Please take a moment to sign the Petition
Your names on this petition will be included with a letter to the Prime Minsiter along to his hundreds of MP’s demanding an end to the use of tasers and demand answers to our questions.
It is our duty as citizens of this nation to ask Canadian Government to act now with an immediate moratorium on taser use by enforcement agencies in Canada.
Here is the petition:
http://newsnet.ca/phpPETITION/
Thanks to Beijing York for posting this link
The Liberals are strongly backing the continued use of tasers subject to proper training, etc, etc,
While I certainly do NOT approve of the way that police officers are curently using tasers, I’m not prepared to scrap them entirely, for they do serve a useful purpose when used as originally intended – as an alternative to deadly force.
I think that if the police were only allowed to use a taser (and had to justify that use) when they would otherwise have had to draw and fire their weapon, we’d see a marked decrease in their use, and correspondingly fewer accidental deaths. And to be perfectly blunt about it, a relatively small percentage of accidental deaths is still a lot better than a significantly higher number of deaths when suspects are shot.
I”m asking for fair criminal investigation against police involved. Prohibit use for all Tasers in Canada and USA. Get rid off all bad cops in Canada and replace them with civilized ones. Police should receive long training. Then peoples will have more trust in Police and crime will drop down quick. I do not like that B.C. Coroner and Walter Kosteckyj involved in the Dziekanski’s case are former Police Officers.
I think we’d be better off if the cops didn’t have tasers at all. The nice thing about guns (and no I’m not being facetious here) is that police know damn well if they use it, someone is going to die. Not maybe, not one chance in 100, but someone WILL die unless he’s damn lucky and the bullet misses or doesn’t hit a major organ. Not only that, but police are trained that way. They are taught under no uncertain terms that when they draw their gun, they MUST be prepared to shoot and kill. That’s why they are never, EVER supposed to “shoot to wound” or aim for limbs or anything like that. They are trained to aim for centre of mass, and to keep pulling the trigger until the assailant falls to the ground and stays there. All police forces in North America are trained the same way. The reason for this is simple. It helps prevent the unecessary use of firearms by police. Cops know damn well that they are only to use their gun if the situation is bad enough to warrant killing someone. Thus, they do not see using a firearm as a half-measure or as something to provide them with an additional margin of safety. It is a deadly weapon to be used only when deadly force is needed.
Now, compare that to a taser. A taser is to be used when deadly force is not warranted. So what criteria does the cop use to make his decision? Basically, he’s left to taser anyone who he perceives might attempt any physical resistance at all. Because the officer knows that the taser is not meant to kill; that it is supposed to represent a “soft” option, he does not feel the same reluctance to use this weapon. Cops will say privately (though they’re not allowed to say this publicly) that because height, weight and strength requirements have gone out the window, they now need some other way to subdue violent or erratic subjects. That’s BS. I don’t care if someone is 4-9, and 90 lbs. They accepted the job, they’d damn well better be prepared to prove that they can physically subdue someone when they have to. If they can’t they should be cut from the force. If a person is so small and weak that they require a taser to do their job, how the hell did they become a cop?
I agree with Raging Ranter….it is a summary of how the mind works. I am deeply upset at the callous use of the Taser and the many unwarranted appliations we are reading about with increased frequency. Meanwhile, our politicians and police are being cavalier with OUR lives. It is easy for them to be aloof and distant about using a Taser against someone. Tasers MAY sound appealing in theory BUT in practise it is clear they are not only being over used but miss applied and unwarranted. I have started losing respect for police since the introduction of this tool. There are far too many incidents where their use was clearly unjustified. I’m not about to sit back and allow myself to be Tasered by some supposedly trained but over anxious cop. I WILL fight to the death. His or mine. It is clearly time for Canadians to ban their use in Canada. How do we make this happen?