Police defend right to use 'less-lethal' weapons

August 16, 2008
MATTHEW TREVISAN, Globe and Mail

Rick Anthony remembers a time in policing when there weren't many options available to officers faced with a life or death situation. "Your gun was your distance weapon and your baton was your close-up weapon," said Mr. Anthony, a detective with the Victoria police. "Your mouth was both."

But now, many forces across the country use a variety of "less-lethal" weapons - that is, a weapon less lethal than a gun but still able to inflict fatal damage - in their arsenal.

One of those weapons, the taser, has generated controversy in high-profile instances such as the death of Robert Dziekanski, who died last fall after being tasered by RCMP at Vancouver International Airport. But another weapon, which has been in some police arsenals for more than a decade, has also had its fair share of publicity. And police have recently said that it is more reliable than the taser and can be used at a much greater distance.

Developed originally as a way for police to control crowds during unrest in Northern Ireland, the ARWEN, the acronym for Anti-riot Weapon ENfield, fires plastic bullets and is used by law enforcements agencies across the country, said Brian Kirkey, president of Police Ordnance, the company based in Markham, Ont., that manufactures and distributes the gun worldwide.

"It would be fair to say most medium to large agencies in Canada have an ARWEN system in their equipment inventory for both their tactical team and their public order unit," he said.

The current model, the ARWEN 37, fires plastic bullets at a rate of 74 metres a second and can be used as far as 100 metres away. Getting hit by one of the bullets feels the same as getting beamed by pitch hurled by a major league pitcher, Mr. Kirkey said.

Tactical officers who fire the guns aim for a suspect's stomach, or extremities such as the upper thigh and lower arm, as a way to disarm suspects or get them to comply with police. "It'll break bones if it hits," Mr. Kirkey said. "You don't want to hit them in the head. You don't want to hit them in the neck. That's where you have a potential fatality."

In August of 1984, Sean Downes died after he was hit in the chest by a plastic bullet fired by a Northern Ireland police officer, an incident that garnered attention because of a photo of Mr. Downes's body showing a huge bruise on his chest.

In Canada, the gun first garnered attention in Vancouver in 1994 when, during a Stanley Cup riot after the Vancouver Canucks lost in Game 7 to the New York Rangers, a man was shot in the head by one of the plastic bullets.

In 2001, the man's civil suit against the Vancouver police force and the city of Vancouver was dismissed, and a B.C. Supreme Court judge found that the officer who shot the man, Ryan Berntt, acted reasonably, according to news reports at the time.

Despite the potential for serious harm, Inspector Clark of the Calgary police tactical team, said the ARWEN is instrumental in providing an opportunity for police to disarm a suspect without inflicting a fatal wound.

The Calgary police department has been using the gun since 2007 and has discharged it five times.

Police forces across the country that employ the ARWEN include Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, Halton and Victoria. ***

The ARWEN 37T Tactical

Claimed to be the first less lethal tactical weapon to combine lightness, high accuracy and the ability to fire up to five shots without reloading.

Rotary magazine

Light weight with minimal rotational torque. Semi- automatic function - can fire five rounds in four seconds

Payload

37 mm foam, wood or tear- gas ammunition

Telescoping butt stock

The ARWEN is 64 - 69 cm long

Rifling:Five lands / five grooves

Rate of twist: One in 540mm right hand twist

Weight unloaded: 2.98 kg

Weight loaded with five rounds:3.61 kg

NINIAN CARTER/THE GLOBE AND MAIL

In the line of fire

April 22, 2008
Keith Vass - Victoria News

Tasers often used on non-assaultive, unarmed subjects, but that’s as it should be, say police

A man is fighting with police, kicking at them, locking his legs with theirs and refusing to let go. Another is armed with a knife, threatening passers-by. One, wanted for dangerous driving and already being held on the ground by police, refuses to bring his arms out from underneath his body. All had their confrontation with Victoria police brought to an end by a Taser.

Drawn from Victoria Police Department use-of-force reports accessed through Freedom of Information legislation, the three cases present a small sample of the 48 times officers drew their Tasers in 2007.

Some contain more detail than others on what led police to deploy the Taser. “Aggressive; tensed up, clenched fists” is all one says.

Others are harrowing. In one case, a man arrested the night before by heavily-armed tactical officers who seized two guns, barricaded himself in an apartment after being released. After he challenged police to “take him on,” smashed furniture and threatened to leap from a seventh-storey window, an officer Tasered him when he turned his back.

As controversy around the weapon mounts, a B.C. inquiry into police Taser use prepares to hear submissions while other agencies face allegations of “usage creep.”

To understand how and why Victoria police are using the weapon, the News reviewed 183 use-of-force reports from 2005 through to the end of 2007. We requested every incident where police drew the Taser to threaten its use or delivered its 50,000-volt, 2.1-milliampere jolt in either the pain-compliance based ‘push-stun’ mode or by firing the weapons barbed probes to disrupt muscle control.

