The Canadian Taser Story

is_that_so

Not sure if this has been posted already. Just been reading about this. It doesn't make for pleasant viewing. The guy is very agitated.

An amateur cameraman has released footage of the death of a man tasered by Royal Canadian Mounted Police at Vancouver International Airport.

Cameraman Paul Pritchard filmed Pole Robert Dziekanski,40, in a "clearly agitated" state on 14 October in a "secure area outside the Canada Customs exit". At the start of the 10 minute film Dziekanski, who had arrived hours before* to visit his mother, can be seen "taking office chairs and putting them in front of the security doors", as CBC News explains. He then "picks up a small table, which he holds, while a woman in the arrivals lounge calmly speaks to him in apparent effort to calm him down".
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Full Story and link to video.

Terry

I suggest reading the full story before posting.

Canadian Taser death caught on camera
Vancouver Airport amateur footage shocker
By Lester Haines → More by this author
Published Thursday 15th November 2007 16:13 GMT

An amateur cameraman has released footage of the death of a man tasered by Royal Canadian Mounted Police at Vancouver International Airport.

Cameraman Paul Pritchard filmed Pole Robert Dziekanski,40, in a "clearly agitated" state on 14 October in a "secure area outside the Canada Customs exit". At the start of the 10 minute film Dziekanski, who had arrived hours before* to visit his mother, can be seen "taking office chairs and putting them in front of the security doors", as CBC News explains. He then "picks up a small table, which he holds, while a woman in the arrivals lounge calmly speaks to him in apparent effort to calm him down".

Dziekanski then "picks up a computer and throws it to the ground". Three airport personnel arrive and "block the exit from the secure area, but Dziekanski retreats inside and does not threaten them".

Video still showing Robert Dziekanski hit by a shot from an RCMP TaserFour RCMP officers arrive shortly after and roughly 25 seconds later, "there is a loud crack that sounds like a Taser shot, followed by Dziekanski screaming and convulsing as he stumbles and falls to the floor" (see pic).

CBC News continues: "Another loud crack can be heard as an officer appears to fire one more Taser shot into Dziekanski. As the officers kneel on top of Dziekanski and handcuff him, he continues to scream and convulse on the floor. One officer is heard to say, 'Hit him again. Hit him again', and there is another loud cracking sound."

As the video ends, officers "appear to be checking his condition and one officer is heard to say, 'code red'". An ambulance team arrived a few minutes later, but "their efforts to revive Dziekanski were unsuccessful and he was declared dead".

Pritchard gave police his footage "on a promise that they would return it within 48 hours". However, the next day, they told him "they would not be returning the recording as promised". He then hired a lawyer to recover the film, which police eventually returned to him on Wednesday.

Pritchard claims he was provoked into action because he "feared a coverup by police". RCMP's Cpl Dale Carr said police "kept the video longer than they anticipated in order to protect the integrity of the police investigation while they interviewed witnesses".

Carr told a press conference on Wednesday: "It's just one piece of evidence, one person's view. There are many people that we have spoken to. What I urge is that those watching the video, take note of that. Put what they've seen aside for the time being. And wait to hear the totality of the evidence at the time of the inquest."

Among the controversial points raised by the video are that police "have said repeatedly that there were only three RCMP officers involved in the incident, but the video shows four men in RCMP uniforms", and that RCMP have said officers "did not use pepper spray because of the large number of people at the airport at the time".

However, as CBC News notes: "The video shows Dziekanski standing alone with the four officers in an otherwise empty area, which is separated from the public area by a thick glass wall."

CBC News concludes: "The RCMP's integrated homicide investigation team, the BC coroner's service, the Vancouver International Airport Authority and the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP are each conducting their own investigations into the incident." ®
Bootnote

*CBC News notes: "The Polish immigrant arrived from Europe the previous day around 4pm, but for some unknown reason he did not clear customs until after midnight." The cause of his distress is likewise unknown.

Kintarō Hattori

It's a little strange alright. As pointed out the guy was quite agitated, but the three policemen who arrived could easily have taken the guy to the ground and cuffed him without having to resort to a taser.
After being hit the first time with the taser they could have cuffed him but they didn't and hit him several more times while he was writhing in pain on the ground.

thefinalstage

eo980 wrote: »

It's a little strange alright. As pointed out the guy was quite agitated, but the three policemen who arrived could easily have taken the guy to the ground and cuffed him without having to resort to a taser.
After being hit the first time with the taser they could have cuffed him but they didn't and hit him several more times while he was writhing in pain on the ground.

"Its is safer to kill an enemy than to wound him. An injured animal has sharper teeth"

They wanted to make sure he was down for the count and wouldn't get a punch if they went near. A little of the top though. The main question is why was he mad? The perspective can change by that. As in was he agitated because the security guard shagged his girlfriend or kept him so long?

luckat

Doesn't sound like anyone tried to talk calmly to the guy, give him a cup of tea, let him call his mot, etc - more to the point than tackling him or tasering him, +RIP+

connundrum

Yet more proof that the Guards should be armed with these yokes.

lostexpectation

cops putting their safety over other peoples lives

Overheal

The first thing officers did when they got to a man in the Vancouver, Canada airport last month was taser him, even though we wasn't resisting them, according to a fellow traveler who videotaped the incident.

