Not to  pile on to the poor. misbegotten taser.  Again.  But  3 more taser deaths in Canada in recent weeks.  This time, it was an agitated shopper.  The story is familiar.

Robert Knipstrom, 36, died in a hospital after two officers used pepper spray, a Taser and their batons to subdue the British Columbia resident. Police earlier said Knipstrom was extremely agitated, aggressive and combative with the two officers who responded.

If they use the words “extremely agitated, aggressive and combative,” does it serve to eliminate the need for any factual explanation of what he did to deserve death?  I know, I know.  That’s just the criminal defense lawyer talking.  I’m just not inclined to accept the police conclusory version in lieu of facts.  Go figure.

What do we learn from this?  That tasers in Canada are no more non-lethal than tasers in the United States.  I would say it has something to do with Canadian stamina, but one of the fellows was Polish coming off a plane in Toronto.  He didn’t even speak Canadian.  But he died like one.

In the past, we posted about the taser being somewhat less the benign weapon that it’s portrayed by police (and its makers) to be.  While it remains a better substitute than hot lead when the time comes that force is required, it clearly hasn’t been the safe, non-lethal weapon that it’s promoted to be.  It can, and does, kill.  Not all the time.  Not even most of the time.  But sometimes.  And if you happen to be that “sometimes” person, all the other times when it doesn’t cause death really won’t matter much to you (or your kids, for that matter).

But the issue really isn’t the taser itself.  The issue is the use of the taser at the drop of a hat.  Police officers, who obviously buy into the taser as a quick, easy fix for any problem that takes more than 30 seconds to resolve, so they can get back before the coffee cools down, need to grasp that a taser is a cure-all.  Resort to taser without provocation or justification has become the norm.  This is a very bad thing, and must be stopped.

The rule of thumb is that when a police officer issues a command, you obey immediately or get (and deserve) a good beating.  That’s the price for disobedience, and it’s their lot in life to teach the rest of us some manners.  But the club has given way to the taser.  It leaves no marks and is far less likely to cause repetitive stress injury to the officer.  Note that the offensive individual has neither threatened nor harmed anyone.  He has, however, committed the sin of disrespect.

And so, the police officer initiates the cure for a disobedient (which in police jargon is called “aggressive”) person.  Zaaaaap.  That’ll show ’em.  And how.  The cop has no intention of killing anyone.  It was just a lesson, and it was supposed to be harmless.  That’s what they said.  Oh my, what do we do now.  The guy’s dead!

While police departments love to have policies that are utterly ignored on the road and cited with impunity in the press, here’s one that might help us all out a bit.  Tasers should never be used except under situations where deadly force would be justified.  It the situation does not legitimately call for the use of deadly force, then there is no reason to use any force. 

Tasers are not benign.  Unless, Mr. Officer, you want to go home tonight with a dead body on your conscience, don’t use it.  Sure, that means that you will have to wait around much longer until the situation calms down.  It means you will have to think and perhaps even use your wits.  There may even be times that you will have to assess the situation like the taught you at the academy, and deliberate over how best to resolve the situation without the use of force.  But at least you won’t kill anybody.  At least not today.  And everybody gets to go home alive when it’s all over.