In an interview, Const. Mike Massine, the VPD’s Taser trainer and co-ordinator explained how they train officers to use the weapon, when each of its three modes of use is appropriate and where the device fits in the range of force options.

Whether the reports released represent every Taser use by the force is unclear. We received 69 for 2005, 66 for 2006 and 48 from last year. But statistics from the Police Services Division of the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General show the Victoria police reported 79 Taser deployments to the ministry in 2005 and 59 in 2006 (numbers for 2007 are not yet available). A government spokeswoman said the discrepancy is being investigated.

And while the recent figures suggest Taser use has become more restrained, the government numbers show Taser usage by Victoria police was less common before 2005. In 2004, the ministry recorded 20 deployments, nine in 2003, 33 in 2002, 16 in 2001 and 32 in 2000.

In a detailed look at the 48 available reports from 2007, 24 Tasered subjects – half of the total – were deemed actively resisting but were not assaultive. Seven of those cases saw the Taser used in push-stun, 14 in probe deployment, five cases saw both modes used and in one case the weapon was only shown.

In 21 cases, police recorded the subject was assaultive, though only one presented a perceived threat of serious injury or death.

Six people either had a weapon in hand or had one within reach, while in another case police had received a report a man had a knife though it proved false. It was used five times to control somebody threatening suicide or self-harm.

In 28 cases, police were also in hand-to-hand scuffles with the subject, though the reports don’t always indicate which came first, the struggle or the shock. Six times another police weapon was used; three of those were pepper spray, two were shotgun fired impact rounds and one a steel baton.

Nine times police used the push-stun mode to get someone already under police restraint to produce their arms for handcuffing.

Across all three years, push-stun was used in 54 per cent of all Victoria Taser incidents, sometimes after the probes had also been fired.

Not one of the 183 reports records serious injuries requiring hospital care resulting from the Taser, though some needed treatment for puncture wounds from the device’s probes or cuts and abrasions.

Use of the Taser on non-assaultive, unarmed subjects has placed the RCMP under fire from the force’s public complaints chair, federal politicians and civil liberties groups, alleging Mounties are using the stun gun at a lower threshold than intended.

But Massine insists police have never viewed the weapon only as a replacement for deadly force, nor is there an obligation to start at a low level of force and work higher.

In policy and training, Victoria officers are told the Taser is an option at the level of “active” resistance, but doesn’t have to reach “assaultive.”

Active resistance, as police use the term, includes refusing verbal commands, pulling away, tensing muscles and ‘turtling,’ pinning arms under the body to prevent handcuffing -- anything that would hinder police making an arrest.

“The bottom line is, in any situation where there’s a level of resistance there’s a potential for extreme violence,” said Massine, adding police have to read often subtle cues to gauge if someone is about to become assaultive.

Rather than match resistance with an equal level of force, police are trained to go one step higher, Massine said, to bring the situation under control quickly. “The longer these things go on, the more likely subjects and officers and bystanders are to get injured,” he said.

B.C. Civil Liberties Association executive director Murray Mollard stood by the group’s call for a moratorium on all stun gun use based on safety concerns and noted a United Nations committee in November said Taser use could be seen as a form of torture.

The use of push-stun to achieve pain compliance is a growing worry. “No one has really examined the degree of pain this imposes on individuals,” he said.

But Massine counters that the Taser in push-stun is actually a lesser force option than other weapons. The effects of a Taser jolt end the moment the current stops flowing. “As soon as I turn it off, it’s gone, it’s done,” he said.

Taser policy gap worrying

April 16, 2008
Victoria News

It’s been 10 years since the province OK’d the use of conducted energy weapons – more commonly known by the brand name Taser – but left the specifics regarding what is or isn’t acceptable in their use up to individual police agencies.

Victoria Police Department officers were the first in Canada to carry the devices in December 1998, the department's first policy for their use was approved by the Victoria Police Board that month.

In three years of records accessed by the Victoria News, the VPD’s most common deployment of the Taser has been the push-stun method, in which suspects resisting arrest are touched directly by the electronic weapon and given a painful jolt of current.

However, the current policy, amended four times since the initial one was written, lists only two methods of using the Taser to control a subject: officers can threaten to use it, or deploy it “to cause a motor dysfunction,” which involves firing a pair of barbed probes into the subject then sending a jolt of current through them.

According to figures generated from police reports, the push-stun method of using the TASER – was used in 54 per cent of all Taser deployments from 2005 to 2007. Using the barbed probes to cause a muscle dysfunction was a close second.