Shortly after being zapped, Robert Dziekanski, 40, died.

The video is causing international outrage, and the man who took it, fellow traveler Paul Pritchard, 25, of Victoria, British Columbia, spoke exclusively with The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm about the Oct. 14 incident Friday.

He called it "shocking" and "disgusting."

The video shows the man screaming and writhing in pain on the floor shortly before he dies.

Four Royal Canadian Mounted Police converged on Dziekanski, who couldn't speak English and who had languished in the airport arrivals area for 10 hours after his flight arrived. It was the first time he'd been on a plane.

Dziekanski had been waiting for his mother, who told him to wait in the baggage area. But she couldn't get in there, couldn't get a message to him, and finally went home after being told he never arrived.

On the video, a bystander tried to calm Dziekanski down, but he didn't understand. Then, he picked up a computer and threw it, then tossed a piece of furniture.

Dziekanski appeared calm when the police arrived.

The video shows him backing up, raising his hands and turning away before the police stun him with the 50,000-volt Taser, sending him to the floor screaming before he's stunned again and the Mounties pin down his head and limbs to handcuff him.

Pritchard told Storm it was the Mounties themselves who first made him realize the video, which they'd confiscated, might be worth retrieving, and publicizing.

He says he was motivated by "the fact that the police actually took it from me and didn't give it back, and, you know, broke a verbal agreement, promising to give it back, and they took it away. (That) led me to believe that maybe there's something important on that footage that I needed to get out to the public."

Pritchard says that, when the incident began, Dziekanski "was acting a little bit strange. He was banging on glass. He was actually trying to get back into the secured area.

"I woke up, and started watching. And as soon as he got back through the glass doors, that's when I started rolling with the film.

The Mounties took half-an-hour just to show up, Pritchard said, and "When police arrived, he stopped everything. He put up his hands. He gave up. When the police came, he thought it was over. The Mounties did not see him at this point break anything."

Why did they taser him?

"I have no idea," Pritchard responded. "It was the first step they took."

They tasered Dziekanski at least twice, Pritchard said, adding that after the first time, "There's audio of the man saying, 'Hit him again, hit him again' when he's on the ground.

"He was on the ground. There were three officers on him, then the officer says, 'Hit him again, hit him again.'

"One officer took his one knee and leg and kneeled on his neck and head. Unfortunately that's when he stopped -- he lost consciousness.

"He was screaming. He was shaking a bit. Then all of a sudden, his body went limp.

"It was shocking. It was disgusting."

A police timeline shows it took four minutes for the Mounties to call for medical assistance, and it was 12 minutes in all until help arrived.

"We didn't know what was going on," Pritchard recalled for Storm. "We were watching. And I stopped filming. We didn't know what to do. We heard someone say, 'Code red, and go call medics.' And you see someone check his pulse, but nobody gave him medical attention. But, as soon as the medics arrived, they ripped off his shirt, put in a mouthpiece, and right away started administering CPR."

When asked by Storm what he would say to Dziekanski's mother, he replied, "Apology, you know, as a Canadian -- we apologize. For everybody."

Pritchard says he believes his video recording will contribute to changes in police tactics in Canada when it comes to use of force.

The video has made its way around the world via the Internet and international newscasts, and prompted a flood of criticism of police.

Poland's ambassador to Canada, Piotr Ogrodzinski, says he was shocked by the video, adding it appears the police action was unsuitable and Poland wants some immediate answers.

RCMP Cpl. Dale Carr says he's been getting angry calls from people, but says they're coming to conclusions based on one piece of evidence and not waiting for all the evidence to come out. He says that won't happen until an inquest is held.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPe_hf7aBXM

fast forward to minute 4:30

biko

Already a thread further down the page
The Canadian Taser Story

Karoma

Merged...by another mod.

Overheal

cheers luvs.

Its astounding, the whole thing. Jump to minute 7 in the clip: the guard on the righthand side starts driving his baton (or is it a crowbar!?) down on the guy repeatedly :eek:

SpAcEd OuT

Not a chance the garda should get these so way too incompetent to get such a weapon.

Overheal

it doesnt take a taser for a law officer to commit brutality.

Voodu Child

Overheal wrote: »

cheers luvs.

Its astounding, the whole thing. Jump to minute 7 in the clip: the guard on the righthand side starts driving his baton (or is it a crowbar!?) down on the guy repeatedly :eek:

He was folding it up by driving it into the ground, not the dead guy. The telescopic batons have powerful springs and take a good ol' bash to fold back up.

TheVan

Shocking