At a time when Vancouver police officers rarely fire a conductive energy weapon — commonly referred to by the brand name Taser — the department plans to buy 200 more of the stun guns and train almost the same number of officers to use the weapon by the end of 2016.
With 128 officers already trained, including members of emergency response teams, the department wants a total of 200 cops to know how to use the Taser before the end of this year. By the end of 2016, the goal is to have 300 officers trained and have one Taser available for every two patrol members on shift.
“It doesn’t mean we’ll be using it a lot more, but we’ll have it more available,” Police Chief Adam Palmer told the Courier in an interview Thursday. “It’s a tool that we don’t use on a regular basis, but when we do need it, it’s very important to have it. It’s like a firearm. We don’t use that very often either, but officers do have to have it. So in those most serious circumstances, it’s nice for officers to have another option.”
The increase in training will mean purchasing 100 of the $2,000-a-piece Tasers this year and another 100 next year to add to the 150 in stock. It will also mean equipping officers with a weapon made infamous by the RCMP in 2007 at the Vancouver International Airport, where Mounties fired it several times at Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, who died of a heart attack following the jolts from the gun.
As the Courier revealed in a story published last month, the VPD’s use of the Taser dropped significantly after Dziekanski’s death. In 2006, VPD officers fired the weapon 93 times but have only fired it an average of nine times per year between 2010 and 2014.
Palmer said it was “fair comment” that officers were probably “a little shy” to use the Taser back then and acknowledged “with any of these less-lethal options, there’s no guarantee that somebody will not die.” He added, though, that “we’re reducing that chance” with the use of a Taser because “there’s less likelihood somebody’s going to die than if shot with a bullet.”
The chief pointed out officers are trained in hand-to-hand combat, are equipped with pepper spray and a baton. Some officers are also trained on how to use a shotgun that fires beanbag rounds. That training is coupled with de-escalation techniques, which emphasize the primary goal of an officer making an arrest is to not resort to use of force.
“After the baton, many officers go right to a firearm because there’s no other intermediate options,” the chief added. “Having a Taser there gives another option.”
The VPD has tied the training and need for more Tasers to a series of initiatives Palmer and his deputy chiefs adopted as it sets out to create a public policy document that details the police’s approach to dealing with a person in a mental health crisis. The initiatives were adopted after a VPD superintendent conducted a review of two Ontario reports that made recommendations related to police cases involving use of force against mentally ill people.
From those reports, the VPD decided to include more training, particularly for new recruits, on how to respond to a person in a crisis and have the VPD’s recruiting unit give more value to applicants with backgrounds in working with people suffering from mental illness.
“Many police officers currently deployed in the field have the ability to draw on their past experiences to assist them when faced with new challenges,” said a VPD report that went before the Vancouver Police Board Thursday. “New police officers have had no opportunity to do this, and can often be faced with challenging circumstances in difficult situations, and be expected to help resolve an individual’s crisis. As such, there is a significant opportunity to provide additional training to all of our new recruits prior to their final deployment after the police academy, and use this time to specifically increase their knowledge on mental illness.”
Lawyer Douglas King of Pivot Legal Society said he believes the VPD’s move to add more Tasers and increase its mental health training is a response to reducing the number of times police shoot and kill a person suffering from a mental illness.
King represented the family of Michael Vann Hubbard, who suffered from schizophrenia and was shot and killed by a Vancouver police officer in 2009. An inquest into Hubbard’s death found the 58-year-old man threatened police with a utility knife. King noted police didn’t have a Taser, a weapon that could have been used on Hubbard and saved his life.
“I think the department recognizes that the number one way it’s going to be scrutinized, and probably the worst publicity it can get, is if one of its officers shoots and kills somebody,” King said. “But the Taser can’t be seen as a substitute for de-escalation. It can be, possibly, a positive substitute for a firearm. But the last thing we want is officers turning to a Taser instead of adequately addressing the situation, especially when dealing with someone with mental health issues.”
Although Josh Paterson of the B.C. Civil Liberties’ Association says the VPD’s move to improve how it deals with mentally ill people is encouraging, he is unclear what the department’s justification is for an increase in training and use of the Taser. The increase, Paterson added, is even more peculiar since the VPD has seen a dramatic drop in the number of times officers have deployed the stun gun in recent years.
“There may be an incredibly good reason for the increase, but it’s not clear to us and it’s hard to comment on whether this is a good thing or not, when we don’t know the reasoning,” said Paterson, who reviewed the VPD’s report. “We’ve been long time advocates for better training and policies on the part of police agencies in dealing with people with mental health issues. We like the recognition in the report that the focus has got to be on de-escalation and resolving issues without resorting to the use of force.”
In recent years, the department has released reports with statistics showing a significant increase in the number of times police answer calls involving a person with a mental illness. The report says about 20 per cent of all calls city-wide are related to mental illness, with that call load increasing in the northeast part of the city, which includes the Downtown Eastside, to 40 per cent.
In 2014, VPD officers fired the Taser nine times. In those cases, police reported that five suspects were under the influence of drugs or alcohol and four were carrying a weapon. Four were considered “emotionally disturbed.” The suspects were all men, aged 19 to 59, according to an annual report the VPD provided to the police services division of the Ministry of Justice.
That same report showed VPD officers displayed a Taser 55 times during an arrest but didn’t fire it at the suspect, inferring the person surrendered rather than be jolted with the weapon. That happened another 38 times in 2013.
mhowell@vancourier.com
@Howellings
