Vancouver, B.C. (Canwest News Service) – The Mountie who Tasered Robert Dziekanski testified Tuesday that he was taught during training that multiple shocks from the weapon can be dangerous.
“We’re taught if it’s used multiple times it can be dangerous,” Const. Kwesi Millington told the Braidwood inquiry, which is probing the death of Dziekanski at Vancouver’s airport after he was shocked by Taser five times on Oct. 14, 2007.
During training with the stun gun, he added, police are taught to give a verbal warning before the Taser is deployed: “Police. Stop or you’ll be hit with 50,000 volts of electricity.”
Dziekanski wasn’t given a warning because, Millington said, the man was in a combative stance and had grabbed a stapler that he grasped in one hand.
“I believed Mr. Dziekanski was going to harm one of the officers,” Millington explained.
Hours after Dziekanski died at the scene, the officer wrote in his police notes that he shocked Dziekanski three times but he failed to fall, so the four Mounties who arrived at the airport seconds earlier had to wrestle the man to the ground.
“It was wrong, right?” asked Walter Kosteckyj, the lawyer representing Dziekanski’s mother, Zofia Cisowski.
Millington agreed his notes were wrong and his first two police statements were wrong.
He said he realized his mistake after watching an amateur video of the incident, which shows Dziekanski fell after he was shocked the first time.
Millington testified he shocked the man another four times because he was struggling with the other officers trying to handcuff Dziekanski’s hands behind his back.
Although the stun gun recorded the Taser was deployed five times for a total of 31 seconds, Millington testified the electrical current didn’t connect properly during the third deployment.
That’s when the officer switched the Taser to “push-stun” mode and placed the weapon against Dziekanski’s back, shocked him again for another nine seconds.
Millington recalled that during the fifth deployment, the weapon wasn’t placed against Dziekanski.
“I may have, due to the stress of the situation, pulled the trigger,” the officer said of the final discharge.
Millington said when he first arrived at the airport, Dziekanski was pacing, sweating and seemed very agitated.
He recalled he initially used the Taser because the man was disobeying police instructions.
He said he used hand signals — he put his hands out, palms down and pushed down — to ask Dziekanski to calm down.
He also used hand signals while asking Dziekanski for his passport and identification.
Dziekanski didn’t seem to understand and he threw his hands up in the air, which Millington took as an act of defiance.
“He didn’t listen to anything we were saying,” the officer recalled. “I remember somebody saying ‘He doesn’t understand English, he speaks Russian.’”
Millington, 32, is a former personal trainer who became a Mountie in May 2005, when he joined Richmond RCMP.
He transferred to the Vancouver airport detachment in July 2006.
He took his Taser training in July 2007, about three month before the fatal incident.
Dziekanski had left Poland more than 30 hours earlier and came to Canada to live with his mother, who lived in Kamloops, B.C.
His mother had told him to stay in the baggage carousel area and she would meet him there.
But unlike domestic arrivals, the international arrivals and baggage carousel are in a secure area, not accessible to the public.
Dziekanski spent more than 10 hours in the secure area, unable to find his mother, who returned home when told by officials that her 40-year-old son could not be found.
At least there is less bleating about not getting to the truth through inquiries such as this. Hopefully there can be some satisfaction with the outcome.
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I believe Trust and Honesty has very little to do with the RCMP it’s just stadard policy to create the occurance to their advantage, use the media to defend their part and if they ever go to court boldly stick to their story.
Don’t think for one minute they will ever admit and appologise for what they do to someone else, they are to full of themselves and pride to make things right for anyone else but themselves.
I feel sorry for people with attitudes like this.
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Kelly McParland, National Post Mar 3:
… one conclusion now seems inevitable: the original tale peddled by the RCMP about that day at Vancouver airport was overwhelmingly bogus.
The 40-year-old Mr. Dziekanski did not grab a killer stapler and wave it threateningly over his head, as the police claimed. He did not advance on four officers with threatening gestures. He did not stay on his feet after the first jolt of the Taser they fired at him. He did not have to be wrestled to the ground. He did not, it appears from the testimony of the officers who were there that day, represent any kind of threat at all…
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Police apologists can not change the evidence or the impressions of gross negligence. This video provides evidence of intentional mendacity. Honest self evaluation should lead to a humble acknowledgment and apology from the command staff on behalf of all . Trust is easily lost and regained only with difficulty.
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Cop ‘panicked’ in using Taser, lawyer alleges
RCMP officer who shot Dziekanski with Taser questioned in Braidwood inquiry
Irwin Loy, 24 Hours
March 3, 2009
The RCMP officer who shot Robert Dziekanski multiple times with a Taser weapon “panicked,” a lawyer in the inquiry into the Polish immigrant’s death charged Tuesday.
The allegation comes amidst aggressive questioning from the lawyer representing Dziekanski’s mother.
RCMP Const. Kwesi Millington has testified he pulled the trigger on the Taser weapon that hit Dziekanski at an incident at Vancouver International Airport during the early hours of Oct. 14, 2007.
But he never warned Dziekanski he had drawn his weapon and was about to fire, a so-called “challenge” recommended by RCMP policy.
“There was ample opportunity for you to give him the challenge,” said lawyer
Walter Kosteckyj, acting for Dziekanski’s mother.
“… Do you think it was a mistake, now?”
But Millington insisted he never had the time, after Dziekanski grabbed a stapler and looked to threaten fellow officers, according to the constable.
“It was a fast moving situation,” Millington said. “I believe he was going to attack with the stapler. I wanted to stop the threat.”
But Kosteckyj pointed out that officers – all physically fit and trained in hand-to-hand combat – outnumbered Dziekanski four to one.
“Did you panic, sir?” Kosteckyj charged. “I put to you that you did. You panicked over the entire situation.”
“No, I didn’t,” Millington replied. “I feared for the safety of the other officers. And I acted to stop the threat.”
Millington admits he erred in aspects of his original descriptions of what happened to Dziekanski.
His official account of what happened, written shortly after the incident, suggested that Dziekanski “swung the stapler wildly,” that he triggered his Taser weapon four times, not five, and that Dziekanski didn’t hit the ground until after he was jolted multiple times.
“You were covering yourself in your notes and in your statements, weren’t you, sir?” Kosteckyj contended.
“No, I don’t believe so,” Millington said. “That’s what I recollected at the time.”
“You panicked,” Kostekcyj charged later. “You got this all wrong. You don’t have a good recollection of what happened that night.”
“I made some misstatements,” Millington countered. “But my overall recollection was good.”
And the officer said he wouldn’t do anything differently if faced with a similar situation again.
“I acted within my training,” he said. “But I never expected the end result.”
The public now knows Dziekanski died after his encounter with RCMP officers.
He had somehow spent hours wandering around the secure customs and immigrations hall at YVR, before emerging into the public arrivals area.
The inquiry continues.