Public Safety Committee on Feb. 25th, 2008

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Yes, and if possible a list of all the taser reviews going on, just to have a sense of where and how many.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

I'm not sure if the RCMP are responsible for all of those.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Well, someone must be able to put that together.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Okay, we'll work on that.

Mr. MacKenzie.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the members who are here presenting.

Mr. Lawrence, in some of what I've read here, we talk about positional asphyxia, carotid artery restraint, oleoresin death, but interestingly—and I think you were the one who brought it up—a lot of this goes back long before those things with respect to non-police deaths, probably excited delirium deaths. We've focused purely on the policing side of the thing, but do you know if there is anybody out there who is doing research on psychiatric facilities or hospitals where the same thing is occurring, which we could look at or should be looking at?

[Chris Lawrence]

Yes, a colleague of mine, Dr. Wanda Mohr, who I believe is now at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, has testified before the United States Senate and Congress with respect to that very issue. She has talked about these kinds of deaths occurring in group homes, psychiatric facilities, and medical facilities. So this is a broader public issue. It is not one that is merely confined to policing on the streets.

She is one who I know, but there are others who are looking into that matter as well.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

At the same time, there is history in text of what we're seeing here with respect to police issues, but there is history in text of it happening in medical facilities and non-medical facilities over the last century perhaps.

[Chris Lawrence]

Absolutely. Yes, sir.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

The other thing is that I think we end up focused on what we as people see in the news. There's a certain irony in that what we see in the news is always a situation that has gone bad, for lack of better words. Somehow we never see the situations we read about.

Today, as a matter of fact, I was reading the newspaper from the small southwestern Ontario city of Stratford—it's not my riding. An inspector was giving the history of three times when the taser has been used in that community, and each time we're looking at situations that would have been far more drastic; perhaps the results would have been catastrophic for someone, and the taser was used very effectively.

We tend to get focused on the negative situations. And I understand. That's human nature and that's where we are.

Do you know of any history or any press articles where it has been used to fit those circumstances that we talk about, where it has been absolutely necessary and done...?

[Chris Lawrence]

Yes. In fact, Inspector Sam Theocharis, who used to work with me at the Ontario Police College as a seconded instructor, called me and asked me to have a look at that article in which he was quoted.

But yes, indeed, version 14, which was the last taser disc for training sent out, still contains video footage that was filmed by Citytv in Toronto. A gentleman was in a park on a very icy, slippery day, and they believed he had a weapon. He had his hands in his pockets, and he was kind of catatonic in that he wasn't moving, wasn't reacting, and wasn't responding to the police. They used an armoured car and fired a taser through an opening in the side of the door and were able to strike the individual and put him down without having to deploy lethal force. So there's that one.

I know of another one in Toronto. A very tall man, who, looking at him from behind, appeared to be roughly my age--mid-40s, early 50s, sort of--had a knife. He wasn't a teenager. He was a mature adult. He had a knife, and he was not having a good day. He was suffering from a mental illness. The officers got close and deployed the taser, put him down on the ground, and were able to disarm him of the knife and use the conducted energy weapon in the way we would all like it used, and they didn't hurt him.

So there are videos that are actually part of training that show positive outcomes. But of course the bad ones are the ones we remember. The good ones are not so easily recalled, but there are some out there.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

I have seen, as have others, a lot of the American videos. We tend to think of some of those as being issues of perhaps training and discipline as opposed to what we in Canada, at least, think of those things. Is that a fair assessment, or am I totally wrong there?

[Chris Lawrence]

Certainly, it's like anything. There are airline pilots who need better training and there are physicians who need better training, and there are teachers and police officers who need better training. I don't know of a perfect system devised yet, but if we--

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

But it's not the weapon that's the problem. That's my point.

[Chris Lawrence]

No, it's maybe the weapon holder. But if someone is using it incorrectly....

I think with the SB/OR idea--subject behaviour/officer response reporting--as it's called, which Staff Sergeant Johnston is championing in partnership with the RCMP, we're going to be able to find those incidents sooner and do the research.

As I said in my earlier remarks, research has not been part of policing up until very recently. And now it would seem that it's a requirement that the public is expecting. You're telling us that.

That is obviously going to come at some type of cost in additional funding. Right now, you call the police department to get a police response and they don't send somebody with a master's degree who is going to stand there and observe and check boxes. We're there to protect the public and protect property and things of that nature. But it will come.

[A/Commr Darrell LaFosse]

If I may add to that, sir--we only had this up on the wall for about 30 seconds--in the IMIM and in the national use-of-force framework, the most important portion is officer presence. It's right in the middle. People tend to go to the outside, to the lethal force side, to the impact weapons and that type of thing. The most important part is that inside part: officer presence. I may go into a situation, or my colleague, Troy, may go into a situation and look at it in terms of officer presence. With our presence, the situation might be completely defused or it could go through the roof.

That whole IMIM is not linear thinking. In order to get to here, you don't have to go there. It's a concept. It's an ideal of how you interact. And things can change with something as subtle as whether you're wearing a patrol jacket or a storm coat, because your whole ability to respond changes 100% because of that. So it's not as simple as having a model.

Going back to your question, sir, it's the training in how you use that when you get into a certain situation.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Do I still have time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Yes.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

If we're talking about using a taser in a surprise situation, I was going to volunteer my friend.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

That ends the first round of questioning.

I just want to tell the members of the committee that we have about one or two minutes at the very end for some business on a budget for which we need approval, so please don't run away.

We now have five-minute rounds.

