Transit police stun fare cheaters with Taser!
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, Canada
- April 16, 2008 - CBC News has learned that transit police on SkyTrain stations in Metro Vancouver have
used Taser stun guns on passengers who didn't pay the fare and tried to run
away.
Transit police have fired Tasers 10
times since January last year, and three cases involved non-violent suspects,
according to internal police reports obtained by CBC News using access to
information laws.
In one case, a person ran from
transit cops during a check for free-riders and "the Taser was deployed as
the subject fled," the documents say. Another person who didn't pay the
fare was arrested but "grabbed onto the platform railing and refused to
let go … the Taser was deployed."
A Taser may be used when "the
situation demands control over a non-compliant, suicidal, potentially violent,
or violent individual and lower force options were ineffective," according
to the transit police policy.
Stunning someone without a transit
ticket doesn't qualify as an appropriate use of a Taser, said Murray Mollard,
executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.
"I would call it a shocking
abuse and misuse of a very significant weapon," Mollard told CBC News
Tuesday.
Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh, who's on
a federal committee reviewing the use of Tasers, said transit police have gone
too far.
"That's the example where
Taser use has just gotten out of hand and I believe the government needs to
actually bring them under some kind of control," he said.
Federal New Democrat MP Penny Priddy also called such
a use of Taser "absolutely intolerable."