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The justice system in Canada moves slowly but this just in from the CBC:
“The girl, whom Kennedy identified as “Miss X” in his report, was a 15-year-old inmate at the Arctic Tern Young Offenders Facility in Inuvik when on March 13, 2007, she was subdued with an RCMP Taser while she was handcuffed and held face-down on the floor by jail staff.”
Well isn’t that nice. Yet another case of a taser being misused by police.
“Kennedy said the officer who used the stun gun, Const. Noella Cockney, had been called to the youth facility by staff who said the girl was not co-operating with their orders to go into a segregated area.
After Cockney gave Miss X several warnings, the girl swore at her and told her to go ahead and use the electric stun gun. The officer “deployed the Taser for a full five-second cycle, causing Miss X to co-operate,” according to the report.”
Here is what gets me. According to the above report the girl swore at her and told her to go ahead and zap her. I have personal experience in working with highly charged situations with youth. One must always remember to remain in control of your own emotions and thought processes despite the fact your heart is beat a million beats per minute and your nervous system has you jacked up and ready to react to the presented stimulus.
Was Miss X asking for it? Should that even enter into the equation? Especially after being handcuffed and restrained by two other individuals. As the chairman of the Commission for the Complaints against the RCMP, Paul Kennedy, states:
“You’re in a custodial situation; you’re not going to go very far. You’re handcuffed — that’s a problem — [and] you’re lying on your stomach and with three people holding you down. So obviously there’s no need for it.”
Kids have a knack for getting under your skin, and if you let them, you give them control of the situation. I would like to put forth the assumption that this is what happened in this case. The Miss X, the youth, pissed off the constable off and she reacted with more force than was necessary to subdue her. Something was amiss as later in the news story it was reported that there was two versions of the incident:
“Cockney [the constable involved with Miss X] filed a report after the incident, but it was undated and printed nine months later. Kennedy said that report did not provide any detail on what Miss X was doing to justify using the Taser.
Cockney was not certified to use a Taser at the time, as her qualifications had expired about a year before, Kennedy found.”
Huh. Two versions of the truth, again. This particular case seems to have a fair amount of CYA involved, but still the two reports are indicative the incident was not handled ‘by the book’.
I wonder how many more people will have to be subjected to electro-torture before we realize that stun-guns should not be in the hands of our police forces.
Why is it that a death(s) is required before you are taken seriously? Tasers were introduced to the RCMP in 2001. The number of taser related deaths is cataloged here. As early as 2004, Amnesty International had serious concerns about how the taser was being used by Canada’s law enforcement agencies. Robert Dziekanski was allegedly tasered to death by a squad of RCMP officers at the Vancouver International Airport on October 13th, 2007. His crime, being intoxicated, acting disturbed and unable to understand English; in any case not a warrant for the death penalty.
A recent report obtained by the CBC had a few interesting nuggets of information regarding the use of Tasers.
“RCMP officials relied too heavily on information provided by manufacturers when they developed their own stun gun policies and training programs, an independent review concludes.”
Huh, our police in their lust for zap-a-riffic enforcement tools, seems to have went with the best case scenario and used the always unbiased and accurate industry data. No problems there.
Well actually there have been problems. Enough problems to justify a new policy for how tasers are used on people:
“Note, we have lowered the recommended point of aim from centre of mass to lower centre of mass for front shots,” the company[Taser International] says in the bulletin on its website.”When possible, avoiding chest shots with electronic control devices avoids the controversy about whether ECDs [electronic control devices] do or do not affect the human heart,” said the bulletin said.
I do not think the new recommendations go far enough. Robert Dziekanski was shocked multiple times before and after he was restrained. Stunning people repeatedly when they are restrained or hysterical should not be allowed under any circumstance. Being unable to protect yourself while being assaulted with electricity would be stressful for any individual and would put them an undue risk for injury and death (excited delirium is not an acceptable justification for the multiple tasing of a person). Taser use needs to be more highly regulated to protect the public from the use of excessive force.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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