(Globe and Mail Editorial) – There is a word for Taser International Inc.’s accusation of bias, levelled at a former British Columbia appeal-court judge who held the most thorough inquiry into the taser’s dangers ever done in this country. That word is “ridiculous.”
Was Thomas Braidwood biased, as a Taser lawsuit charges, because he concluded that the taser can cause “serious injury or death” and that police use it too much? Of course not. Twenty-five people in Canada have died after being tasered, yet most police forces in Canada have been loath to acknowledge that the stun gun is dangerous.
Mr. Braidwood chopped away at the existing bias until the truth could be seen. Ten B.C. police agencies that use the taser rely exclusively on the manufacturer’s training materials, he noted. Whose bias is in play? Not Mr. Braidwood’s. He very reasonably said police should not rely on manufacturers when the materials “encroach into policy areas or topics of medical risks that may be under dispute.”
Did he refuse to hear from Taser International, twist facts, deliver a diatribe? No, no and no. He brought before him – in public hearings – experts from emergency medicine, cardiology, electrophysiology, pathology, epidemiology, psychology and psychiatry. He listened to the evidence. Was that an act of bias?
It is worth recalling why the B.C. government called the inquiry. A Polish immigrant, Robert Dziekanski, was tasered five times by RCMP officers at the Vancouver Airport. Unarmed but for a stapler, he gave no resistance at any time to the advancing four officers. He died within minutes. A video of the incident showed as horrific a piece of brutal and incompetent policing as this country has witnessed for some time. Was Mr. Braidwood biased because he doesn’t associate such scenes with Canada?
He did not invent the risks. The most likely cause of death from a taser is ventricular fibrillation; the electrical current of the gun triggers a chaotic heartbeat. A second cause may be “spasm in the muscles of respiration … interfering with the subject’s ability to breathe.” The B.C. government has accepted all of Mr. Braidwood’s recommendations, which include strict limits on taser use. The truth about tasers is now in plain sight, and no amount of lawsuits from Taser International can obscure it.
I attended several months of Braidwood Inquiry. This was an experience which was draining my emotional energy.
Listening to blatant lies and perjuries of people whom I would charge with contempt and sent to jail was very hard to stomach.
Thomas Smith, Chairman of the Board, TASER International, Inc. had plenty of opportunity to say everything he knows about goodness and safety of his product. Nobody interrupted him or his “experts” who, I believe, turned out to be the best representatives of fraudulent science, the best money can buy.
It is a pity that a gadget which probably costs about $25 to produce is sold for about a thousand dollars to the taxpayers of Canada and for a profits we are being bribed. Automobile spark plug costs about 7 cents at the factory gate in US, much less in China. iPhone costs about $8 to make. Do we need more examples?
On May 12th 2008, http://www.braidwoodinquiry.ca/transcripts.php during the cross-examination by Mr. Vertlieb at the Commission Mr. Smith admitted that there is a low probability of risk of Taser contributing to death.
How low is it?
Aren’t policemen paid well to take some risks?
Should they be allowed to be scared of a stapler or a cockroach?
I suggested to the Taser International lawyer Mr. Neave to ask his client to post the Prize for a person who would be willing to take 5 Taser treatments for 31 seconds, after 20 hours of sleep depravation and 10 hours of fasting. Would it be 10, 20 or 50 million dollars payable only if the volunteer survives.
He did not get back to me, so probably there was no offers made, but according to the strict liability definition, manufacturer of the gun, its dealer and user, could be found responsible to pay damages to the injured or killed victim.
And pay Taser did. There are millions of dollars assessed by various Courts in the world and all the legal tricks are being used to delay payments. We will watch the outcomes of the those legal proceedings until the Judgement Day.
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Whatever information was presented to the Inquiry, it should have been examined and if need be dismissed or upheld for tangible reasons. The following remark by Vertlieb does not help:
“We just did our job and brought in all the evidence that we thought should be listened to, and it was up to the commissioner to listen to and weigh it,” he said.”
