No Taser inquiry report until at least June

March 1, 2010
Canadian Press/Toronto Sun

VANCOUVER — The final report from the public inquiry into Robert Dziekanski’s death won’t be released until at least June.

Commissioner Thomas Braidwood has been compiling his report since the inquiry wrapped up last October, and has agreed to hand it over to British Columbia’s attorney general by May 31.

It will be up to the provincial government to decide when to make the report public, but a commission spokesman notes the report from the first phase of the inquiry took about a month to release.

Braidwood has been examining what happened the night Dziekanski was confronted by four RCMP officers at Vancouver’s airport in October 2007, when he was repeatedly stunned with a Taser and died.

An earlier series of hearings examined Taser use in B.C., with Braidwood’s report from that phase concluding that Tasers can kill and recommending restrictions on their use.

Braidwood’s report won’t be the final chapter however, because Dziekanski’s mother is suing over his death and the American company that makes Tasers has launched a lawsuit challenging the findings in Braidwood’s first report.