Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP – 18 June 2008 report
The Commissioner for Public Complaints made several recommendations regarding the use of tasers including:
- RCMP members with less than five years of operational experience should be prohibited from using Taser stun guns.
- Individuals who are Tasered about whom police have no knowledge of underlying medical conditions receive prompt medical attention, thereby possibly saving their lives.
Compliance Strategy Group Independent Review of the RCMP – June, 2008
Compliance Strategy Group (John Kiedrowski, Principal Consultant, Michael Petrunik and Ronald-Frans Melchers, Associate Consultants) conducted An Independent Review of the Adoption and Use of Conducted Energy Weapons by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police[ http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/ccaps/cew/kiedrowski_report_e.htm] that was completed in June 2008, but only released under access to information and privacy around September 12, 2008. The report is available from the RCMP under access to information, but is censored (e.g., no recommendations). The report as released by the RCMP may be found on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation website www.cbc.ca. The Report reviews how the RCMP made the decisions to introduce the conducted energy weapons, training, policies and procedures, and accountability. The report is approximately 150 pages and provides an excellent analysis on how a police force adopted the Taser. The authors of the report argued that the police did not due their due diligences, is concerned abut training and the issues of accountability. The report also pointed out that the police in Canada have misclassified the taser as a prohibited weapon whereas under the criminal code it is referred to as a prohibited firearm, and refers to excited delirium as “folk knowledge”.
Taser International recommends that users be tased during training.
On 5 July 2005 Michael Todd, then Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, England, let himself be shot in the back with a Taser, to demonstrate his confidence that tasers can be used safely. This was captured on video, and the video was released to the BBC on 17 May 2007. He was wearing a shirt and no jacket. When tased, he fell forward onto his chest on the ground, and (he said afterwards) “I couldn’t move, it hurt like hell,” he said after recovering. “I wouldn’t want to do that again.”
Although tests on police and military volunteers have shown Tasers to function appropriately on a healthy, calm individual in a relaxed and controlled environment, the real-life target of a Taser is, if not mentally or physically unsound, in a state of high stress and in the midst of a confrontation. According to the UK’s Defence Scientific Advisory Council’s subcommittee on the Medical Implications of Less-lethal Weapons (DoMILL), “The possibility that other factors such as illicit drug intoxication, alcohol abuse, pre-existing heart disease, and cardioactive therapeutic drugs may modify the threshold for generation of cardiac arrhythmias cannot be excluded.” In addition, Taser experiments “do not take into account real life use of Tasers by law enforcement agencies, such as repeated or prolonged shocks and the use of restraints”.
Police officers in at least five US states have filed lawsuits against Taser International claiming they suffered serious injuries after being shocked with the device during training classes.
On September 30, 2009, the manufacturer issued a warning and new targeting guidelines to law enforcement agencies to aim shots below the chest centre mass as “avoiding chest shots with ECDs avoids the controversy about whether ECDs do or do not affect the human heart” Calgary Police Service indicated in a news interview that the rationale for the warning was “new medical research that is coming out is showing that the closer probe to heart distances have a likelihood, or a possibility, that they may affect the rhythm of the heart”.