[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS: The Vermont Senate Friday gave preliminary approval to a controversial bill calling for statewide policies regarding police Taser use and training. The bill says officers can only use a Taser against subjects who exhibit active aggression or actively resist in a manner the officer believes is likely to result in injury to […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS: Because of the controversy over tasers, Ottawa police have done a survey. There are some 1,200 responses to an online questionnaire, including as well as 700 filled out by police. Views will be analyzed in a report to be published in April. The Ontario Civil Liberties Association wants to see increased police […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS: Following the death of three mentally ill Toronto residents who were shot by police – Reyal Jardine-Douglas, Sylvia Klibingaitis and Michael Eligon were all gunned down after approaching officers with knives or scissors – a coroner’s jury recommends that Police should “maximize emphasis on verbal de-escalation techniques” in their training. “If the […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS: An excellent conclusion: Following the death of three mentally ill Toronto residents who were shot by police – Reyal Jardine-Douglas, Sylvia Klibingaitis and Michael Eligon were all gunned down after approaching officers with knives or scissors – a coroner’s jury recommends that Police should “maximize emphasis on verbal de-escalation techniques” in their […]
[[ SUMMARY / COMMENTS : The head of the Ottawa police union accepts police oversight (the minimum!), but, like the police chief, says there isn’t a pressing need for talks around de-escalation tactics here because local officers already do it all the time. “To echo the chief’s comments, we already do a lot of de-escalation. […]
[[ SUMMARY / COMMENTS : The Ottawa police chief criticizes the Ontario ombudsman for suggesting the police service is resisting an investigation into whether new use-of-force guidelines are needed is “unfounded” and “not factually based.” The ombudsman had said: “I think some of the police community has forgotten that this is not a police state,” […]
[[ SUMMARY / COMMENTS : Abby Deshman of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association is concerned with the threshold for taser use in Saskatoon, limited to “immediate need for control due to a high risk of death or serious bodily harm.” The Braidwood Inquiry wanted actually causing bodily harm or would imminently cause this. The police […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS : A case of proceeding cautiously with a new taser roll-out: Saskatoon police chief says city police will soon be getting tasers “in hopes of preventing the use of lethal force.” Police haven’t used a gun in the last year. The board of police commissioners approved the purchase of 44 X26 Tasers. […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS : Many important issues raised if tasers are rolled out to frontline officers in Ontario: criteria for using tasers: causing bodily harm or will imminently cause bodily harm (BC), and not just “assaultive behaviour” as in Ontario; taser-training; inquest findings that supposedly advocate more taser use; whether tasers are a method of […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS : An all-too-rare example of a constructive consequence of tasering – of a mentally disabled man: Officers in one police district are to be taught how to deal with the mentally disabled. The focus is on speaking calmly, empathy and not acting violently … : “If it’s a situation where the actions […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS : A Court of Appeals reverses a lower court judgment to re-instate an officer who last year Tased – for a duration of 31 seconds – 64-year-old James Howard, a nursing home resident with Alzheimer’s disease. The officer had claimed he utilized the Taser in an effort to minimize injury to Howard, […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS : Need for policing the police use of tasers. Ontario’s Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Service announced on Aug. 27 that it will allow police services to decide what officers can carry conducted energy weapons. Remembering Robert Dziekanski’s death, a city councillor wants controls in place to ensure how Sault Ste. […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS : Thee CCLA press release following the Ontario government’s decision to expand taser deployment in the province. Need for de-escalation training and mental health and disability crisis response teams not expanded taser use. While there are extreme situations in which the taser can be effective, misuse of the taser – it becomes […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS : In what’s been described by Ontario’s top pathologist as an “index case”, there are many doubts about what actually cause Aron Firman’s death. Mr Firman, a man with schizophrenia, died in June 2010 after an encounter with Ontario Provincial Police in Collingwood, Ont. Ontario’s police watchdog – the SIU – cleared […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS : The boss of Jordan Begley, the ice cream worker who died after being shot with a Taser by police, said his death could have been prevented if he had been allowed to talk to him. Typical reaction: a friend: “They turfed his mum outside and then went in and battered him. […]
[[Summary / Comments : The taser is not the appropriate instrument to deal with combative Alzheimer’s patients! Police are being trained to de-escalate such encounters, following a June 2012 episode, when a Police Officer used a stun gun three times on a 64-year-old man with Alzheimer’s disease, for being combative. Now, according to a bill […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS : The Victoria Human Rights Law Centre says police should be trying harder to avoid difficult escalation in altercations with the public: “In our view the money spent on the Taser rollout in Victoria would actually be better spent on training police to de-escalate situations and actually equip them with the skills […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS: Halton police relied more on the Taser than any other non-lethal weapon to subdue suspects last year — with 24 reported uses. In 10 of those, simply pointing the Taser at an individual was enough to get them to cooperate. Officers used the Taser like a stun gun twice while 11 incidents […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS: Do the new “X2” tasers excalate or de-escalate policing? ACT – the region around the capital of national Canberra in New South Wales; pop.:340,000 – are purchasing the new X2s for its police. The major advance is its “ a dual cartridge option” – i.e., each unit can fire twice. It also […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS : At a 4-day “Australasian Electronic Device conference” in Wellington, New Zealand, New Zealand police say they will not consider stopping the use of tasers. The police say that sionce Tasers were introduced in New Zealand in March 2010 after being trialled in 2006 and 2007 they have discharged tasers 212 times, […]