Tasering of 11 year old no-charge decision explained, sort of
Monday, October 17, 2011 by David Eby
The West Van PD has finally released some details in relation to their "no charge" decision for the RCMP officer who Tasered the 11 year old boy in Prince George.
The objectively discernible facts from the summary are that the boy was involved in an incident with a staff member where a staff member was "stabbed." The injury is not described. The boy was spotted in the house and had several interactions with police. The police decided to intervene. When the boy exited the house the boy was Tasered. The attending officers say they reasonably believed the pen the boy was holding was a knife.
The remainder of the document is made up of the various impressions of witnesses of the level of danger represented by the boy to the police and to himself. It reads like a defence lawyer's summary as prepared in response to a criminal trial.
To begin, in relation to this statement, at the very least the WVPD should be thanked for ending the months of rumours that the boy was holding everything from a syringe to a spatula to a knife.
Now, on to what's important.
Was there really no other option for the officers involved? Did they reasonably believe the boy had a knife when he in fact had a pen? Can we know from the summary of a police investigator?
No, unfortunately, we can't. We'll never see the investigation file, the witness statements, the interview transcripts. It's all protected from Freedom of Information requests, and there is unlikely to be any public hearing related to this incident.
This may have been the best investigation of police by police in all of B.C.'s history. It might have been the worst. But we'll never know.
Unfortunately for both the officer involved and those concerned with the welfare of children in B.C., this investigation summary can't be relied on for much given the two public inquiries we've now had into police accountability in B.C., both of which recommended ending police self investigation.
All we'll know is that B.C. police investigations get worse, the more serious the incident is, according to an audit of the police complaints system in B.C..
We know that B.C. has the highest rate of police-involved deaths in Canada.
We know that this boy had a pen, and not a knife.
It's hard not to think that we don't know close to enough about this file yet.
The objectively discernible facts from the summary are that the boy was involved in an incident with a staff member where a staff member was "stabbed." The injury is not described. The boy was spotted in the house and had several interactions with police. The police decided to intervene. When the boy exited the house the boy was Tasered. The attending officers say they reasonably believed the pen the boy was holding was a knife.
The remainder of the document is made up of the various impressions of witnesses of the level of danger represented by the boy to the police and to himself. It reads like a defence lawyer's summary as prepared in response to a criminal trial.
To begin, in relation to this statement, at the very least the WVPD should be thanked for ending the months of rumours that the boy was holding everything from a syringe to a spatula to a knife.
Now, on to what's important.
Was there really no other option for the officers involved? Did they reasonably believe the boy had a knife when he in fact had a pen? Can we know from the summary of a police investigator?
No, unfortunately, we can't. We'll never see the investigation file, the witness statements, the interview transcripts. It's all protected from Freedom of Information requests, and there is unlikely to be any public hearing related to this incident.
This may have been the best investigation of police by police in all of B.C.'s history. It might have been the worst. But we'll never know.
Unfortunately for both the officer involved and those concerned with the welfare of children in B.C., this investigation summary can't be relied on for much given the two public inquiries we've now had into police accountability in B.C., both of which recommended ending police self investigation.
All we'll know is that B.C. police investigations get worse, the more serious the incident is, according to an audit of the police complaints system in B.C..
We know that B.C. has the highest rate of police-involved deaths in Canada.
We know that this boy had a pen, and not a knife.
It's hard not to think that we don't know close to enough about this file yet.
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Well, now we have one way we can save taxpayers a ton of money. If the police have so little confidence in their self defense training that they feel threatened by a child with -- perhaps -- a knife, then there is no reason to spend millions to continue the pretense of providing the officers with first-class marshal arts training and facilities that they cannot have the courage to use; we can save a fortune by just supplying them with all they really want: a gun, a taser and a closed review system.