I'll just add to some of the things Patti already brought up.
In the months following Robert's death, my daughter Patti and I spent hundreds of hours researching other deaths that involved the use of a taser. We were both surprised and shocked to discover many other such deaths of people such as habitual drug users, the mentally ill, and others in weakened conditions.
Coroners' reports refer to a condition they call “excited delirium” as a contributing factor. I've never heard of dogs, pigs, bears, or cows showing any signs of excited delirium before they died after being tasered.
Tasers are being administered on a daily basis to people in all walks of life--children as young as six years old, senior citizens in their 80s, and all those in between. Some have been tasered while in handcuffs or in jail cells. It seems that the taser has become a brutal form of subjugation, which was not its originally intended purpose. Here in Canada, the taser was supposedly introduced to be used instead of a gun in situations in which a police officer or others might be in imminent danger.
Since the inquest into our son's death, the list has continued to grow to 337 North Americans, 20 of them in Canada, after tasers were deployed. Are we still to believe that it is a mere coincidence that these people are dead? Are we to accept that they were coincidentally in the throes of dying of natural causes when they just happened to be tasered? Good God, what will it take to assure the Canadian public and our hard-working police forces that this device is safe to use?
Why does our government resist having these tasers safety tested, as all other electric devices are tested in this country? Why are police departments relying solely on the standards and use policies that come directly from Taser International? As a responsible Canadian citizen, I insist that my government place a moratorium on tasers until they have been tested and deemed safe and absolutely non-lethal. We owe this to our citizens and to our police officers.
Patti and I have reached out to several victims' families as we've tried to comfort each other while this madness prevails. None have been treated fairly. We each, in turn, have walked away from these inquests feeling stunned and betrayed, knowing that the truth has not fully been told.
As the mother of Robert Bagnell, I do not accept that he died of a simple drug overdose. I believe he died after being hit several times, while in a weakened state, by two tasers. I also believe that there was never a need for 13 strong, burly policemen to make that fateful call to employ their tasers on this one sick man. Had my son's death been recorded on video, I'm certain that it would have been found to be every bit as sad and brutal as the death of Robert Dziekanski, and now there is nothing more we can do for any of them. But perhaps through our efforts and your recommendations we can make a difference and in so doing, save some lives.
In a few days I will reach my 68th birthday. I could never have imagined that I would become so immersed in something so vital and so important in this final stage of my life. But as long as I am able, along with my daughter Patti, who has given so much of herself, I will continue to fight against the uncontrolled and often unwarranted and brutal use of this deadly device.
Thank you very much.