|
BLACK-SHEEP COMMENTARIES by BITE THE BULLET ON RCMP CONTRACT January 7, 2009 MY New Years prediction: the year of the Ox will and end up as the year of the Taser. When Inquiry Commissioner Thomas Braidwood resumes his inquiry later this month, he will begin accumulating a mass of evidence that will ultimately enable him to determine whether the taser-related death of Robert Dziekanski, at Vancouver International Airport on October 14, 2007, was a discreditable act of policing that could easily have been avoided. Beyond the terrible circumstances of the Dziekanski affair is the insistence by the RCMP and most municipal forces that tasers are essential in controlling violent and unpredictable persons. However there is an equally important reason for an expedited arrest by Taser: it eliminates any likelihood of injury to arresting officers. I believe Braidwood’s final report will contain stark truths about present-day policing, and recommendations as to how policing can be improved. Hopefully, Braidwood will take dead aim at British Columbia’s insistence on continuing with a dysfunctional system of contracts with the federal government to provide us with provincial policing. As it stands we have to endure a federally controlled E Division of the RCMP as our provincial police, working on an integrated basis with a tagalong group of municipally employed police departments that operate under the direction of our provincial solicitor general. It makes no sense. Rampant use of Tasers constitutes a major break from longstanding police tradition: that arresting a suspected criminal requires absolute adherence to and scrupulous application of a force continuum. If there is non-compliance with an arrest and resistance to the authority of the officer, the time-honoured constraint of a force continuum comes into play. It requires police to exercise a high degree of self-control and physical skill that can only be acquired by intensive training in the recruit stage and periodic retraining thereafter. The force continuum begins with commands and gestures, escalates to empty-handed control techniques which will be as forceful as required to meet the offenders resistance, then rises to the use of pepper spray and impact weapons, and finally, should an officer have a reasonable belief that his/her life is threatened, a last-resort use of a police handgun to disable the attacker. On Jan. 30, 2008, former attorney general of British Columbia, Ujjal Dosanjh, told reporters attending a Commons all-party public safety committee enquiring into Dziekanski’s death, that he was informed that the Taser would be a weapon of last resort before the handgun – “the policing community at least gave me the assurance, if I remember correctly … that it would be used sparingly.” Today’s indiscriminate distribution and common use of Tasers demonstrates that the force continuum is now optional and may soon become passé. In my view, the Dziekanski takedown is proof positive. At the outset there was no calm and benign open-handed approach to Dziekanski by the senior member of the four Mounties; no attempt to stand back for a few minutes to allow his agitation to subside; just a straight in rugby tackling and smothering by four officers coupled with an immediate Tasering. No bumps, no bruises, no ripped clothing; and one killed-on-arrival visitor to Canada. Today, the RCMP and most municipal police forces insist on equipping officers with Tasers even though there is a mounting record of deaths in Taser incidents and clear evidence that the strength of its discharge of electricity is unpredictable. A matter that must be dealt with by the Braidwood inquiry is the response of the RCMP. Denial and delay seems to be the standard response from our national police force that cannot produce change from within, and is beyond the jurisdiction of the inquiry and our solicitor general. Under the division of constitutional powers in the British North America Act, the provinces have a duty to provide policing within their borders. Ontario and Quebec exercise their duty to provide adequate provincial policing and they ensure that their urban centres do likewise. Since 1952, wimpy British Columbia has avoided maintaining a provincial police force and gives every indication that it will continue to do so even though it has no assurance that the RCMP will be able to meet new obligations required after 2012. In future columns I will have more to say on tasers and policing. I’ll also a look at our North Vancouver mayors and councillors and challenge them to create an independent North Vancouver police department. Will they rise to the challenge; and as Kipling said in his Light that Failed: “Steady, Dickie, Steady! Bite on the bullet, old man, and don’t let them think you’re afraid.” * * * Published by the North Shore News on January 07, 2009.
Contact Judicial
Gadfly at:
wallace-gilby-craig@realjustice.ca |
|
|
