Sure. I think it's a simple question with a complicated answer. Your question raises more questions in my mind, and the first thing is that safety and scope of practice are two different questions. I think most of us on this side of the table are poorly placed to answer the questions surrounding use of force paradigms and where things fit.
That said, I think one of the issues is who defines an acceptable level of safety and how. I think one of the great misconceptions, and the thing I had to learn when I started doing this research, is this: was this weapon designed to be an alternative specifically to deadly force? In other words, do you bring a taser to a gunfight? The answer to that, from police circles, is that if you are staring down the barrel of someone else's gun, it shouldn't occur to you to draw a taser.
So I think that concept, although it's a bit crude, is very important in all of this. And one of the great responsibilities of your committee is to decide where that all fits.
When you consider the weapon specifically in the light of an alternative to deadly force, that's clearly a whole different question from what's going on in Canada and North America today. What we're seeing when we look at evaluations of data from police agencies is that police officers are using tasers. There's no question everyone in this room could come up with an anecdote of an inappropriate use. That's the same with every weapon system or restraint modality there is. But when the police are going to the taser is when they're involved in close-proximity, hand-to-hand confrontation. That usually happens, in my experience, in reading the literature and in reading case reports and in testifying at inquests. That's not an all or nothing statement.
There is no “always” and no “never” in medicine. So the discussion about whether this is lethal, whether it is non-lethal, whether it is less lethal--no methodology, no matter what you call it, will always be one or the other, and that's important. So use of force is one thing.
Safety and who determines the adequacy of studies is extremely important to me and everyone in this room. To use the pharmaceutical development model, data are evaluated in animal models for drugs, then they're taken to normal, healthy volunteers to determine dosing profiles, side-effect profiles, and the like. And eventually all drug models are tested in the clinical venue for which they are intended. That's what's happening with taser technology right now.
None of us who know about restraint believes that any single method of restraint will never cause harm and will never cause a death. The question becomes, at what frequency level, in what situation, does that situation become untenable? The answer to that question depends largely on who you are. If you are the police officer who has a fractured scaphoid who doesn't work for 12 weeks and has a chronically arthritic wrist from a hand-to-hand struggle, then the level of safety required of a weapon system is quite different than if you're the mother of a 23-year-old methamphetamine addict who died in her bathroom.
So the question of safety is a big one.
Medical safety is quite different from the level of safety that's expected in the community policing world. Physicians are held to about a 70% standard. In other words, when you go to have your gall bladder out, the anesthetist gives you a list of risks, the nurses give you a list of risks, the hospital gives you a list of risks, and the surgeon gives you a list of risks. We all take risk into account and weigh it against the severity of the situation.
I think one of the pivitol things that's been said across this side of the table is that deciding when enough data is enough data is a tall order. We do need to know what we're doing. We do need to keep better track of what we're doing and to evaluate it fairly.