Public Safety Committee on Jan. 30th, 2008

[Tom Smith]

One of the limitations today in the use of our device is the length of the wires. We're just physically limited by that distance. I mentioned earlier the Star Trek phaser, a longer-range application. In law enforcement use today, one of the things they have is a beanbag round or rubber bullet that can be deployed from a launcher such as a shotgun. So one of the requests we had from the law enforcement, the military in particular, was they would like to be able to reach, let's say, a person in a barricade situation or a person further than a confrontation with you and me. The taser has obviously proven effective in stopping and incapacitating compared to a beanbag, where you're literally just trying to hit somebody with a fast ball and inflict pain, which sometimes they may be able to fight through if they aren't feeling that. This device will be able to take that type of application--it's a higher level of force--hit that individual, and now apply a taser wave to incapacitate them, rather than just hitting them with beanbag rounds.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

We will now go back to the government side.

Mr. Cullen, please.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to come back, if I could, to this sudden in-custody death syndrome awareness.

On your website, Mr. Smith, it says that if a subject is exhibiting signs of behaviours associated with sudden in-custody death syndrome--and you then list that these signs are extreme agitation, bizarre behaviour, inappropriate nudity, imperviousness to pain, paranoia, exhaustive exertion, superhuman strength, hallucinations, etc.--consider combining the use of a taser device with immediate physical restraint techniques and medical assistance.

When I saw the videotape of the Mr. Dziekanski experience, it comes back to this issue of using the taser once or twice or three times or four times. I don't recall how many times they used it, but it seems to me it was certainly more than once and maybe more like three or four times. In the way you look at it, if someone is exhibiting these symptoms, could you use one shot of the taser and then, if you have four RCMP officers especially, could you not then rush in and subdue this person? Do you have to actually taser them multiple times? I don't understand how that works.

[Tom Smith]

In the Vancouver case there are nine minimum investigations going on that I'm aware of, so I don't want to speculate on that particular instance. What I can tell you is, in the research that we're seeing today, sometimes more than one application is required to give the officers the ability to take that individual into custody.

I think people need to understand one of the fallacies about the taser device. It does not knock you out, it does not make you go unconscious; it only incapacitates during the stimulation. As soon as that stimulation ends, there's nothing keeping that individual from getting up, from re-engaging in the fight, from getting their full faculties back. If they weren't able to restrain them or get them into custody and they chose to continue to fight, there have been times when the second, third, or fourth application is needed in order to get that person restrained.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

But wouldn't you then say, as you're recommending on your website, that if they're exhibiting these behaviours—which seems to have been the case with Mr. Dziekanski, which I know you don't want to comment on specifically, though it's the state he seemed to have been in, to me any way—you'd use a taser and then try to use physical force, rather than using the taser repeatedly?

I suppose you have the dilemma that one of the police officers will get in between the taser and the person you're trying to subdue. But what you're recommending on your website is not that you absolutely multiple-taser the person to the point where they're totally incapacitated, and then apply physical force or constraint, but that you do those simultaneously. Is that right?

[Tom Smith]

That's the standard trend out there for any use of force. You don't want to have somebody just sit there and hit him with a baton over and over again either. The idea of using force by law enforcement is to take that person into custody with the least amount of force possible in order to reduce the injury. Certainly we cover pretty extensively in our training the point that we don't want somebody to just sit there and keep pulling the trigger over and over. This is not a spectator sport, so you need to get them in and get them restrained and get them into custody, so you can minimize the amount of force. But again, with policy and training, that's where they're going to determine how that's done at the particular agency.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

There was a piece on some television program about a woman who was quite drunk, and the police officers tasered her mercilessly; she was lying on the ground, and they even tasered her when she was in the police car. To me that's an abuse of the taser, and probably 1%, or half of 1%, of law enforcement officers would use that force. And I think the person concerned was disciplined.

But how do you then ensure that if you're tasering someone and you try to apply physical force at the same time, the police officers don't get in the middle of it and get tasered themselves?

[Tom Smith]

That's part of the reason we recommend that the officers get tasered in the training, so that while that officer is getting tasered, the other officers are hands-on and touching that officer so they can realize the electricity is very lazy; it's trying only to go between those two points. As long as they're touching the extremities or are away from that area, it's not going to go to them. But if they do touch that point of contact and become part of, let's say, the circuit here, they will get that stimulation.

