Canadian Policemen Killing a Pole (warning!)

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AFI: I wasn't making a polish joke. It didn't hit me until several hours later the word I used. The bit about the RCMP however was a joke...

 

It happened again: "Family identifies man who died after taser strike"
http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/displayBreaking.htm?StoryID=67806

As I said, non lethal?

 

I worked for a while as a civilian (IT) in a police department. They had a number of tools for situations like this--pepper spray, tasers, shotguns that fired beanbags--and they made it a point to always refer to them as 'less lethal' options. It was for the very points you mention, namely, that any of them can still cause death if used improperly or if you're flat unlucky.

There are a number of bad things going on in this incident, which have already been highlighted--improper use of the tools, poor training, lack of a translator, and standard 'OMG terrorist' paranoia.

It's not the voltage that'll kill you, but the amperage.

 

Well IIRC, 'banana republics' kept the taser market alive back in the 70's when these things were taboo in America because the dictators would use them as torture devices - some models will give an initial shock when the darts strike, but then each time the trigger is pulled, another charge is sent.

Aye, the duration of the shock can be the factor that determines whether heart rhythm is interrupted terminally. (gawd, that sounds so dispassionately clinical )

From your description (i really don't WANT to watch the video) it's likely the victim wasn't flopping around in fear but having involuntary spasms from the residual effect of the first shock - his motor nervous system was overloaded and still going haywire.

Thinking dispassionately, it would be clear that a second shot would be unnecessary, and indeed, likely VERY harmful. That said, it was a situation of split-second thinking, and it's amazingly easy to second-guess with the benefit of hindsight, but in the end, the officer(s) responsible made a judgment call...

AND WERE WRONG; A MAN DIED.

This issue is really no different than the 'friendly-fire bombing' of Canadian soldiers in the field by two US Air National Guard pilots a few years back; these people are given positions were we expect them to make instant judgment calls with the potential for serious harm or death of others. And when all is said and done, they exhibited poor judgment resulting in others' death.

Do they deserve to be punished? No. We PUT them in this position, they merely weren't up to the task we gave them, and it's really unfortunate.

Now should they KEEP these positions after having an example of bad judgment on record?
NO
The pilots should not be assigned combat roles, but keep their positions in the Air National Guard (and their regular gigs as airline pilots) and the security officials/police officers should be moved to 'desk jobs' out of the field.

Anyways, I hadn't realized that post-9/11 America rethought its stance on tasers - I had read several instances of law enforcement agencies decrying these things as unnecessarily cruel, back in the 70's and 80's.

I was also unaware that the RCMP et alles up here had these things in their arsenal; I'll be emailing my MP today about getting them removed from use, especially in light of this debacle.

 

So the cops were idiots and they mistook the effect of their own weapon for aggressive behaviour?

On the other hand, I agree with what you wrote about judgement call. I don't want the cops prosecuted for homicide. I suppose in a civil society the knowledge of what happened should be enough and making the cops liable won't undo the death, if there was no contempt or malice involved.

 

As much as I hate to belittle people (especially behind their back here where I'm pretty sure they're not SP subscribers), I have to agree with the italicised part above:

a) they ignored common sense while holding an individual that they couldn't understand and couldn't understand them in NOT GETTING A TRANSLATOR (they had to have known what language they'd need because of a little thing the man HAD to present to them...a PASSPORT.)
b) they broke the 'esclation of force' procedure detailed elsewhere by skipping the pepper spray and going straight to the taser,
c) they responded incorrectly to the results of their taser attack, quite possibly due to poor/absent training on the device and not understanding of the likely results from it (violent spasming).

Essentially, it's almost as bad as reading a police incident report saying:

The perpetrator refused to comply with my verbal commands to lie down, so I deployed my pepper spray and hit the perp in the eyes. When he began to scream and flail his arms around, but still refused to lie down, I feared he was going to charge so I drew my sidearm and shot the perp. ​

Unfortunately, another factor comes to my mind - adrenaline was likely pumping through the officers' bloodstreams, clouding rational judgment and encouraging 'fight/flight instinct.' Pity. Maybe not putting hulking mesomorphs with adrenal glands the sizes of soccerballs for this sort of role might be a better human resources priority?

 

This incident has been drawing HUGE commentary in Canada -- every radio talk show is howling for RCMP blood. To a certain degree I agree with them. There have been a number of tazer deaths here in Canada, though the statistics still say that being hit with one is not likely to kill you. ANY weapon can kill a person if the person is particularly susceptible to it -- there is no such thing as a 100% non-lethal intervention -- even bare hands can be unintentionally lethal.

That said, the airport personnel are airheads (I use the term as a euphemism for a more appropriate "A" word) for making a person sit in the holding area for 10 hours without trying to find him a translator. I don't excuse his throwing around of computer equipment and the other stuff he did, but he never attacked another human and he was likely tired, frustrated, and probably hungry to boot. It's understandable he'd snap and go a little crazy.

Why the 4 (four!) policemen who responded thought that a Tazer was the right way to go as opposed to the four of them just wrestling him down is totally beyond me. Likely they had paranoia pumping through their veins as well. They've probably used Tazers a lot (as I said, Tazers are lethal only in rare instances) and had no thought that this would be one of the exceptions to the non-lethal nature of the weapon.

My understanding of this story is that it is a 'comedy' of errors that isn't very bloody funny. There was a miscommunication with his mother, so she was not there to translate for him, and then no-one had the know-how or desire to talk to him. When he started acting aggressive, people thought he was a violence risk, and then the police charged in, likely having been told he had been violent toward people, and overreacted. That should have been the end of it but sadly it ended in a death. This is likely going to sour Canadian / Polish relations for some time now. I heard the Polish ambassador on the news and he is quite strident in his demand for an inquiry. I can't blame him.