surely people have heard of this incident involving the polish bloke, RCMP, tasers etc. what are people's thoughts on it [ehran, i'm especially interested in your opinion]. i'd say they handled the situation fairly well, not sure why there was no attempt to revive but then that's not my area of expertise

I'm sure it will be blamed on the influence of Seattle area TV. 

Believe it or not but in the reactions page on the Dutch online article the Americans got blamed for it. Even after people pointed out that this happened in Canada!

I can only speak for the Netherlands. Here I think this is ultimately the result of managers/politicins:
- Trying to cut costs where you shouldn't.  Hiring lower quality personell to save on wages. (If you pay peanuts you get monkeys working for you). Reducing the amount of training. Etc
 - Allocating funds on the wrong things. Big fat pay rise for the manager. New computer software that does exactly the same as the old software. Expensive media ad campaigns to improve the image of the police.
- Having the priorities wrong. Investing huge amounts of manpower to punish relatively minor traffic problems (Fining people for having no light on their bicycle while 500m away dealers are selling underage prostitutes heroin.)

This results in lower quality personell working in security due to low pay, which are inadequately trained due to not enough funds. This lower quality personnell resorts grab mace or tasers much, because they are not equipped mentaly and physicqally to deal with stuff like this.

the story so far

 

the polish guy's mother has lived in canada for a few years now and wanted to bring her son over to join her.  he's a bright lad wasting his life in Poland and agrees that canada offers more possibilities.  she makes the arrangements and he sets off.

 

it's a very long flight especially given he speaks no english and has to deal with plane changes etc.  the guy lands in vancouver and gets off the plane and goes off to stand by the luggage carousels as instructed by his mother.  this section of the airport is out of bounds to people and his mother cannot get in to pick him up.  the guy spends 10 hours waiting around and during this time he not surprisingly becomes agitated.  it seems other passengers flowing through tried to talk to him during this time but none of the ones who did spoke polish.  his mother for some reason does not manage to get anyone to help her reach the guy.  this part i am confused by as to whether it was security types not helping or her not asking for help.  anyhow after ten hours the guy is reached the point of breaking some furniture etc and security is called.  the call escalates up the chain till it gets to the rcmp airport detachment.  i guess the polish guy being 6' 9" inspired some "i'm not getting paid enough for that".

 

we have some cell phone vid that shows the 4 officers surrounding him and then him moving away quickly and then his being tasered.  he goes down and they pounce on him to cuff him.  the video ends at that point but he was tasered again and then it seems it took 5 odd minutes to call for medical help.  there is another bit of video which has not been released so far which is longer.

 

at this point there are no less than 5 investigations into what happened and there is a considerable number of people who want to nuke the 4 mounties involved in this incident.

 

i don't have enough information to want to nuke the mounties yet but it does not look good for them so far.  we do not know whether the taser actually did him in for instance.  we do not yet know the full circumstances on why they tasered him so quickly upon arriving.  the cell phone video is too short to show whether he did anything to provoke his getting zapped. 

 

what i do know for sure though is that there is no reason on earth why he was allowed to linger in the carousel area for ten hours.  there are security cameras and surely to god someone should have noticed him there over that span of time.  it shouldn't have been impossible to find a polish speaker to translate for him.  even a laptop with a language translation site would have been helpful.

 

bob this poor schmuck shouldn't have died when it was so preventable.  i think the blame lies as much with the crappy policy and responsibilities setup at the airport as with the mounties and i really hope things get unscrewed out there so this never happens again.

 

last comment is that i LIKE tasers a lot.  they will drop the biggest and most bent out of shape shaved gorilla on his face even if he's high on pcp instantly.  given the alternative is often a rather less survivable fusilade of 9mm i think tasers are overall a good thing.  there's the odd death from using them but they beat the holy crap out of the other options.

 i thought the offiers handled the situation quite well, were i am, opp [ontario prov' police] have a shot to kill policy i'm told, i think using a taser is a wee bit more reasonable, especially in an airport/openly public place where flying bullets aren't the friendliest of things. yet i've heard from many people that they consider it a disgrace, i bet opinion would be different if the lad hadn't popped his cloggs.

i think all police forces operate on the shoot to kill principle if it gets to that point of lead launching.

you figure the polish guy was almost certainly dehydrated, exhausted and quite possibly hypoglycemic by the time he saw the cops and it's not much of a surprise to think his reactions were off.  seems it was the first time he'd ever been on a plane as well. 

 

Believe it or not but in the reactions page on the Dutch online article the Americans got blamed for it. Even after people pointed out that this happened in Canada!

This results in lower quality personell working in security due to low pay, which are inadequately trained due to not enough funds. This lower quality personnell resorts grab mace or tasers much, because they are not equipped mentaly and physicqally to deal with stuff like this.

what the theory being that since an american invented tasers they are responsible for all the evils that flow from using them?
makes as much sense as blaming the bloodthirsty swedes for all the deaths caused by modern firearms and artillery.  it's all that nobel guy's fault right.

 

the officers that put him down with the taser were the airport detachment of the rcmp not rentacop types.

thanks for the more in depth update ehran, i was too busy [my excuse for laziness perhaps ] to route out a decent write up on the situation. i don't disagree that things should have played out better in this situation [ie, like you mentioned, checking as to why a man was allowed to wonder around in one area for ten hours, surely that gets suspicious after a while, and ofcourse helping the mother with her problem of trying to find her son {provided she asked}] but i've chatted with a number of people who seem to exagerate the whole situation and write off the RCMP as an excessive and abusive force [maybe their still dismayed at the incident where the young lad was shot point blank during an interview or something], anyway, from what i've seen so far, i'd say they handled the contact side of things well [not getting into anything but purely the apprehension], after all, you don't expect tasers to kill [at least i don't think you do?] but i am still confused about the lack of action after establishing he was pulse-less [the video clearly shows a man checking for a pulse and from the body language of him and the officers around him you can tell all is not good].

Couldn't the cops shoot this guy in the thigh?  Or just point a gun at him and point at the ground instead of electrocuting him? 
Cop + drawn gun + pointing at ground = universal language.

thing is once a cop pulls out a gun there is really only one more escalation left to him.  mounties are also taught that drawing a firearm is absolutely the last resort in a situation. 

tasers have a very low mortality rate with the manufacturer saying there have been 0 cases where the ME tagged the taser as the cause of death or even a factor in the death.  that's probably too optimistic but if you consider that the police routinely taser recruits as part of their training they cannot be too worried about thinning the ranks.  cops have used tasers about 40000 times since they were introduced here and there is essentially zero expectation of death from the use of a taser.

 

femoral artery runs down the leg btw nan and if that's severed by a thigh shot it's not likely you'll live long enough to appreciate the cop's benign intention..

 

 

Would I be wrong in guessing those stats and past experiences were based on one or two tasers?

the poles have started an investigation into the airport debacle which brings the total to 9 now.