In response to national anger at the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski in the Vancouver airport, the RCMP was urged to curb multiple Taser use by its officers — but instead deleted an existing restriction from its stun-gun policy.
CBC News has learned that on Feb. 3, 2009, two sentences were erased from the main document that guides officers' actions — the first limiting Taser usage to one shot and no more than 20 seconds at a time, and the second requiring officers to warn suspects before deploying a stun gun.
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The RCMP's policy change comes at a time when new independent research has emerged suggesting that chance of death from stun guns rises with each exposure, contrary to claims by the largest stun-gun manufacturer and police forces using the devices.
"It is a linear relationship: the more you are exposed — if you double the exposure, you double the risk of death," Pierre Savard, a biomedical engineer at Montreal's École Polytechnique who specializes in effects of electricity on the heart, told CBC News.
Savard studied statistics on more than 300 Taser-related deaths compiled by Amnesty International and results from 3,200 RCMP Taser deployments amassed by CBC/Radio-Canada and the Canadian Press.
That electrical current, says Savard, increases the heart rate and can directly affect the cardiac rhythm. "There are plausible mechanisms that can relate the Taser itself to death," said Savard.
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Broken force.
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