Toronto Police Service: Stun Gun

Stun Guns Dept: Now B.C. Coroner Patrick Cullinane has closed the book on one lingering aspect of the long-drawn-out Dziekanski tragedy by ruling that his death was a homicide, a neutral term meaning it was caused by the actions of another person. It implies no blame. While Zofia Cisowksi remains haunted by her son death she can take some comfort at least in knowing that police today are less quick to draw their 50,000-volt weapons from their holsters, according to The Star. Police elsewhere are showing similar restraint. The Toronto Police Service used stun guns 273 times last year, down from 333 uses in 2007. And in more than half the cases Toronto police merely had to show the stun gun to control a suspect. It worth noting, too, that almost all stun gun use is restricted to front line supervisors or emergency task force officers. That another safeguard and It has been more than five years since Canadians were shocked by the case of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, who died of a heart attack on Oct. 14, 2007, after being Tasered five times by Mounties at Vancouver airport. The incident, graphically captured on video, sparked an inquiry and led to a tightening of the rules for using so-called conducted energy weapons. In 2008, before retired justice Thomas Braidwood completed his inquiry, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported they used or threatened to use conducted energy weapons 1,069 times, nation-wide. By 2012 that had dropped sharply to 633 uses. That an encouraging 41-per-cent decrease. And the Mounties increasingly are using the threat of stun guns, rather than firing them, to control suspects. Actual use on suspects dropped from 51 per cent of the time to 35 per cent. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.