New Brunswick police to monitor Taser use

March 7, 2007
CBC News

A new policy on how police in New Brunswick can use force to apprehend suspects will include a requirement to track the use of Taser weapons. The rules will apply to municipal forces, but not the Mounties.

The province, along with the New Brunswick Association of Chiefs of Police, is drafting a new use of force policy because the one currently in place doesn't include monitoring the use of Tasers, said Mike Quigley, director of policing services for the province.

"At this time there are only three of the municipal regional police forces that have been using it for a year or two, but other police forces have expressed interest," Quigley said Tuesday.

The RCMP does have a Taser-use policy in place, but Quigley said he'll pass along a copy of the province's new policy to the RCMP once it is complete.

The announcement of the new policy comes days after the conclusion of a coroner's inquest into the Taser-related death of Kevin Geldart.

Geldart died in May 2005 after RCMP officers used Taser weapons to subdue him at a Moncton bar. He had walked away hours earlier from the psychiatric ward at Moncton Hospital where he was being treated for bipolar disorder.

At an inquest completed last week, the jury determined the cause of death was a condition known as excited delirium, but found that injuries from the Taser weapon contributed to it.

Quigley said the new policy could be adopted by municipal forces this summer.

"We're hoping to achieve the final draft by the end of June and it will have to proceed through the policy committee of the New Brunswick Association of Chiefs of Police," Quigley said. "That procedure is not expected to be very lengthy."