7.The Province

Sunday, November 25th, 2007

1000 incidents involving Tasers in B.C. since 2005

By Jennifer Saltman

I've been having mixed feelings about the use of tasers because the fact of them being used with fatal outcomes quite often lately. According to Amnesty International, "there had been 16 deaths related to Taser use in Canada since 2001, before the recent case of Robert Dziekanski and the death of Robert Knipstrom, announced yesterday. Six of those people died in 2005 and 2006." In this article it is giving us a view on how tasers have helped many people and prevented some bad situations and fatalities. In May 2007 Victoria police saved a suicidal woman's life by using a Taser. "The woman, who was high on cocaine, had seriously wounded herself and was holding a sharp object when police approached her." The shock caused her to drop the weapon. In November 2006 a judge found that police used reasonable force during a Lillooet drug bust. An RCMP officer used a Taser on a large dog and a woman who was screaming and refusing to obey the commands of the drug squad. In December 2003, RCMP used a Taser to "subdue a weapon-wielding Fort St. John man following an incident at a bar."

*These incidents make me think that tasers are a good thing. I would rather police use tasers than guns. Tasers are a good way to stop a potentially bad situation before it happens and tasers besides occasional deaths are usually non lethal. I do think though that police could come up with more strict rules on when it is okay for the use of tasers and maybe come up with a taser that is not as powerful but still does the job, so there is not as big of a risk for death. Tasers are good because if police are trying to control a situation, before they use their guns they have a taser to try first if that doesn't or isn't possible to use then they have the option of using guns, if needed. Although, I do not like the fact that the taser related deaths have increased lately, but I do think that those incidents had more to do with the mis-use of the taser by the police officers rather that the actual taser itself. This article gives good insight into how police are going to monitor taser action more closely in the future and also it shows you the advantages to using tasers, that people usually forget about as soon as there is a death related incident.