Mounties strip details from taser reports

A common point made by law and order spokespeople suggesting wider police search powers is 'if you've nothing to hide why do you care if you're searched?'

Good point.

So why does the RCM Police want to strip details and conceal information?

Mounties strip details from taser reports

JIM BRONSKILL AND SUE BAILEY

The Canadian Press

March 24, 2008 at 7:11 PM EDT

OTTAWA -- The RCMP is stripping crucial details about taser firings from public reports as use of the controversial stun guns skyrockets across the country.

A joint investigation by The Canadian Press and CBC found the Mounties are refusing to divulge key information that must be recorded each time they draw their electronic weapons.

As a result, Canadians will know much less about who is being hit with the 50,000-volt guns: whether they were armed, why they were fired on and whether they were injured.

Taser report forms obtained under the Access to Information Act show the Mounties have used the powerful weapons more than 4,000 times since introducing them seven years ago.

Incidents have increased dramatically, topping 1,000 annually in each of the past two years compared with about 600 in 2005. The overwhelming majority of firings were in Western Canada, where the national force often leads front-line policing.

As taser use escalates, however, the RCMP has tightened secrecy.

Information stripped from the forms includes details of several taser cases the Mounties previously made public under the access law. In effect, the RCMP is reclassifying details of taser use - including some telling facts that raised pointed questions about how often the stun guns are fired and why.

A Canadian Press analysis last November of 563 incidents between 2002 and 2005 found three in four suspects tasered by the RCMP were unarmed. Several of those reports suggested a pattern of stun-gun use to keep suspects in line, rather than to defuse major threats.

But the Mounties are now censoring taser report forms to conceal related injuries, duration of shocks, whether the individual was armed, what police tried before resorting to the stun gun and precise dates of firings.

The RCMP cites the need to protect privacy and continuing investigations to justify removing basic details from other reports.

Liberal public safety critic Ujjal Dosanjh scoffed at the explanation.

"That's hogwash. That's absolute nonsense," the former attorney-general for British Columbia said in an interview. "Whether or not someone was armed ... how does that violate privacy?"

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day was travelling yesterday and not immediately available for comment.

Inspector Troy Lightfoot, who helps oversee RCMP taser use, would not speculate on why the reporting changes were made. But he stressed there are still ways to monitor stun guns and other uses of force.

"I can tell you that there are many accountability systems in place with regards to police actions. You have the courts, you have coroners' inquests, you have a multitude of oversight bodies," he said. "There is a complaints process that can be followed."

The RCMP has more than 2,800 tasers and about 9,100 Mounties are trained to use them.

They can be fired from a distance, laying suspects low with high-voltage bursts that override the central nervous system. They can also be used up close in touch-stun mode, which has been likened to leaning on a hot stove.

Officers say they're a safer, more efficient option than pepper spray or batons.

RCMP reports previously released to The Canadian Press also detailed several head injuries when suspects struck the floor, along with burns caused by stuns and lacerations from sharp taser probes.

It took 15 months and an official complaint before the RCMP would release thousands of pages recording more than 4,000 taser incidents.

There are stark differences between the newly released forms and earlier versions filed about the same confrontations.

For example, the original report on a March 7, 2004, case in northern Manitoba revealed that an unarmed detainee in a Pukatawagan RCMP cell was tasered after only oral intervention. There was no attempt to subdue the inmate through physical force.

The new form says only that the confrontation occurred in 2004. The section entitled Weapons Carried or Immediately Available by Subject is blank.

And there is no longer any description of verbal commands or other police response before the taser was fired.

James Morton
1100 - 5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 6P4