Remember the incident (early-May 2008) where the Kamloops RCMP tasered an elderly 82-year old man in his hospital bed, because he was wielding a 3-inch pocket knife? Here is my first post on the incident [LINK], and here is where I expose the RCMP excuse as being extremely weak [LINK].
Well, I note that this story, on the CBC News website [LINK], has evoked almost 800 comments. And the vast majority of those comments do not support the RCMP's action. And the very few comments supporting the RCMP's action appear to be from people that are extremely ill-informed (they wouldn't last five minutes in a rational debate).
Elected officials should take note of this extremely strong public reaction.
Also, the top RCMP officials might wish to consider the value of (what's left of) their public reputation and try to balance it off against the effort of implementing some sane Taser Use Policies. A sane policy would not allow tasering an 82-year old man unless he was armed with something more menacing than a 3-inch pocket knife. Especially when the situation apparently wasn't quite so frightening that the taser-happy officer wasn't able to walk up, within arms reach, to apply the taser in direct stun mode.
Perhaps the RCMP do not realize it yet, but they are in the midst of their worst public relations crisis in living memory. And the taser problem is at least half of it.
UPDATE: One day later: 822 comments. [LINK]
Politicians take note - the taser-abuse / taser-misuse / taser-overuse issue is pissing-off your voters. Stockwell Day - where are you on this issue?
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