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Blogs by Malcolm K Watts
Cowboys and Yahoos have no place in modern police forces.
4/1/2009 7:49:18 AM
Robert Dziekanski died because RCMP officers shot first and used their brains later.
Police officers have a difficult job for sure, but unfortunately, too many of them are gung ho yahoos drawn to the job for the personal power entrusted to them. The death of Polish Immigrant Robert Dziekanski, tasered repeatedly by RCMP officers in the Vancouver airport is an example of what I speak. He died from police brutality.
The videotape of the incident makes it clear that the officers arrived on the scene with no intention to intervene peacefully if possible but rather to use whatever force they could to subdue this man. In fact, he may not have required to be subdued at all if certain other steps had taken place. Nevertheless, the tape makes it clear that officers arriving on the scene do not even ATTEMPT to talk to the man. Instead, they resort like gangbusters to their fire power option to subdue this man who was frantic after being lost in a foreign airport for hours and unable to speak the English to get help. He was contained in an area and of minimal threat to the officers, other passengers, and property. The officers maintain he was a threat to them. How? The officers maintain the man was brandishing a stapler at them.
Dziekanski was tasered and falls immediately to the ground but the yahoo’s were still not satisfied. They shock him two more times with the taser after he was already on the ground. He died.
The RCMP officer, questioned during a recent inquiry into this incident, stated that he administered two more taser hits after the man was on the ground because the man wouldn’t give up struggling. This was merely a pathetic excuse for police brutality, and a yahoo mentality.
Most police officers do not behave like this – but too many do. The recent tragedy in the U.S. where an NFL player was refused permission to go to his dying mother because he ran a red light (no one around) to get to the hospital is such an example. The man’s mother died inside the facility while he was held up in the parking lot by the power tripping officer. Such power trippers must be rooted out.
To be sure, police officers have a really tough job. Nevertheless, dealing with the public - obnoxious, disturbed and otherwise, is part of the job description. Tact and judgment, not fire power or power tripping, is required in the vast majority of situations with disturbed people. Force, especially lethal force, must always be the last choice. I speak from experience.
A social worker for thirty years, I worked in schedule 1 mental health facility (involuntary patients). There were times when disturbed patients had to be confronted and restrained. We used code white overhead page to bring a large show of force to stand by while skilled staff tried to talk with the patient.
None of these patients were any less upset than Mr.Dziekanski, and even when sometimes we called police to help us, none of our patients were injured, died, or were tasered. Indeed many of them, some dealt with by myself personally, were talked down to a peaceful resolution without any force whatsoever required.
I don’t know what the answer is, but those officers involved with Mr. Dziekanski must be censured, even dismissed in disgrace for their behavior that day. Their actions have brought disrepute upon the RCMP and Canada in the eyes of the whole world.
Police forces everywhere must strive to find ways to avoid recruiting people attracted to the weaponry and power of police work instead of a pledge to serve and protect.
Malcolm Watts MSW
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April 2009 Blogs
• Cowboys and Yahoos have no place in modern police forces. - Wednesday, April 01, 2009
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