So we really emphasize in the training that you can go hands-on with the taser. Unless you touch the probe or get in between the probes, it's not going to come to you. That's really part of the purpose of the training, so they can experience what the taser feels like and know the amount of force they're applying and know that when they're holding the subject up, it's not going to come to them just because they're touching the individual.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

I have one final question if I may. It's a very short one.

Mr. Smith, do you know the temperature of the electric arc of a taser?

[Tom Smith]

I do not know the temperature, off the top of my head.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Could you let us know through the chair?

[Tom Smith]

Certainly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Monsieur Ménard, do you have any further questions, or does the Bloc?

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Yes, just a few.

Mr. Smith said earlier that since tasers have been in use in major cities—he mentioned some large Canadian cities—the number of deaths has decreased.

Mr. Palmer, I assume that you are particularly interested in statistics on the use of force by police forces in Canada. Can you confirm Mr. Smith's impression on this?

[Steve Palmer]

We do not have those statistics identifying what the injury rate was prior to the use of tasers and what it currently is. It is one of the areas we are seeking information on to see whether we can capture that information in time for our report in August.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Smith, you have often mentioned cases that have occurred. I do not know if you are providing statistics, but you are certainly giving the impression that you are seeing a reduction or an increase in something.

What is your basis for saying, for example, that only 30 cases involved taser use? Where did those figures come from and who compiled them?

[Tom Smith]

In a lot of the instances the departments, at the department level, did track injury rates before versus when a taser came in. Obviously they've had injuries in the past . For example, in the United Kingdom, they were documenting injury rates to officers. When a taser was being deployed, there were no injury rates on those particular instances where a taser had been deployed to an officer. However, if an officer had used a baton or gotten into a fist fight, there'd been an injury and the officer had to go to the hospital.

A lot of that data is in worker compensation claims made by the officer and it's held by the cities. But a lot of that data really comes out of the agencies reporting back to us. Unfortunately, anywhere in the world, there's no central reporting of injury rates to officers or suspects, so a lot of that data is used by the local municipalities.

I included a PowerPoint presentation that gets some of that data for your reference. That is taken from public records at the cities and the departments that report those statistics. And it's, by far, not comprehensive for every agency.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Palmer, in Canada we have the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey. As a result, we have very precise statistics on crimes that are reported to police officers.

So I do not think that it would be too much to ask our system to have a box on a form to be checked whenever a taser is used, because it always leads to an arrest and therefore to a report.

[Steve Palmer]

That's the information that is probably already captured by police services. Again, I'm not sure whose jurisdiction it falls into, whether it's federal or provincial, in tracking statistics. But it's certainly not the Police Research Centre's position or responsibility to demand that information from police services.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

I also think that the statistics are compiled by Statistics Canada. You are familiar with the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey, correct? That could be one of our recommendations.

There are rare cases where police offices have to use two tasers in particular circumstances.

Mr. Smith, is there documentation describing when two tasers have been used and both have hit their target? After all, two tasers could be used when there is a chance that one will not hit its target. Does the fact that someone has two tasers increase the risk a lot?

[Tom Smith]

We have not seen an increase in the risk factor with multiple exposures to the taser. The way it was relayed to me is that if I have two cups that each have 100 degrees of water and I pour them together, I don't have 200 degrees of water. I have more of 100 degrees of water. And electricity, again, follows very similar principles to water. It's not a cumulative effect that each time you add it, you're going to be accumulating it in the body.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

We'll actually have to wrap it up.

Ms. Priddy, did you have any more questions? You did. Okay, go ahead, please.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Yes, please. Thank you.

They're training questions, if I might.

If a city in Canada of a couple of hundred thousand people decides to buy tasers from you--and maybe they're going to buy 50, I don't know--who provides the training?

[Tom Smith]

Typically it's law enforcement officers who will provide the training. We do what we call a “train the trainer” program where they will attend a taser training. It's a two-day course to become an instructor, where they will learn how the taser works and then they will take that material to go back and develop a use of force policy and a procedure. Our two days really focuses on the taser itself.