We find it more than a tad alarming, that somehow -- it’s unclear why -- the most common mode of use of the weapon is not only absent from the use of force policy for Tasers written for the department, but has not been approved by the Victoria Police Board, whose job as the force’s civilian oversight is to rule on what level of force is acceptable.

Whether it was the result of an oversight somewhere in the process of policy approval or a deliberate decision by the board remains unknown.

We’re confident Victoria police officers are receiving solid training in the safe and appropriate use of the weapon. And while the pain compliance role of the push-stun mode may make some cringe, used appropriately it can help end police confrontations quickly and with fewer injuries to police, suspects and the public than hand-to-hand fighting or other intermediate police weapons.

But it’s concerning that such a gap should exist between the department’s understanding of how the Taser fits in their arsenal and what has been clearly endorsed by the police board. The gap could open the way for a lawsuit from someone claiming the weapon was used on them unlawfully, potentially putting taxpayers on the hook for damages.

An amendment to the policy is already in the works, but the gaffe still demands an explanation from police management and the board. We hope it doesn’t end up costing more than red faces.

Taser moratorium urged by lawyer

April 3, 2008
Richard Watts and Louise Dickson, Canwest News Service

VICTORIA - Police should be prohibited from using Tasers until clear rules are in place governing their use, a leading civil liberties lawyer said Wednesday.

"The solicitor-general should issue a moratorium on the use of Tasers until official policies or training are in place," Jason Gratl, president of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said in a telephone interview. In the absence of any policy, "the weapon has become a lawless instrument of coercion."

Gratl was speaking on an incident reported Wednesday in which several West Shore RCMP officers handcuffed a 135-pound, 15-year-old boy and then Tasered him at least twice. The boy told his mother and lawyer that the Taser-inflicting officer laughed after administering the electric shock.

An incident report from police confirms the Tasering was done in the handheld "touch" mode, where the electrical terminals of the device touch the subject, and not by firing the instrument's darts. But the report also says the boy was resisting. Even after he was placed in the rear seat of a squad car, the boy kicked at the window and door hard enough to rock the car, the report added.

The boy, who is known to police, was arrested March 21 for being out past his 9 p.m. curfew. The court had imposed the curfew as one condition of his interim release while the boy awaits trial on a mischief charge. The acting solicitor-general, John van Dongen, was not available for comment. The use of Tasers has become especially controversial since the Oct. 14 death of Robert Dziekanski. Mounties at the Vancouver International Airport Tasered Dziekanski, a 40-year-old Polish immigrant, in an incident captured in video on a bystander's cellphone. Dziekanski died shortly afterwards.

Victoria interim police Chief Bill Naughton, who co-wrote a Tasers report, said people are under the misconception that a person who is handcuffed is under control and somehow incapable of causing injury. "And that's not the case," Naughton said.

RCMP accused of misusing taser on BC teen

April 3, 2008
CBC News

An RCMP detachment in a suburb of Victoria, B.C., is being accused of misusing a Taser stun gun on a 15-year-old boy who was being arrested for disobeying a court-ordered curfew for a mischief charge.

The boy was combative while being arrested and he was shocked at least two times, once in the leg and once in the chest, according to a West Shore RCMP report about the March 21 incident.

"The conducted energy weapon was deployed because the individual was combative and kicking at the officers, and it was important for officer safety to control that individual," RCMP spokeswoman Tasha Adams told CBC News Wednesday.

The report said the boy was attempting to wriggle out of a police car when an officer fired a Taser shot into his leg. Shortly after, the boy began kicking the police-car door from the inside and the officer decided to use the Taser again, on the boy's chest, the report says.

The boy's mother admits her son is no angel, has anger issues and has been in trouble with the law. "He yells and he screams a lot. He's voracious when he's in an angry state. He's damaged property at home," the mother said. But using the Taser on the boy was an overreaction and the RCMP had other options, the mother said. Her name cannot be used to protect the identity of her son, who cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. "If the kid was kicking up that much of a fuss, could you not have cuffed his feet to prevent him from kicking? Did you have to use such force?" she said.

Tom Morino, the boy's lawyer who saw the marks on his body, said this is clear abuse of the Taser. "[He's a] 15-year-old boy, who is 135 lbs. His hands are handcuffed behind his back. There are several officers present. How could they possibly justify Tasering him twice?" Morino said. It's also wrong for the RCMP to use a Taser on his client for "attitude adjustment," Morino said. "We really, as the public, ought to be concerned about the type of force that is used [by police] and we really ought to be ensuring there is sufficient civil oversight so that this isn't used in an indiscriminate fashion."

Morino said he advised his client to file a formal complaint but the boy said he's reluctant because he fears retribution from police.

West Shore RCMP said the teen is not being charged with resisting arrest or damage to the police vehicle. There'll be no formal investigation into whether the Taser was improperly used in this case other than the standard review that is always done whenever a police weapon is deployed.