Only the evidence “we” thought should be listened to. Is it not the job of the inquiry to hear all the evidence and not just what counsel for either side selected for presentation? To sort fact from fiction and hyperbole from the mix to truly come to cogent and germane conclusions?
Looks like Verlieb shot himself and the Inquiry in the foot with that remark. I am sure it will figure prominently in the next diatribe by Taser International.
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It’s a great job for Taser lawyer David Neave. His success will be judged not on eventual outcome but on how long he can keep the matter before the courts and unresolved. Three or four years should be no problem.
This action allows them to make the bias argument to customers around the world, people who will know only what Taser tells them about Braidwood’s inquiry.
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Taser maker has uphill battle with judicial review: experts
By David Karp, Vancouver Sun
August 16, 2009
VANCOUVER — Taser International will have a tough time convincing a court to quash the Braidwood inquiry’s recommendations surrounding Taser use, two experts say.
“It doesn’t sound like something I’d think would have a huge chance of success, but as soon as I say that, no doubt I’ll be proven wrong,” said David MacAlister, a professor with Simon Fraser University’s department of criminology.
“It sounds to me like they have a lot of money and the report didn’t come out the way they wanted it to, so they have nothing to lose by challenging it.”
On Friday, Taser International, which manufactures the Taser stun gun used by police, filed an application to the B.C. Supreme Court arguing that commissioner Thomas Braidwood made “unreasonable findings of fact” and breached “principles of procedural fairness.”
Taser International is asking the court to quash the recommendations made by Braidwood, who is leading an inquiry into the death of Robert Dziekanski. The Polish man died after RCMP officers shocked him with a Taser at Vancouver International Airport.
In July, Braidwood released a report recommending that the threshold for police using a Taser should be raised from “active resistance” by a suspect to a threat of the suspect inflicting bodily harm.
“The fact that the terms of reference (of the inquiry) are broad and the fact that it’s a policy piece he’s been asked to write and not a hearing — both of those things are going to make the court more deferential to Braidwood’s findings,” said University of B.C. law professor Cristie Ford. “It’s going to be a difficult case to make.”
Late last week, commission counsel Art Vertlieb said in an interview that there is no merit to the allegations by Taser International.
“Commissioner Braidwood ran an open, public and transparent process. He went out of his way to accommodate everybody who had a point of view,” said Vertlieb.
Taser International is also asking the court to declare that Vertlieb was biased and failed or neglected to ensure all medical and scientific literature was presented to Braidwood. But Vertlieb dismissed those claims.
“I’m as independent as the commissioner. I have no bias, nor does the commissioner. We just did our job and brought in all the evidence that we thought should be listened to, and it was up to the commissioner to listen to and weigh it,” he said.
The filing by Taser International argues the medical research used by the commission was “inadequate” and “flawed or irrelevant,” and claims the commission didn’t consider the material or experts Taser brought forward, naming four specific experts.
But one of those experts, Los Angeles-based cardiac electro physiologist Dr. Charles Swerdlow, said in an interview he believes the commission heard him out.
“My impression is that this has been a very thoughtful commission, and an enormous amount of work has gone into it,” he said during an interview. “I’m sure the commissioner thought about this pretty carefully, from my observations. If the implication from Taser is that these guys did not think about it, that’s almost certainly not true.”
UBC’s Ford said Taser International’s best chance probably lies with the procedural fairness argument, but that would still be a difficult case to make. The commission is expected to have “heard both sides, with an open mind and desire to be competent about it,” Ford said, so it would be Taser’s responsibility to establish that didn’t happen.
“The standard that Taser is going to try and establish is . . . (Braidwood’s) findings are so unreasonable that they can’t stand. The difficulty there is the amount of deference the court is going to give to the inquiry,” she said. “They are not going to rush in to second-guess Thomas Braidwood, who has been on this for a couple years now.”
The filing is typical behaviour for Taser International, SFU’s MacAlister said.
“They’ve made a policy of fighting any kind of adverse ruling, whether it be from a coroner or a commission like this. They fight it all the way,” he said. “This is just another example of them doing that.”