasylenko says the officer continued to Taser him as he wailed in pain. A second officer zapped him as he lay on the ground. “I thought they were going to kill me.”

The CP and CBC/Radio-Canada compiled figures from standard forms RCMP officers must file each time they pull a Taser out of its holster. Thousands of heavily censored pages — stripped of names and other identifying details — were obtained under the Access to Information Act.

The percentage of cases in which RCMP officers fired their Tasers more than once rose to a high of more than 45 per cent last year, up from 31 per cent in 2002. The pattern of increase continued even after a mid-2005 bulletin to Mounties that said multiple zaps from the electronic gun “may be hazardous to a subject.”

Officers were advised not to cycle the Taser repeatedly against a person unless “situational factors dictate otherwise” under the force’s overall policy on use of force.

The six-level police force continuum begins with officer presence and builds in intensity to verbal commands; empty-hand control techniques; use of pepper spray, batons or Tasers; less-lethal force such as weapons that fire bean bags or rubber bullets; and finally deadly force.

TASER STATISTICS

Some statistics on RCMP Taser use across the country from 2002 to 2007:

Number of events when Taser used: 3,226

Total number of events when person zapped multiple times: 1,376

Total percentage of incidents involving multiple firings: 43

Percentage of incidents involving multiple firings in 2002: 31

Percentage of incidents involving multiple firings in 2007: 44.5

Percentage of events in which Taser used multiple times on unarmed person: 65

Average number of officers present when Taser used: 2.73