Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to you about investigations into deaths associated with the use of conductive energy weapons, or what I call tasers, that have been conducted by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Alberta. I'd like to thank the Government of Alberta for allowing me to come to speak with you, but would like to emphasize that the opinions and views I will be offering you are my own.
By way of introduction, my name is Graeme Dowling. I am a forensic pathologist by training, have worked with the Alberta medical examiner's office for just about 22 years, and have been the chief medical examiner for the province for just under 15 years. As a medical examiner, I conduct investigations, which can include performing autopsies—so I actually do autopsies—into unexplained deaths caused by natural disease and into injury- and drug-related deaths.
The purpose of any death investigation is to establish, among other things, the cause of death and what is referred to as the manner of death, which is basically a statistical breakdown of deaths into natural, homicide, suicide, accidental, etc.
Our office conducts about 3,500 death investigations per year. Any death that occurs when an individual was in police custody or when there has been use of force by the police is automatically investigated by us, including all deaths where a taser has been utilized. These deaths are also reviewed at a public fatality inquiry, which is essentially very similar to a coroner's inquest.
There have been four taser-associated deaths in Alberta since 2001. The first of these occurred when police entered the residence of an intoxicated male in order to arrest him. The taser was discharged as soon as the police saw him, because witnesses had indicated that this gentlemen was armed with a knife. One of the taser darts did not lodge properly, such that the taser failed. This individual subsequently attacked the police and was shot four times. He had an extremely high blood alcohol level. There was no evidence to indicate that he was in a state of excited delirium.
The other three cases involved individuals in whose cases we have concluded that excited delirium was the cause of death, although one of the three had such an exceptionally high level of cocaine in his blood that arguably the cocaine, in and of itself, could be the cause of death.
I'm aware that the members of this committee have heard quite a bit about excited delirium, so I'll only say that this is a state of extreme agitation associated with bizarre, violent behaviour, so-called super-human strength, and elevated body temperature, thought to be caused in most cases by illicit drug use and/or psychiatric illness. It was actually first described in psychiatric patients in the mid-1800s, but has really only come to renewed attention in the past few decades.
Returning to our Alberta cases, police were called to deal with these three individuals because of their violent behaviour. Restraint methods varied among the three, but included what you might refer to as “piling on”—those are the best words I can use—where there are several police officers trying to restrain the arms, and even lying on the chest; hobbling, which is similar to but not quite the same as hog-tying; and of course, with all three, the use of tasers.
With two of them, there were three applications of five-second discharges, and with the third one there were three five-second discharges at the scene followed by five five-second discharges at hospital, as both police and emergency room personnel attempted to transfer this patient from an ambulance stretcher to a hospital examination table. This same individual then received a single injection of what we would call medically a “chemical restraint”—drugs used to tranquilize the person and bring them down—and this was administered by emergency room personnel.
In these cases, the individuals became unresponsive, usually several minutes after the last discharge of the taser. All attempts at resuscitation were unsuccessful, and in each case an autopsy did not reveal any restraint injury or natural disease that would be a clear-cut cause of death.
Of course, the question of most interest to you is, what role, if any, did the taser actually play in these deaths? That's the issue you're trying to look at. In the first case I gave you, it's arguably the failure of the taser that resulted in a rapid escalation of the police response to the use of deadly force. The other three are more difficult.
Although there are several things you have to look at, one important thing for me when I'm looking at these cases is the timing between the last discharge of the taser and the person becoming unresponsive. Generally when they're unresponsive, it is because the heart has stopped, or they have stopped breathing, or a combination of the two. When you come right down to it, the taser is an electrical device. If a taser is going to kill, it will do it in the same way as any other electrical device, by stopping the heart.
In electrocution deaths, which coroners and medical examiners investigate--we have to investigate all electrocution deaths--any person who receives an electrical current of sufficient strength to stop their heart will be unresponsive in 15 seconds. Some are immediately, but the maximum is about 15 seconds. So when we look at the discharge of taser, if the person becomes unresponsive when the taser is being discharged, or within 15 seconds of the discharge, an argument could be made that the taser might be the cause of death. It's a lot more complex than that--it's very difficult to prove--but that argument would have some merit. If the last discharge of the taser is outside of that 15 second range, then I think the best anyone can say is that the taser may--heavy emphasis on the word “may”--have been a factor in the death in ways that we, quite frankly, don't currently understand.
I believe you've learned just how complex most of these deaths are with an interaction of drugs, psychiatric disease, excited delirium, hog-tying, chokeholds, etc., such that sorting out what the actual cause of death is, versus factors that may or may not have played some role in the death, becomes virtually impossible.
If we look beyond tasers, though--to all deaths that have involved some sort of restraint close to the time of death--there is one relative constant. That is the state of excited delirium. The need for restraint by police, members of the public, or hospital staff in psychiatric facilities is created by the violent behaviour of these individuals. They are a threat to property, to themselves, and to others, such that our uniform community response is to try to get them under control so we can then attend to what we believe is an underlying medical emergency. Yet no matter what method of restraint has been used over the years--be it a taser, pepper spray, piling on, hog-tying, or chokeholds--within minutes of the subject being brought under control, or perhaps it's just when they've reached a state of complete exhaustion, there are some, not all, who become unresponsive and die. I've often asked myself what would happen if we simply stood back and agreed that we would watch them and allow them to exhaust themselves so that we could then approach them and hopefully assist them.
We investigated a death this year of a male who had been exhibiting increasingly strange behaviour to his family over a period of a couple of weeks. On the day of his death he began shouting paranoid statements, he started breaking things, he broke into a neighbour's home, and then he climbed onto the roof of a house and took off all of his clothes and attempted to jump to the roof of the adjoining house. He missed. He broke his fall by grabbing on to an eavestrough as he fell to the ground, but when he reached the ground he was still conscious. He was still incoherent, he was still behaving abnormally, and one police officer--the only police officer who was there--asked a number of bystanders to simply help him hold on to the legs and on to one arm so that the officer could place handcuffs on him. There was no hog-tying; there was no pressure on the chest; there was no taser; there was no chokehold. And as soon as the handcuffs were on, this individual stopped breathing. All attempts at resuscitation were unsuccessful. At autopsy, there were no injuries of any substance from his fall, no natural disease, nothing to account for his death. This, in our view, was a case of excited delirium.
We've also investigated rare cases where you have a secure apartment or house that has been completely destroyed on the inside. All the mirrors are smashed, the furniture is broken, the drywall is punched out, and in the middle of all this mess is a dead young adult male. There are no significant findings at autopsy. There may be a psychiatric history; there may be a small amount of cocaine. Once again, all indications are that these people were in a state of excited delirium. There were no police, there was no restraint, and there were definitely no tasers, yet they still died.
It's my belief that individuals in a state of excited delirium can experience a fairly wide variety of outcomes. In your work you have become most familiar with those who are restrained and die, but there are also those who go through the full gamut of restraint--including taser--and survive. And as I have presented to you, there are a group of people who undergo no restraint and still die.
The challenge for all of us is to try to understand how many people fall into each group--because we don't know--and what the differences are between them. Why does this one die? Why does that one survive?
I'm worried. As a Canadian, I want to make sure tasers are deployed by the right people for the right reasons. But laying the blame for these deaths solely at the feet or hands of the taser is far too easy and far too simplistic, and I think we need to do better than that.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.