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Wednesday » February 20 » 2008

Weapons of minimal disruption

Florence Loyie

The Edmonton Journal

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Const. Derek McIntyre displays a projectile launcher and a blast canister that the city police tactical unit can use instead of lethal force.

CREDIT: Bruce Edwards, The Journal

Const. Derek McIntyre displays a projectile launcher and a blast canister that the city police tactical unit can use instead of lethal force.

Const. Joe Tassone displays the baton and pepper spray all officers carry.

CREDIT: Bruce Edwards, The Journal

Const. Joe Tassone displays the baton and pepper spray all officers carry.

EDMONTON - Imagine a canister of pepper spray so big that if it were emptied all at once it would fill Rexall Place with a choking, blinding irritant that would take hours to clear.

"This is stuff the average ordinary citizen will never see," noted Const. Derek McIntyre, a member of the Edmonton Police Service tactical unit. "It's for tact guys only."

The OC exProject, as it's called, has a 21/2-pound canister that delivers a stream of pepper spray, at 1,000 feet per second, in 15- to 17-second bursts. Police will use it to stop someone from gaining access, or for crowd control.

While the device is considered non-lethal, it must be used with care. The pepper spray comes out with such force that the stream could be fatal if it hit someone in the head at close range, said McIntyre.

Police departments across the country are looking carefully at their arsenal in the wake of high-profile deaths involving Tasers -- which are themselves categorized as non-lethal weapons.

Last week, a parliamentary committee in Ottawa was assured by the chairman of Taser International that the weapons were not lethal, but not all MPs were sold on the safety of the electronic device.

Human rights group Amnesty International says at least 16 deaths in Canada are linked to Tasers. One of those deaths was Robert Dziekanski, who was Tasered by RCMP officers at Vancouver International Airport, prompting law enforcement agencies and levels of government to review or restrict their Taser policies.

But police departments have a number of non-lethal devices at their disposal.

Last year, Edmonton police responded to more than 238,000 incidents, in which force was required in 1,922 cases to bring a person under control, said Const. Joe Tassone with the department's officer safety unit.

Tasers were used in 455 of those situations; in most of those cases, the officer merely had to pull the stun gun from its holster and the person backed down, without being hit with a charge of 50,000 volts.

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Cmdr. Sid Heal, considered the world's leading authority on the use of non-lethal police weaponry, travels the world advising police departments on what works at the LASD, which has 9,000 officers and 7,000 civilian employees.

"Every day, until we get that special device, we are dooming ourselves to use the lethal force option. That's the most frustrating part of this job," Heal told the Vancouver Sun. But if a police officer believes he or she is in a life or death situation, Heal has no qualms about using a firearm.

"Crooks could use less lethal options, yet there are no cases where crooks use less lethal options to commit robberies. The crooks still understand the less lethal options we use are primitive. It's a paradox. We put these officers in a position of trying to spare the life of a guy who is trying to kill them," he said.

Since city police began using Tasers in 2000, three suspects who have been shocked by them subsequently died. None of the deaths was attributed to the device. A recent fatality inquiry into the 2004 death of Ronald Perry -- an Edmonton man with a history of drug use who was Tasered while fighting his arrest -- recommended more study into the condition "excited delirium" in a bid to prevent future deaths.

In Edmonton, all front-line EPS officers are equipped with firearms, as well as a 340-gram canister of OC (standing for oleoresin capsicum, the active ingredient in pepper spray), and a baton.

Out of its 1,400 members, 400 officers are trained to operate conductive energy devices -- better known by their brand name, Taser -- while 235 members actually carry the units, said Tassone, who trains officers in CED use.

Tactical unit members are equipped with much the same gear, but they have additional non-lethal weapons to choose from, if the situation demands.

In addition to the mega-canister of pepper spray, there is a munitions launcher that fires a foam baton, roughly the size and density of a racquet ball, at 356 kilometres an hour.

"The target areas are the large muscles in the thighs and buttocks," McIntyre said about the device, which is effective from five to 18 metres. "It's made to incapacitate people, but not to kill. It is used for a single subject in possession of a weapon."

He added: "Usually one round works, but if someone is highly agitated or on something, you might need an additional round."

As another safety measure, Edmonton police officers are trained to keep a shielding distance of 7.6 metres between themselves and their opponents.

A motivated person armed with a knife can cover a distance of 6.4 metres in less than three seconds. In the time it would take for an officer to process the attack, draw a firearm, aim it and shoot, the attacker would be on top of them, Tassone said.

"This isn't the movies," he added. "It isn't one bullet and the guy is dead. He doesn't get shot and get flung back.

"Sometimes he'll have to bleed out and that can take a few minutes, or 15, or 20."

TASER POLICY CHANGES

A recent internal affairs report found public complaints about EPS officers' conduct hit a five-year-low in 2007. Investigations into 139 formal complaints were launched by the beginning of December, compared with 214 in 2006 and 217 in 2005. EPS received 299 formal complaints in 2003.

In February 2006, EPS introduced a new policy on the use of conductive energy devices, better known as Tasers.

Under the new rules, two senior officers are called to the scene as soon as the device is fired.

There, they download information from the Taser's computer chip, including the date and time it was fired, to verify facts after interviewing the person who was zapped and the officer who zapped them.

One of the most important changes EPS made was to ban the use of a Taser in a case of passive resistance -- defined as a person not assisting an officer with their arrest, rather than outright resisting it, said Const. Joe Tassone with the department's officer safety unit.

An example of passive resistance would be where a suspect is lying on the ground, but refuses to obey commands to put their hands behind their backs so they can be handcuffed, said Tassone.

In December, the Alberta Solicitor General's Department issued provincial guidelines for Taser use which apply to RCMP and all municipal police departments.

The guidelines are similar to the parameters EPS currently operates under.