In a secluded section of Vancouver International Airport, a man forms a barricade of office furniture in front of a motion-sensor doorway. Though he’s been here for hours, his mother waits for him on the other side of the terminal—she’s been told that no one with her son’s name arrived at the airport today. A small crowd has gathered to watch him, and there’s an air of tense curiosity. Some begin to film him on their cell phones. He’s agitated and pacing; soon he’s hurling objects at a window. Before long, four burly RCMP arrive on the scene. The man backs away nervously, unable to understand their words.
The rest is history: within 30 seconds, the man has been shocked five times with Tasers, and he’s convulsing violently on the ground. Soon he is pronounced dead.
This is the scene that many Canadians relived last month, when B.C.’s Criminal Justice Branch issued a statement exonerating all the officers involved, effectively ruling out the possibility of a criminal trial over Robert Dziekanski’s death. According to Crown spokesman Stan Lowe, the officers that day were “lawfully engaged in their duties,” and their use of force was both “necessary and reasonable in all the circumstances.”
This statement arrived after a prolonged investigation into the incident by the RCMP’s internal Integrated Homicide Investigation Team. The investigation was extensive, including a trip to Mr. Dziekanski’s home country of Poland to determine any external factors that may have contributed to his death. Unsurprisingly, their conclusion was not in his favour. They determined the cause of death to be a combination of a fear of flying, physical exhaustion, and alcohol withdrawal. Taser International would chock the incident up to a state of “excited delirium,” a condition of exaggerated and irregular heartbeat (akin to the sort a cocaine overdose might produce), considered by most medical professionals to be controversial.
But Amnesty International has a slightly different take on what might have happened. A Taser, or “conductive energy device,” operates by using compressed air to propel dual wires. With a charge of up to 50,000 volts, the Taser incapacitates a target, regardless of their constitution, by causing all of their muscles to contract violently at once. If subjected to multiple shocks, cardio-respiratory failure is probable, particularly in cases where the victim is intoxicated or suffering mental health problems. This was substantiated by a recent CBC study that tested 41 Tasers, finding that 10 per cent demonstrated much greater effects than the manufacturer claimed.
Amnesty International found that of the 290 individual Taser deaths reviewed, 90 per cent of the perpetrators were unarmed at the time of incapacitation. Though the impunity awarded to the officers who killed Robert Dziekanski will haunt Canadians, the real issue is one of classification: a Taser can no longer be regarded by law enforcement as a safe alternative to a firearm. Until proper training is provided to officers, proper regulation is exercised, or an outright ban of the weapon takes place, the fate of four officers will seem like small potatoes indeed.
