Canadian province bans police use of Tasers

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The Canadian province of Saskatchewan has banned the use of Tasers - or stun guns - by municipal police forces.

...

The chairman says there are questions about the safety of the weapon and that it has not yet been established one way or another that Tasers are safe, so he is asking for more medical and scientific information.

The decision comes amid more allegations of police misuse of Tasers.

At least one recent review found that some police officers were using the Taser too often and not exclusively to situations where their lives were being threatened.

Over the past five years, 22 people have died in Canada after being hit with a Taser.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07...m?section=world

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An opinion piece on taser guns in Canada... this is a good read:

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.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/2008/07...271031-sun.html

[MrsCat 6]

Saskatchewan is a fairly small province with many rural locations - most of which are manned by RCMP detachments. I am not sure even which cities in Saskatchewan have municipal detachments. This would affect very few people I would think. However - seems to be a smart move in the right direction none-the-less.

[Fandango 1,440]

The taser is deadly, and the cops need to stop reaching for it as a first resort like it's no big deal. These fcukin cops! grrrrr

[natty bumppo 297]

The taser is deadly, and the cops need to stop reaching for it as a first resort like it's no big deal. These fcukin cops! grrrrr

but ... but ... they can abuse this non-lethal weapon ... cause it just can't kill

[Teacher Mark 53]

Another victory for the bad guys.

[Chica Yeyé 41]

They should instead prosecute these fellows selling body parts....

ONLY in Saskatchewan