In memory of our brother and son, Robert Bagnell, who died moments after being tasered by police in Vancouver, British Columbia on June 23, 2004. Bob was the 7th Canadian to die and the 110th in North America.
August 7, 2008
World Radio Switzerland
A taskforce is looking into just how dangerous taser stun guns are and whether the police should be armed with them or not. There are concerns following several deaths in North America. Officials say federal guidelines will not change until a study is complete.
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August 7, 2008
World Radio Switzerland
There’s renewed debate in the Swiss press this week over the use of Taser guns, following the death two weeks ago of a Canadian teenager who’d been stunned by the electroshock weapon.
The 17-year-old died in Winnipeg – thousands of miles from Switzerland – but officials here say they’re examining cases like his in order to assess the risks posed by Tasers.
Their use is allowed in a number of Swiss cantons, in particular larger cantons such as Bern and Zurich. And that number is steadily increasing, according to Urs Geissbühler, the secretary-general of the conference of cantonal police commanders. Speaking to WRS’s Catherine Allen, Mr Geissbühler says a task force is currently assessing the dangers of Taser guns – but that for now, there are no statistics on how they’re being used across the country as a whole.
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Labels: michael langan, switzerland, winnipeg
March 19, 2008
Agence France Presse
BERN - Switzerland’s parliament on Tuesday approved the use by police of Taser stun guns when forcibly deporting foreigners from the country, Swiss news agency ATS reported.
Police will be allowed to use the electronic stun guns as a last resort, along with handcuffs and dogs.The Taser packs a 50,000-volt punch that can paralyse targets from up to 10 metres away.
Tasers have been mired in controversy after a series of fatal shootings in the US and Canada last year, with a United Nations committee denouncing them as a form of torture.
In one notorious case last year, a Polish man died at Vancouver airport after being tasered by Canadian police.
The man, Robert Dziekanski, 40, fell to the ground and died after the police officers piled on top of him. A passenger captured the attack on film and the incident revived debate about the guns’ safety.
The company that makes the weapons has said that similar deaths have been shown by medical science and forensic analysis to be “attributable to other factors and not the low-energy electrical discharge of the Taser”.
The Swiss decision was sharply criticised by rights group Amnesty International.
“This is a deplorable law … it puts people’s lives at risk,” said Amnesty’s Swiss head Daniel Bolomey.
Amnesty Switzerland said it “believes Parliament’s decision to allow the use of Tasers when deporting foreigners as scandalous and unworthy of our country”.
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See the archived map for the period February 2009 to February 2010 here.
At the 2005 Arizona Press Club Awards, Mr. Anglen won first place in the Investigative reporting category. He was the recipient of the Don Bolles Award for his report entitled "Taser tied to 'independent' study that backs stun gun'. “As part of an extraordinarily thorough investigation of Taser International, Anglen uncovered ‘smoking gun’ documents that showed the manufacturer was heavily involved in the key study that purported the devices are safe. Anglen also uncovered conflicts of interest and documented wide-spread problems with Taser safety — a matter of national and international public interest.”
In 2006, Mr. Anglen was a runner up for the Arizona Press Club's Virg Hill Journalist of the Year award. Peter Bhatia of The Oregonian wrote “Robert Anglen is an investigative reporter, pure and simple. Clearly, he is a reporter who, once he sinks his teeth into something, stays with it until the story is done. His ongoing work around the company that makes Tasers speaks to that."
