Public Safety Committee on Feb. 25th, 2008

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Would it be realistic to assume that in some deaths, as a result of persons who were tasered, it would be possible to have scientific as well as other investigations--whether through post-mortems or otherwise--that showed the causes of death could not be determined?

[Chris Lawrence]

Yes. As I said about that CSI effect, the general public expects that an autopsy will reveal everything, but sometimes it can't. Sometimes the problems are so subtle that they escape detection. How do you know what you're looking for when you're not certain what you're going to find?

We recently heard at a conference that there may be a genetic factor. One person is doing some significant research with respect to the brain. I alerted some medical people to this potential back in 2000-01. This has become a very complex issue with a variety of potential causes. If there turns out to be a genetic component, I wonder how that will impact on people's perceptions of what has been taking place.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

So with some of these investigations, it may be years before we can find out the cause of death. In the interim, those unexplained deaths in some quarters--and I won't make any accusatorial statements--could be fed by.... When we don't have an answer, a whole lot of people come out and want to blame somebody or find an answer. They won't find it, so all these theories will come out.

Would it be unrealistic to say that probably out of the nine or so investigations into the use of tasers of late, we will probably come out with some reasonable expectation that we will have some of the answers we don't currently have?

I'm going to ask your personal as well as your professional opinion here. Do you have confidence that these investigations will result in something of value?

[Chris Lawrence]

I hope they do. I don't know what the terms of reference are for many of the investigations or reviews currently under way, but I've also learned that when we get a few answers, it seems to open up the doors to a couple more questions.

The more we learn about this, the more we realize we have more to learn. In response to the member's question from earlier, we know a lot about the deaths—that's what I learned when I did my first research project; we know much about the deaths, but we know almost nothing about the people who survive.

Dr. Christine Hall has started the restraint study, which is in its infancy, but we hope her examination of people who survive may open some doors and answer some questions that we've been searching for in the past.

We're a long way, I think, from getting to the reason. I don't think we're going to find one mechanism. Dr. John Ratey at Harvard Medical School said one of the problems with science is that scientists are always looking for the one piece of the puzzle that answers all the questions. As I said to you in my comments, I found around eight different mechanisms, any one of which could cause the death in and of itself.

When you add three or four of these potential problems to the event, it's a wonder that people are surviving at all. And I'm not talking about the use of conducted energy weapons; I'm talking about the physiological stress that some people get themselves into, induced by either ingested substances or circumstances that are organic in nature. It's the way they were built and there's nothing they can do about it.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

If I could, I'll just give you a hypothetical situation. If tomorrow Parliament or some other legal body said police forces must turn in their tasers—they can't use them any more because, well, the Canadian public just doesn't want police officers to have them—could you give a quick analysis of what you would see then?

What means would police officers have, in reverting back to pre-tasers? I guess what I'm trying to get at is this. Do you think the instances of injuries and deaths to persons with whom police come into contact would be increased or decreased with the removal of tasers?

[Chris Lawrence]

It's a good question, but it's one that I don't think we can really definitively answer. I would only be able to speculate.

As I said in my remarks, during a 10-year period, 35 of 40 deaths that occurred did not involve the conducted energy weapon. People have been dying under similar circumstances for a long, long time, and nobody, to date, has been able to say conclusively—at least in this country and I'm not aware of anyone anywhere else—that the taser has caused the death of an individual.

We still have in Ontario one of those deaths that involved the conducted energy weapon, the taser—that's the only one that's really being used in this country right now. Only one of those has gone to a coroner's inquest; the others are scheduled for one in the future. I think another inquest is going to occur in the next couple of months.

So until those processes have played themselves out, we don't know what the final result will be, whether the public thinks the taser was involved or not involved. As I said, 35 out of 40 didn't involve one.

As I said earlier as well, I think if you were to take those things away, we would still have deaths. You are not going to eliminate deaths of this nature by that single act.

The other thing we need to look at is that there are some circumstances where we have saved lives. I think there was a newspaper report today, or maybe it was yesterday, out of a jurisdiction in the United States where they had done exactly that. They had taken these devices away from the police, and they had to shoot and kill somebody. Now they're all looking at each other, asking whose idea it was to take them away, because now we have another family who's missing a member.

I recognize that the comments have to be taken with the understanding that we have families in this country who have lost members after an altercation with the police. Typically nobody expected the individual to die. We didn't expect the death. That's why we call them sudden and unexpected. You can call them in-custody as well.

We have a long way to go before we really know what's happening. I think we're doing the best we can as police organizations, at least in Canada. We're looked at as leaders in understanding this problem and in doing the best we can. The Americans are very interested in what we're doing and are trying to align themselves with us in some of our research projects.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you.

I have just a quick question for either Acting Commissioner LaFosse or Inspector Lightfoot.

One problem we run into as politicians and as police officers when we deal with service to the people in our communities is the expectation that the officer, when he or she comes into work, is out on the road doing their job. Has your police force or any other force that you're aware of determined the amount of time spent in an office getting all of these statistics that everyone wants? Because the person who provides those statistics isn't some unknown person. It's the man or woman who wears the uniform. They actually provide the service.

Now, one complaint is that we don't see their carcass out on the road doing their job, doing the front-line policing that we expect. That is one of the issues we deal with, especially in municipal politics.

We're running out of time here, so I'll try to cut this down: have you actually done a study saying that 30 years ago a person providing police services spent x amount of hours on administrative work as compared with now? I personally can give you experiences of where police officers spend over half their time in the office providing answers to people like us just because some bad thing happened. They have literally thousands and multi-millions of dollars' worth of administrative work and are not out on the street catching bad guys.

Sorry about the diatribe, but quite frankly, it has to be put in its proper context.

[A/Commr Darrell LaFosse]

No, you're absolutely right, sir. One area that I'm responsible for is the records management systems of the organization, the how and the why behind the use of the systems available to us. The constant complaint is that the boys and girls aren't on the road but are in doing finger-poking to put information into systems.

First of all, we have to get away from the idea that paperwork is not police work. In my day, if we had what we called the C-237, which was a serious crime report, you sat in there and pounded away on an old Olivetti, making triple copies and whatnot. We called it paperwork, but it was still police work. When you do a search warrant, you still have to type up a search warrant.

The other side of that very sharp sword is that when we need statistics, we have to be able...and this is what Troy and his team are trying to do. When you go into the electronic systems right now and you type in that you arrested somebody on the old C-13s, there's a drop-down list that comes up with the subject behaviour and officer response. There are check boxes on there. There's something that paints them into a corner. There's no interpretation of how they reacted. That bare-bones information comes in, under many categories, and then we can look at it.

So they're not locked in a room doing finger-poking. They're actually out on the road being able to do it.

I hear exactly what you're saying, because we hear the same complaints from the men and women out there, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

I'm sorry, we have run out of time here. We're going to go in camera in a few seconds.

I want to thank our witnesses very much.

Did you have a comment, Mr. Lawrence?

[Chris Lawrence]

Yes. I just want to make sure that everyone understands something.

When I talked about 40 deaths in the province of Ontario, I had done a preliminary review of information on the special investigations unit website. I had not done an in-depth analysis, so those numbers may not be accurate. I don't want to paint somebody in Ontario into a corner, saying that we've had all these numbers, because I have a limited perspective. I did the best I could to gather relevant data to answer some of the questions that I had kind of anticipated for today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Right.

I want to thank all of our witnesses very much. You have given us invaluable information. We appreciate the work you're doing and we thank you for the time you've taken to come and be before the committee here today.

Members, we have one minute of in camera business left.

[Proceedings continue in camera]