Angry in the Great White North

In a previous post from the summer, I discussed the perverse effect of tasers and other so-called non-lethal devices. By promising to incapacitate a suspect without killing him, police will use them with far greater frequency. In other words, the number of violent confrontations in which a suspect is taken down against his will instead of convinced to surrender peacefully will go up.

Worse yet, even a relatively minor resistance to arrest (a tensed arm, a glance over the shoulder) might earn the suspect a 50,000 volt shock instead merely a hard push from a burly police officer.

One wonders if tasers are growing in popularity because they level the playing field between officers of different physical capabilities, important in a world of affirmative action. But that's a discussion for another day.

If a suspect tenses up when he's about to be cuffed, should he be shot dead by police? Of course not. And that's the problem. Tasers ought not to be used except as a replacement for an officer's sidearm.

These are lethal devices. Robert Dziekanski is a testimony to their lethality. We've seen the video:

Dziekanski was agitated. Maybe he appeared threatening. But ask yourself this. At the moment Dziekanski was tasered, had the police instead pulled out their pistols and shot him dead with bullets, would it have seemed justified to you?

To have shot Dziekanski would not have seem justified to me. He wasn't armed. The incident was in an airport and not in the woods. There were more Mounties were available as backup if required. There were already four Mounties surrounding Dziekanski.

Using the guideline that a taser is really a substitute for deadly force, the situation does not seem to meet the standard required to justify the use of a taser.

As an engineer, I'm particular sensitive to the trap advanced technology sets for people looking for quick fixes for problems. Armed with a taser, I understand how some people might think that police can simply stun suspects first and ask questions later. Maybe even some police think that too. But those people are mistaken. Though technology can define in exquisite detail the working parameters of a taser, there is no equivalent analysis of the person about to be shocked. Some people will die. Some will break bones from the fall or the tensing of muscles (it has actually happened). A few will shake it off, and now attack knowing that police have already exhausted negotiation. Most will simply be incapacitated, as expected.

It's a classic Bell curve -- most people in the middle (incapacitated but otherwise unharmed) with far fewer people at either extreme (killed by the taser or unaffected by it).

As tasers are deployed more widely, and if there is no concerted effort to rein in their use, the sheer numbers of people getting shocked means that those "few" outliers will grow to be a long list.

No one wants that. Not the police, not governments, not society as a whole, not the manufacturers of tasers who are now dealing with the public relations fallout. Holster the taser until we've had a clear-headed debate on the inherent risks in any technology that is being proposed to be widely deployed, especially one that is deliberately designed to be dangerous.

My view is that you don't use a taser unless you are willing to kill that person. The overwhelming likelihood is that the person will survive. That's a good thing. But if he doesn't, the reaction of society should be "The suspect didn't give police a choice" and not "Why the hell is he dead?"

I'm swimming against the Conservative tide on this one. Prime Minister Stephen Harper says there will be no moratorium on tasers:

The B.C. government has launched a public inquiry into the death of a Polish immigrant shot with an RCMP Taser, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper insists the federal government won't "interfere" in police operations by ordering an interim suspension of the stun gun.

B.C. Solicitor General John Les said the probe into Robert Dziekanski's death at Vancouver International Airport last month will also review policy on Taser use in the province. But NDP Leader Jack Layton accused the Conservatives of not being "sufficiently proactive" and demanded the federal government halt the use of Tasers across Canada until further studies and officer retraining have been completed.

In my view, Jack Layton is right. The RCMP is a federal police force. Interference in operational decisions is not something to be done lightly, but a blanket moratorium does not constitute second guessing any specific incident. It would send a message to provincial and municipal forces that there are serious concerns about the technology, but in particular how it is perceived and used. Communicated correctly, it would also send a message that a law-and-order government like the Conservative government has the goal of making sure police forces in Canada are the best trained and most effective anywhere, with the tools they need to do the job. The government takes seriously any suggestion that the police are falling short of those high standards, perhaps, as might be in this case, because of unreasonable expectations of the technology at their disposal.

I do believe the government is taking the situation seriously. I'm just not sure if the people in charge realize that this might not be an isolated incident, but rather an unintended consequence of the false promise of non-lethal weaponry.