Why the Police Wouldn't Tase Me When I Asked Them to

The shooting was premeditated. Cpl. Gregg Gillis plotted it out a month in advance. Two weeks later, he nailed down the date and location: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police offices in Richmond, British Columbia. My first thought upon waking that morning: What to wear to my own zapping?

En route, I half expect a last-minute call to cancel my appointment with 50,000 volts of electricity. More than 300 North Americans have died after being tasered since the stun gun was introduced in 1999, including at least 20 in Canada. Robert Dziekanski became the most notable recipient when he died at the Vancouver airport on Oct. 14, after being tasered twice by Richmond-based RCMP officers. The incident was caught on tape by a bystander and posted on Youtube, sparking controversy round the globe. The safety of the stun gun has since come under heavy fire, with heated debates among medical specialists and accusations that Taser International censors, bullies and sues medical examiners who link deaths to tasers. Meantime, Amnesty International is calling for a taser moratorium, and the United Nations has called the taser a potentially lethal method of torture. In Canada, a government investigation has cited taser usage creep among law enforcement, lack of transparency with field use statistics, the need for stricter guidelines for its use and improved training.

Letting a journalist go through RCMP taser school seems like the kind of trouble the RCMP would go out of its way to avoid.

Training day

But here I am and Sgt. Mike and Sgt. Gene of the undercover drug squad are my schoolmates for the daylong recertification course, which is mandatory every three years. Their initial two-day training included brief "exposure" to the Taser's zap, which used to be mandatory. But with rare reports of adverse reactions, it's now only strongly recommended.

Gene has never once used his Smith and Wesson pistol in his seven years as a Mountie and has only once fired his taser on a man who had been threatening an ex-girlfriend and became "combative" after Gene chased him down and tried to get him cuffed. Drug squad team boss Mike, with 12 years of service under his holster, has never fired either gun. Neither are keen to be voluntarily zapped again today, but I elicit raised eyebrows when I tell them the plan is for me to be tased.

"I'll do it if you do it," says 32-year-old Gene, a university grad and former Canadian Forces member who acknowledges it "sounds like a big clich," that he joined the RCMP "to do my part for my country and community." The RCMP is Canada's federal police force, and while large urban centers like Vancouver and Toronto have city police forces, approximately 25,000 Mounties are contracted to suburban and rural areas across Canada.

Our trainer, Adrian Tarasoff, wearing an RCMP issue T-shirt emblazoned with the Public and Police Safety patch (a maple leaf and a gun), begins the touch-screen Powerpoint training presentation by discussing the mechanics of this most-studied weapon in law enforcement.

Standing on the trigger

Tarasoff reminds us that tasers fail to work 20 per cent of the time. And even with optimal deployment -- when both darts hit the subject, ideally with a 36-inch probe spread -- one out of 10 times it won't cause the ideal five seconds of neuromuscular incapacitation.

The now-famous Vancouver airport video footage has certainly put this topic of less-than-ideal taser deployment into stark relief, for a number of reasons. 40-year-old Dziekanski was tased a mere 24 seconds after RCMP officers arrived at the scene, yet he continued to flail around post-exposure. Prior to the tasing, the Polish immigrant had spent many hours inside the international arrivals area, a secure area where travelers also go through customs. His mother, a Vancouver resident, had ordered him to wait at his baggage carousel, assuming it was accessible to the public. It's not, though that's where he remained, unbeknownst to his mother, who eventually left the airport. Dziekanski's behavior became increasingly erratic as the hours ticked by. He did find his way towards to sliding glass doors leading to the public waiting area, armed at one point with a chair, shouting at airport officials and refusing to exit.