Public Safety Committee on April 21st, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Mr. Holland, for one minute.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Commissioner, in light of the death of Mr. Dziekanski, of the reports that have shown a clear correlation between the increased lethality of the taser when it's used more than once, and of the number of cases we saw in 2008 in which a taser was fired five or more times on an individual, are you saying, going back to your comments, that there's equivalency between a fist, a baton, and a taser?

[Commr William Elliott]

No.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Why did you make that analogy when you said you don't have rules about punching or hitting people with batons?

[Commr William Elliott]

With respect, Mr. Holland, we certainly have rules about punching people. We certainly have rules with respect to the use of force. Overall, our rules are not to use force unless you have to, and when you use force, to use only the amount of force that is necessary and reasonable in the circumstance. That's true with respect to any use of force, no matter which one of any of the options available to our officers is used.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Are you saying that, just like you don't have it for a fist or a baton, there's an equivalency in not having a rule for a taser in terms of how many times you fire on somebody?

[Commr William Elliott]

Again, I would stress that we do have rules and we do have clear accountability. What I am saying is that across our use-of-force continuum you cannot really write prescriptive policy or rules that will cover every one of the circumstances that our officers encounter every day.

There are 7,500 people who will call the RCMP today. We responded to over three million such calls last year. We have to write policy and we have to teach people in ways that are simple, straightforward, and appropriate, and that is certainly what we attempt to do.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Mr. Kania, you have three minutes.

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

Commissioner, because I have three minutes, I'm going to pose three questions to you and ask for your responses to each three individually. If you run out of time, I'm going to ask you to provide a written response at a subsequent date.

On the first question, in the first operation manual, there was a CEW challenge. Everybody acknowledges that these are dangerous instruments. This challenge has been absolutely removed. There was a challenge that said, “Police, stop or you will be hit with 50,000 volts of electricity!” That is missing from the new procedures. I find that shocking and I'm asking for your commitment to do something to remedy that.

On my second point, under the definitions of when this can be used, it says: “The CEW must only be used in accordance with CEW training, the principles of the Incident Management/Intervention Model (IM/IM) and in response to a threat to officer or public safety as determined by a member’s assessment of the totality of the circumstances being encountered”. It says, “Members' actions must be reasonable and the force used must be necessary in the circumstances”.

That is the test the officers have to use to determine whether or not they're actually going to use a taser. As a lawyer, I find that very open and broad in terms of how it needs to be interpreted. I find it shocking that there is no specific training at depot for this. I am asking you to remedy that and to put training specifically in depot for officers on the use of tasers, on when they should be using it, the whole gamut.

Third, in this operations manual, there's nothing with respect to children. There's no recognition that children should be treated separately. There are no guidelines. I'd like to see training at depot with the respect to that. Once again, I find it shocking.

There is a Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was ratified by Canada. It says in particular, in article 19, that every child is protected from all forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and under which states parties commit to ensure that children are protected “from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury, or abuse”. There's nothing in this manual at all with respect to children and there should be. I'm asking that to be changed, as well, taking this convention into account.

[Commr William Elliott]

Thank you very much for those three important questions. I'm very happy to elaborate on each of them and I will be happy, if I don't get through this, to provide further information.

First of all, with respect to a warning, the old policy did contain reference to a so-called CEW challenge, which read, “Police, stop or you will be hit with 50,000 volts of electricity!” We have deleted that, but we have certainly not deleted from our training or requirements the notion of a police challenge. The old policy talked about using the challenge--and I won't quote the exact words, but certainly we can look at that--where it's feasible or appropriate. That's the idea. Sometimes situations dictate that no such warning would be appropriate.

The previous policy, which I actually do have it in front of me, said, “Before using the CEW, when tactically feasible, give the CEW Challenge”. The new policy does eliminate this, but again, I would invite honourable members to look at the entire context, and I would underscore the importance of that, including the IMIM and training.

For no other RCMP intervention is there a specific policy requirement to issue a specific challenge. The former challenge was long and complicated, and frankly, it was inaccurate. In fact, the taser does not deliver 50,000 volts.

The IMIM and our training stresses de-escalation, including dialogues and warnings. Our belief is that a shorter, clearer warning is better, and we train our people to use the standard warning, which is, “Stop! Police!” We also train them, where appropriate, to specifically warn of the deployment of a taser, normally by something like, “Taser! Taser! Taser!” It's simple. It's easy to understand. It's easy to remember.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Maybe you can use your time to finish your answer at another time, but we're way over time. I apologize.

Mr. MacKenzie, please.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Elliott, I have a couple of things here, but I'm not sure we'll have the time for them. Obviously, lawyers sometimes see things differently from police officers in the field. I know that one of the things you consider when you write your policy is that some of your members are 6'4'' and some of them are 5'4'', so obviously policy has to apply to all of them, and use of force changes given the circumstances.

Having said all of that, I don't know whether you brought them with you, but I understand that statistics from 2008 and from the report from the public complaints commissioner would indicate there's been a tremendous change in the use of the CEWs by members of your organization. If so, I wonder if you could just elaborate a little bit on what some of those significant changes are.

[Commr William Elliott]

Overall, as Mr. Kennedy, the Chair of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP has reported, our number of deployments of CEWs in 2008 was down approximately 30% from 2007. I would suggest that there are a number of contributing factors to this. As Mr. Holland said, there has been a lot of public and media attention on the use of tasers. A lot of it has underscored the risks associated with tasers.

I would say that the public attention, the attention inside the force following my last appearance, and our discussions of the risks associated with tasers, including the risk of death, have combined to heighten our members' awareness. I think it's a little dangerous to read too much into statistics, because we can't really predict with any accuracy what sorts of calls our officers will respond to today and what an appropriate response will be.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Kania pointed out one of the issues with respect to the taser when he talked about children. I appreciate that Mr. Kania wasn't present, and I don't mean that in any derogatory sense, but we did have a medical expert before the panel in the last session, a doctor who dealt with emergency room and trauma. She spoke to us about a 14-year-old boy who was 6'2'' and could not be controlled by the medical people. The police people were brought in. Sometimes the only way to protect that child from injuring himself and others is something like a CEW. I would suggest that it may be very difficult to simply say that we won't use it on a child.

The other issue is that I don't know how you define by looking at someone whether the person is a child or not. It's difficult to look at someone by age. When you define it in a policy, it would seem to me that when you say you cannot use something for someone under the age of 16, and it turns out someone was 14 but looked 16, this creates problems. So I would say that your policy of using it only when necessary—and there's also the rule that he who uses force must justify it—applies to the taser as it does to any other weapon.

I'm a little puzzled about how you can eliminate its use in every situation that may or may not come up, simply based on age. I haven't heard that in Canada we have used tasers in schools. I'm wondering if that's not a red herring and if you have any comments.

[Commr William Elliott]

I think that people are and should be concerned about any use of force on vulnerable populations, and that certainly includes children. Age, size, state of mind, and whether there is a weapon present: all these factors would be considered by our officers and by outside entities, including the courts and the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, in determining the proper response in a particular situation.

We would look very carefully at any incident where the CEW was used against a child. Maybe a better term would be a “minor”. Unfortunately, some people who fall under that description can pose serious risks to our officers, to themselves, and to the public.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you. It's 12 o'clock and our time is up.

Thank you very much for coming here today.

We will resume our meetings here on Thursday.

This meeting stands adjourned.