Alternative to taser needed, coroner says

July 2, 2005
JONATHAN WOODWARD, Globe & Mail

VANCOUVER -- The death of a fifth person in B.C. after being shocked with a taser means that police and the medical community need to look for other ways to deal with a condition known as "excited delirium," the province's chief coroner says.

Some thrashing, violent people have elevated hormone levels that put them at risk no matter what type of restraint -- handcuffs, pepper spray, or electrical shock -- police use to subdue them, Terry Smith said yesterday.

"It's a medical emergency, in the truest sense of the word," he said. "Do we need to look at the taser? Absolutely. Certainly, nobody's going to dismiss the fact that we need to determine what the physiological impact, if any, of the taser is.

"But whether you put that person [who is in a state of excited delirium] in handcuffs or you put them in a straitjacket and strap them to a gurney, there's a high probability of negative outcome, even death."

Early Thursday, 41-year-old Gurmeet Sandhu was shocked with up to 50,000 volts from a taser in an altercation with the RCMP outside his Surrey home.

His wife told reporters that her husband was shocked multiple times, while the Surrey RCMP say they are waiting for their investigation to finish before the circumstances of the death can be confirmed.

Mr. Sandhu died two weeks after the Victoria police department released a long-awaited report on taser use. It had been commissioned in response to the death of Robert Bagnell in his Granville Street hotel room after he was subdued with a taser in June of 2003.

The report said police should get more training on taser use, deploy the weapon only when people are actively resisting arrest or posing a threat to others, and that the device shouldn't be used multiple times.

The report also said a person shocked by a taser should be restrained in a way that allows them to breathe easily.

Constable Mark Searle of the Surrey RCMP said he couldn't comment on whether police had followed the report's recommendations. He did say, however, that the attending officer had felt he was in danger and pressed an emergency button to call for help.

"That's a drop-everything call," he said, adding that the officers had gone through their full possible range of options -- using physical force, pepper spray, and finally, the taser weapon -- in attempting to subdue Mr. Sandhu.

Mr. Smith's warning about the use of tasers came on the same day that a man in Beamsville, Ont., died after police used a stun gun in his arrest.

The B.C. Coroner's Office has begun investigating Mr. Sandhu's death, Mr. Smith said. It will perform an autopsy and do toxicology tests to determine the levels of drugs that were in Mr. Sandhu's body. Mr. Smith said he didn't know when the investigation would be complete.