Public Safety Committee on April 28th, 2008

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Could you control one of them physically?

[Dr. Andrew McCallum]

Could I control a person in the throes of excited delirium by myself? No, I couldn't, even in my prime. The strength, agitation, and the aggressiveness of some of these individuals is something that can only be believed if one experiences it, as you know, and it's a very frightening and challenging experience to be faced with.

I was approaching it from a therapeutic as opposed to a security standpoint. I was approaching it as a physician. I wasn't thinking of it from the standpoint of enforcing the law, and it was frightening.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Dr. Dowling.

[Dr. Graeme Dowling]

Just to give an example, we had mentioned earlier that at least with respect to the deaths, we've never seen one in a woman, but I have heard from a police officer of a case of clearly excited delirium in a 16- or 17-year-old girl. It took, I believe he said, three or four police officers to get her under control. I believe she went the whole gamut. I can't recall if he said a taser was deployed. She did survive. But when you think of it taking four police officers to control a 16-year-old girl, it blows your mind.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

I think both of you have indicated it's more often a male than a female with the excited delirium situation.

[Dr. Andrew McCallum]

It's vastly more predominant.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Might the illicit drugs play into that? Or does it have nothing to do with it?

[Dr. Graeme Dowling]

Women are smarter than men. They just don't do this stuff.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

The drugs, you mean?

[Dr. Graeme Dowling]

They just don't do the dumb things we men do that get themselves into that situation. I don't have an explanation for it. I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Go ahead if you have a very brief question.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

One of our concerns here in this committee is where we go. Looking at the taser, which seems to be the focus, I think I've heard both of you say that the taser has been involved in some of these situations and obviously not in all of them. There are people who die without the taser. If that's the case, could you confirm that?

[Dr. Andrew McCallum]

That's correct.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Very good.

Ms. Barnes.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Right now RCMP, police forces, apparently transit forces in B.C., and apparently in some provinces or territories penal authorities have tasers. In the States anybody can get one, as you know, and they're used in situations that I don't think this country would even comprehend.

A lot of our discussion today has been your point of view on people with excited delirium, and I think you have the expertise that many of us wouldn't have in that area. But my concern isn't so much in that area as it is with these tasers being used on people who aren't in excited delirium, people who are just not compliant fast enough with instructions, who are resisting apprehension. We don't have all the facts at this committee concerning what happened in those transit situations where people were tasered in B.C. in the last year for skipping out on fares. But I think there's a difference here regarding when this taser is used: if someone is in the state you're talking about versus someone just not reacting and being submissive fast enough to a direction. There doesn't seem to be a policy guideline that says you only use this taser if there's excited delirium. I'd like you to address whether or not you feel a taser is an appropriate vehicle in a situation other than excited delirium.

While you're doing that, I would add that what really troubles me about the taser is that it's something being used in Canada, and I can't think of any other product that we would put on the market for any use when we didn't have any answers about what the risks were. You wouldn't put a new drug on the market when you didn't have the answers out there. I'd like you to tell me what product you can think of that is comparable for which you don't know the risks and that you would authorize the use of in this country.

[Dr. Graeme Dowling]

The reality is that many of us gathered here probably take some medication. I take insulin as a diabetic, I take Aspirin to make sure my heart stays good, and I take a drug to lower cholesterol. Each one of these drugs has killed. We know that, but I still take them, because when you have to balance the risk of that illness or death occurring versus the benefits to me as an individual, they still come out in my favour. So I think there are a lot of products out there about which we don't have all the answers. Drugs would be a big one where we don't have all the answers, yet we still use them.

I share your concern about the deployment of tasers. I have no expertise on when they should be deployed, and it would be improper of me to even go there. But as a Canadian, I would like to be assured that they're being used by the properly trained people in the right circumstances.

If what you're describing in B.C. happened, that's not the way they should be used. Again, I don't know all the circumstances.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

I just know it from the national news a couple of weeks ago.

[Dr. Graeme Dowling]

As you know, with the media there's always another side that you may not be aware of.

I'm not sure, Dr. McCallum, if you can add to that.

[Dr. Andrew McCallum]

Again, it's beyond my expertise to comment on where the taser ought to be applied in the use of force continuum, but it would seem to me, just to take something that Dr. Dowling said, that the risk and benefit have to be compared. I don't think it can be said this is a device that has no risk. I think it can be said the device has risk that's unquantified and therefore it ought to be used in circumstances where there really isn't another more palatable alternative. My view is that this would be in circumstances where it's necessary to protect or save life. Used in other circumstances, I can't see how it would be properly applied.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Monsieur Ménard and Ms. Thi Lac, does either of you have any questions?

Ms. Thi Lac.

[Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Welcome, doctors. I am pleased to be able to speak to forensic experts. I will ask you a question that I raised during our visit to Vancouver. It is purely hypothetical. I will ask the first question, and then explain the reason for it.

A little over a month ago, there was a seizure of taser weapons in the riding of Richelieu, which is beside my riding. These were weapons that people had obtained illegally. I imagine that in this case, the weapons would have ended up on the black market.

If a member of the organized crime world or some other shady individual shot repeated taser discharges into someone in an effort to kill him, without launching the probes, would it be possible to say, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the death was attributed to repeated taser discharges?

A few years ago, there was a product available that could not be detected during autopsies. It was a muscle relaxant that people injected into their victims in order to kill them. Could taser discharges used to kill people be detected beyond a reasonable doubt during autopsies?

[Dr. Graeme Dowling]

We have to understand that everyone thinks the gold standard of death investigation is the autopsy. It isn't. It's the history, the scene, and the body. With the situation you're speaking of, the multiple applications of tasers, this would be the taser that's held against the skin. Each time it is discharged or moved, etc., it leaves a very distinctive mark on the skin. In the situation you're describing, I would see these pairs of electrode marks all over the individual and would start to ask what's going on. Is there a definitive finding at autopsy that would say the heart stopped because of this, or what have you? No, there wouldn't be, but if you're looking at that type of...it's torture. What you're describing is torture.

You can put enough stress on the heart with prolonged torture that the heart in some cases will stop. You don't see any changes in the heart itself, but you're looking at the injuries on the body. To give you an example, I have seen an individual beaten to death with a coat hanger, believe it or not. All the welts, hundreds of welts on the skin, were from the coat hanger, yet you looked at all the internal organs and there were no injuries. What did they die of? The release and stress of adrenalin--we've talked a lot about adrenalin today--to the point that they died.

I'm not sure if that helps.

[Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

I have no other questions. I will give the rest of my time to my colleague.

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

I think that in my colleague's example, she is thinking of a situation in which a taser would be discharged, the two darts would be deployed, but the current would subsequently pass through these darts continually and so the person would die. So there would be only the two darts.