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The stun gun death of a Polish immigrant on
October 14 at the hands of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has
drawn worldwide condemnation. At least seven official
investigations are underway into the electronic weapon and its increasing
use by cops.
If not for a private video, initially confiscated by
the federal police, but released in November, showing RCMP using a Taser
on Robert Dziekanski, the death of the 40 year old man might have been
swept under the rug.
The Taser fires 50,000 volts of electricity into its
target. Dziekanski, who spoke no English, was distraught over
waiting ten hours in the secure baggage area of the Vancouver
airport. He was unarmed. Police zapped him twice only 30 seconds
after they encountered him, without being able to understand a word he
was saying. Three beefy officers held him down. He died soon
after.
According to a review of 606 Taser incidents, from March
2002 to March 2005, by the Canadian Press, 79 per cent of those hit were
not in possession of a weapon. The figures, compiled from hundreds
of partially censored pages filed by RCMP officers, reveal a pattern of
Taser use as a quick means to subdue low-risk prisoners, drunks and
unruly suspects. Most of the incidents were recorded in western Canada
where the RCMP act as the provincial police force. Many of the
incidents involved aboriginal persons.
Although the Taser is supposed to be an injury-free
alternative to pepper spray, batons and guns, its more
frequent use has resulted in a growing incidence of severe burns,
lacerations and deaths.
Amnesty International has
long urged police to stop employing what it calls “electro-shock weapons”.
It cites 17 deaths in Canada and more than 280 in the United
States. “Although coroners have attributed most such deaths to
other causes, the Taser was found to have been a cause or possible
contributory factor in more than 30 of the deaths.”
The RCMP is to submit a review of its Taser policies
to federal Conservative Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day. After
the death of Dziekanski, Day told a Kelowna, British Columbia
audience that he wishes Canadians were as outraged over impaired driving deaths
as they are over the death of a Polish immigrant shot with a Taser by
police.
So much for any suspense over Day’s take on the Taser
review.
But there’s more to this matter. As Toronto Star
columnist Thomas Walkom observed, Dziekanski was also a victim of
post-9/11 hyper-security politics.
“Civility and common sense demanded that airport
officials let his mother enter the baggage area to search for the son she
had mistakenly advised to await her there; security demanded that she be
kept out. The result was classic and illustrative: Thanks to officialdom’s
decision to put security first, Dziekanski was safer. But he was
also dead.”
Clearly, it’s time to abolish use of the Taser, and
stop treating immigrants like criminals.
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