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Video released shows a Polish immigrant's dying moments after police shocked him at Vancouver Airport

*video on web is edited*

1. The police did what they had to to take an out of control man down. Why put themselves in Jeopardy?

2. They used a form of non lethal force(taser)

3. If there is an issue, it should be if the Taser is an appropriate form of non lethal force, as it has proven to be lethal. Maybe good old pepper spray should be used instead again. But the Police did nothing wrong.

There has been a lot of airtime on the local news especially when this video was released yesterday. I encourage you all to read the three articles in the links below. There are a number of facts that relate to the police conduct before and after the incident that led to the man's death.

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news ... =88674&p=1
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news ... =88674&p=2
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news ... =88674&p=3

Here are a few more articles relating to the issue

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news ... 47&k=19619
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news ... d4&k=80295

I do believe the police are not the only ones to blame in this situation but I also think that they had a number of different options at their disposal that may have changed the outcome.

A few points I have

1) If the taser is supposed to be non lethal why do people die after it is used on them, does that not imply that it is lethal.

2) How out of control was the man...he did not have a weapon...he was yelling and throwing things but is that really dangerous and justification for tasering someone...why not just tackle him or better yet try to calm him down by communicating with him.


3) It took less than a minute for one officer to decide to use the taser...is there no protocol when approaching a man in distress other than taking them down with a taser.


4) Why after tasering him 2 times and handcuffing him why was there an officer basically sitting on his head.

5) After they saw that he was unconscious why did no one attempt CPR or other life saving measures.

The police are a lot more picky about the wording associated with tasers. The cops that i know call it Less-than-lethal force. They told me they would never call it non lethal since any force can kill a person, even if a cop kicked up a pebble and hit the suspect in the temple the man could potentially die.

As i do disagree with some uses of tasers i do believe that they are a essential tool for police. I have talked to a few cops who have used them in a situation where it was either their taser or their gun. They choose the taser that brought down the suspect with no more force needed. People need to remember that this is a world of media. Everyone has a camera, iphones can stream video live over the phone. Tasers are being used to save police and civilians lives from death or injury. If someone wants to do some detailed research, count how many videos there are of cops using a taser and then find out how many times total cops have used them. Thanks to media we hear about the isolated incidents where things go wrong and we are quick to generalize this to all police.

I do believe that there needs to be rules written in the field operation manual that gives them clear times when and when not tasers should be used just like there are for firearms.