Taser Deaths II
Canadian Taser Controversy: The Death of Robert Dzienkanski
Once again, fierce debate has risen over police forces’ use of tasers as a non-lethal subduing alternative in Canada, sparked by the release of last month’s video recording that shows an overwrought immigrant dying after being tased by several Canadian Mounties. The owning of the weapons by civilians is illegal in Canada, but the Canadian Mounted Police are permitted to use them when they feel they are in a physically threatening situation. However, the death of Polish immigrant, Robert Dziekanski has brought fresh criticism about the reliability of police judgment and a reconsideration of the rules in Canada governing use of the weapon.
Robert Dziekanski, a forty-year old construction worker who was being sponsored by his mother to begin a new life in Canada, arrived at Vancouver International Airport on October 14th. He was unable to speak English, and the CBSA failed to provide a Polish interpreter. Apparently disoriented, Dziekanski somehow managed to slip through Canadian customs and wander lost in the halls of a secure area for approximately nine hours. When he tried to exit the area, a CBSA officer advised him on where he needed to proceed. Exhausted and incapable of understanding the officer’s advice, Dziekanski then became emotionally distraught. What followed was documented in a video now seen by millions around the world.
The video, filmed by fellow traveler Paul Pritchard, unleashed an international firestorm and instigated more than half a dozen investigations.
The film shows Dziekanski beginning to shout in Polish, repeating the words “help,” or “police,” which in Polish sound very similar. He then begins to move furniture around in a frustrated manner, at one point shoving a computer off of a desk and throwing a chair. Whether or not these actions can be justifiably interpreted as “physically dangerous” is up for debate.
At this point, the recording shows airport security officials first appearing, and other passengers shouting to them that. Dziekanski could not understand English. Moments later, Dziekanski throws his hands up in the air and tries to walk away. Four Canadian Mounties wearing bulletproof vests proceed to shoot him with a taser within 46 seconds of appearing on the scene, with no attempts to find an interpreter. Dziekanski falls to the ground, only to be tased once more as three of the officers pile on top of him. Exactly one minute and eight seconds after the police arrived, Dziekanski appears to have stopped moving, and the recording ends shortly afterward.
A recent autopsy report disclosed that there was no evidence of alcohol or drugs in his system, but was unable to determine a cause of death.
The CBSA has since come under fire for not providing translation for Dziekanski and for allowing him to wander unaided in a secure area for hours, the frustration of which apparently provoked Dziekanski into behaving in an erratic, though non-confrontational manner. However, the real debate concerns whether or not the Canadian public can rely on police judgment to use a taser with appropriate force, and furthermore, if a taser is truly a non-lethal option. Dziekanski was the 18th person to die in Canada since July 2003 after being shocked by a taser, and one of four who have died in the last six weeks. Amnesty International estimates that in the United States, a country with about nine times the population of Canada, 280 people have died after being shot with police tasers since 2001.
Alex Never, the secretary general of Amnesty International in Canada, which has called for a suspension of Taser use, said of Dziekanski’s death, “There is a very good likelihood that the Taser was used well before the situation called for it.”
“Nobody really knows exactly why these people are dying,” Amnesty executive director Larry Cox told CBS News.
“It may be because they have a heart condition. It may be because they’re on drugs. It may be because of some other factor that we don’t know about. The important thing is, they are dying after they are tasered. That cannot be denied, no matter how you spin the language.”
The manufacturer, Taser International of Scottsdale, Ariz., disclaims on its website that the technology is not risk-free but the company says no deaths have been definitively linked to the product. The federal minister for public safety, Stockwell Day, disclosed in Parliament that he had ordered a review of the police use of tasers in Canada shortly after Dziekanski’s death A coroner’s inquest, which will not determine legal fault, has been ordered for the case. An independent commission that investigates complaints about the Mounties is also reviewing the incident.
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