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 Tuesday, after allegedly stealing some stuff from a car refused to put down the knife he was carrying. So the police zapped him and he died.
At first I thought why in hell didn’t they shoot him in the leg instead of using the stun gun, but then, I realized we in Canada don’t use bullets on a petty thief – even if he’s holding a knife.
So this boy, too young to drink, but old enough to die, has become another stun gun statistic.
He joins Robert Dziekanski, 40, who died in the Vancouver airport in October of 2007 after committing two sins. He knew no English and he was guilty of BTWP, or brandishing a table while Polish. It was a very small table.
His tragic story – the one about the immigrant who arrives at a Canadian airport, gets no help and dies before he gets to see his mother – is shameful. It made front page news around the world, not least because a tourist in the airport video taped the whole thing. I can still hear a young RCMP officer, eager as a puppy, asking his superior, “Can I taser him?” Sadly the older officer said yes.
That same week in Montreal, Quilem Registre, 39 was pulled over by police for driving erratically. He was probably drunk, but carried no weapon. Zapped repeatedly, Registre died later in hospital.
After Registre’s death, Denis Cote, Quebec municipal police federation president said: “If you don’t have that Taser gun, you’re going to have to use your handgun.”
What a good idea: let’s shoot drunks. Perhaps they’ll live to sober up and lead productive lives.
And last month in Ontario, Jeffrey Mark Marreel, 36, was evidently creating a disturbance in Turkey Point on Lake Erie. He was waving a piece of metal piping at passing cars. He got zapped. He died.
I could go on and on — at least 16 more times.
But it is important to note that none of the 20 deaths in Canada and the over 300 in the United States has been directly linked to the stun gun, with most of the deaths being attributed instead to “excited delirium” that apparently just happened to take place at the same time as they were being hit by thousands of volts. And smoking is healthy.
Meanwhile, Paul Kennedy, head of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, recommended in June that Tasers be upgraded from an “intermediate” device like pepper spray and reclassified as an “intermediate” device to be used only in truly dangerous life threatening situations — which is what many police departments initially said they would be restricted to in the first place.
Significantly, he recommended they not be used as a weapon of first resort.
This recommendation is particularly relevant when linked to a recent report from the city of Ottawa which stated that half of the 115 incidents since 2000 in which stun guns were used involved either suicidal or mentally ill people. This is the scary use of the stun gun as cattle prod.
Stun guns, say some experts and of course, the company that manufactures them, are not lethal.
They shouldn’t be legal either.
More data to support that the taser is safe. Grievous use? Absolutely. Policy is not law. Could not find the Ozark policy so I dont know if their policy is poor or not or whether there is even any.
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I have to profess again. “I found it” is cheap example of miss direction.
This video represents an extreme grievous use of the TASER weapon and Poor Policy
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19 times, who counted? And all he had was an elevated white cell count, after falling off an overpass onto cement or asphalt and getting zapped. Yup that taser is real deadly.
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I have to profess. I found it. I found it. I’ve discovered a video describing how safe a TASER really is….. Well you decide.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo6UwNu7QJ0
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If in fact the variation is as wide as stated, the second question is how often is this variation occurring.
Semi-automatic handguns such as the police carry are notorious for jamming if not in perfect working order.
Body armour also has a failure rate.
So the question to be addressed is how are you going to ensure quality control? Are you going to have the police responsible for it, or are you going to hold the manufacturer responsible? Who do you sue when there is a failure?
There are those that want more government regulations, and there are those that want less, and leave the various bodies to regulate the industries. Where are you on that issue is also a question.
If in fact we have joined the dictatorships, I would dare say there would not be any of the dozen inquiries ongoing at this time.
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“People get the government they deserve”, the most contested quote of all time.
No one knows who coined that phrase exactly but it’s the most perfectly appropriate statement characterizing British Columbians and Canadians in General.
“Sheep being led to slaughter” also comes to mind. What is wrong with Canadians? Why are they so apathetic towards life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Where am I going with this? Imagine for a second a police issued 38 calibre revolver that will, when fired, without a moments notice either fire a bullet 100 feet or 3000 feet. Would the RCMP use such a weapon?
Or how about a police car cruiser when the gas tank is filled will either travel 10 miles or 300 miles.
Or how about a bullet proof vest that will without warning either stop a 22 calibre bullet or let a BB gun penetrate it.
According to a study done by the Victoria BC police department (conducted by Intertek) the Taser is no different than the examples I gave.
If you had this knowledge, that a taser discharge could vary by 30x’s (30 times) would you continue using it? Of course not and any police department that advocated it’s use would be negligent in it’s responsibility to it’s citizens.
But this is the new low Canada has stooped to. It doesn’t care about the lives of Canadians or it’s officers. It only cares about supporting the right for a companies ability to manufacture anything. From garden insecticides to weapons if you can make it the Canadian governments will buy it.
You may think what I am saying is outlandish or shocking. Watch this newscast and you’ll see I am not exaggerating.
By allowing this weapon into Canada, Canadians have forfeited their right to call themselves a free and democratic nation. They have officially joined the lowest ranks under dictatorships and and police states.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZqBRk8zAK0
Get it straight, make no mistake about it.
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