We'll go to Mr. Cullen.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.

The whole question of the use of force is, I imagine, a function of a variety of things, and it's not a science, but a bit of science and art blended together.

If you have, for example, four trained RCMP officers trying to subdue one person who's somewhat agitated—I've been to Depot and have seen the training RCMP officers go through, and I know I'm alluding to what happened in Vancouver, but I don't want to drag you into opinions on that—they should be able to subdue one individual who doesn't have a weapon, apart from, I gather, maybe a stapler or whatever the situation was, but not a lethal force weapon.

I'm led to conclude that there could be some things that come into play here: first, that the officer deployed the taser inappropriately, or second, that.... Mr. Groulx, you mentioned the question of bodily fluids. It's easy for us here in Parliament to talk about arresting people on the site, but some of these people are pretty unsavoury. I'm not referring to the chap in the Vancouver airport necessarily, but some involved with drugs and what have you can be pretty unsavoury. Police officers could rightly be concerned, it seems to me, that if they're going to physically subdue someone, they could be exposed to some bodily fluids. I think that could be a factor. Third, we've heard testimony that sometimes the use of the taser is actually the preferred method to subdue someone, because if they're in an agitated state they could go over the top, so you taser them and get them under control. We've heard some testimony along those lines.

If you look at Vancouver, you could also argue that the taser might have—I don't know, because we're still trying to figure out the science on this—pushed that person over the top physiologically and played some role in his death. I don't know; I'm just speculating.

My question is how, for one thing, in the use of force, do you factor in the number of constables present and the kind of target you're working with, the kind of client? Second, I wonder whether you'd comment on this question of bodily fluids. I think it's important, and we should speak openly and frankly about it. If it's not an issue, then let's get it off the table. Third is the question of actually using the taser as a preferred method to subdue someone.

Would anyone want to comment on those?

[Chris Lawrence]

We had an incident in Ontario involving a gentleman and six or seven trained tactical officers. Those are officers who work in a full-time agency of around 400 full-time members. That is what they do; they attend dangerous calls. They were sent to gain control of an individual and they had great difficulty. In fact, I testified at the inquest, and I recall one of the officers describing how he, at well over 200 pounds, put as much weight as he could on the individual's arm, but the man was able to curl his arm in towards the side and extend it back as though the officer was not on his arm.

You need to appreciate that a human being can get into a state, which I think is best described as a runaway of the fight-or-flight response, and the capabilities that person possesses are extraordinary.

In the training we provide at the Ontario Police College, I tell the biggest recruits--and they haven't been trained in this aspect yet--to get the biggest person in the class and to use any method they want, other than hurting them...hold on to them in any way they like and just try to keep them on the ground. They grab his arms and his shoulders, they sit on his hips and they grab his legs, and within four or five seconds the person is usually at least at their knees.

Then we take the five smallest people in the class and the largest person in the class, and I show them how, in a perfect situation, to lock up the joints so that it limits the person's movement. I can get five of the smallest people to hold the biggest person on the ground and he can't really move. But that's an ideal situation, where the person has allowed those joints to be misaligned, if you will, to make the ability to hold that person optimal and the resistance minimal. Theoretically, it can be done.

Actually, in my policing career, my active career--I'm no longer a police officer; I've been at the college for 12 years now. I'm a citizen. But in my active career I had to subdue a woman who was experiencing this excited delirium state, if you will, and it took three of us to hold this woman down. She was about 40 years old. We tried everything we could. We didn't want to harm her because we knew she was out of contact with reality that day and was suffering from mental illness. It took us four or five minutes to gain control without harming her, to get the handcuffs on her and take her out to the car, and she survived. I didn't recognize it for what it was at the time because I was not even familiar with the term back at that stage of my career. But it is not as simple as it seems.

We believe that rather than fighting with an individual for 10, 15, and in some cases as much as 20 minutes, it may be more prudent, in fact safer and more effective, to use a device that can gain control or assist in gaining control in five to 10 seconds, maybe 15 at the top. You can get the individual in handcuffs and transition this event from a police response, which it traditionally has been, to a medical response, which is probably more what needs to happen.

So when we talk about multiple exposures, and you've seen that it's a five-second window...after that, my experience in having endured a taser discharge is that when the switch goes off, there is no lingering effect. Yes, you feel tired, but you are as capable of resisting after the event as you were before the event. We try to use those cycles to get the cuffs on, get the person handcuffed, and then put them on a stretcher so we can get them off to the hospital.

With regard to the exchange of bodily fluid, if you want to be frank about it, the old way involved punching somebody, kicking somebody, or whacking them with a stick, which is now a metal rod. You can break an arm. You hit the person; people move, they get struck on the head and the head bleeds profusely, despite the fact that it's not necessarily a lethal injury--we don't teach officers to hit people in the head, but accidents happen. You punch a person in the nose, the lips split, your knuckles get damaged, teeth cut into the knuckles, there's an exchange of fluid. We don't know what's going to happen.

You're right, we don't always deal with people whose background and medical history we know. Sometimes we do, but most often we don't. Those things all have to be considered. A person who's involved in a medical crisis...if the officer honestly believes this is something they've seen before and they don't think this is something that would be good for the subject, it may be prudent to gain control and transition that person off to the hospital, in their interest and in a public safety interest as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you.

Mr. Vincent, please.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Good afternoon, everyone.

Mr. Groulx, most of my questions will be directed to you.

What year did the RCMP first get tasers?

[Sgt Richard Groulx]

The evaluation started in 2001 and the taser was approved for use in the field in 2002.