Don't attempt to ride the Metro in Vancouver, British Columbia without paying the fare. You'll get a TASERin' for your trouble:
"According to documents provided in response to a Freedom of Information request, police patrolling public transit in the Metro Vancouver area have used tasers 10 times in the past 18 months, including five occasions when victims had been accosted for riding free." (Emphasis mine)
They must really need that $1.50, or however much the fare is, quite badly to justify deploying a TASER on a crowded train or platform just because someone jumped the turnstile.
"An internal review of the incident concluded that the action taken by transit police officers complied with the force's policy and was within guidelines 'set out in the National Use of Force Model,' the report said."
This circumstances of the described incident, however, seem to be in direct contradiction to that very same model, described in the analysis of a separate incident, which states that:
"RCMP policy in relation to Taser use on the incident date stipulated that the Taser 'only be used to subdue individual suspects who resist arrest, are combative or suicidal.'"
I don't see anything about being a cheapskate being included in those categories.
Of course, the head cop up there isn't so much upset about his minions shocking the peasants as he is about the information leaking out without his getting a chance to put a positive spin on it:
"Yesterday, the head of the RCMP admitted the police force did not do a good job making information public about taser use, and vowed that changes will be made.
'Frankly we did not handle this matter very well,' Commissioner William Elliott told the Canadian Club of Ottawa. 'We should not have needed two kicks at the can. We must learn from that and do better.'"
Yep, fix the information-releasing system, not the asinine policy of TASERing everyone in sight that generated the damning and embarrassing information in the first place. That'll set things right.
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2 comments:
You should get tasered, its better than getting punched, hit with a baton, or pepper sprayed. These all cause injury, the taser causes only pain, and lasts 5 seconds. Good solution to using more damaging levels of force when people resist if you ask me. You should research and become informed before you go spewing your inflamatory rhetoric around.
Also, why don't you go on a ride along with an officer, see what its like to get spit on and attacked. See how you defend yourself then. I doubt you would though, you would rather live in your little bubble, thinking that the streets are like candy land while you sleep in your egyptian cotton sheets at night. Reality isn't a word in your dictionary.
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