Highlighting some of the policy flaws

The Truth ... Not Tasers blog has an interesting post: [LINK]

The CP article is entitled: British Columbia Attorney General's Ministry concerned about police use of force before airport death: documents [LINK]

TNT blog has highlighted two sections:

1) "...a submission to the inquiry by the Corrections Branch of the Ministry of the Solicitor General indicates corrections officers are trained to use the taser for [pain] compliance."

This first highlighted extract is significant because the taser (M26, X26) has been designed to incapacitate. The amplitude of the electrical waveform is reportedly about 2000 times what would be necessary to cause 'intolerable' pain. [LINK]

On its face, using a taser for pain compliance seems to be excessive and unreasonable. Given that the pain level is well beyond 'severe', such use would also seem to be in clear violation of the Criminal Code of Canada section 269.1. In short, using the taser for pain compliance almost always meets the definition of torture, and torture is illegal.

2) "Corrections officers using the weapon must be trained and re-certified every two years, using the standards and curriculum suggested by Taser International, the corrections submission states."

The second highlighted extract is significant because Taser repeatedly claims [LINK] [LINK] not to be involved with creating, recommending, or endorsing taser-use policy. And yet they provide 'standards' and 'curriculum' used for training. And if the training isn't including, and centered around, and based on, the policy - then what the heck is going on?


That such policy flaws are blatantly obvious to ordinary citizen bloggers speaks volumes about the regulation vacuum that exists for taser use, abuse, misuse, and overuse in Canada (and just about everywhere else too).