Montreal hears from taser opponents

May 12, 2010
By Dan Delmar, The Suburban

A number of community groups and concerned citizens are showing their displeasure with the taser gun as a part of the Montreal police arsenal.

Hearings were recently held at city hall, in front of the public safety commission, and several Montrealers made their case for an outright ban, including members of the Black Coalition of Quebec (BCQ) and city councillor Marvin Rotrand.

“There have been many cases where there has been a lack of responsibility,” on the part of officers who have been given the taser, said Dan Philip of the BCQ. Something is wrong when “a young man received 300,000 volts of electricity, six times.”

Philip pointed to the case of Quilem Registre, 38, who died on Oct. 18, 2007 — four days after being repeatedly stunned by a Montreal police officer in St. Michel. In her report, coroner Catherine Rudel-Tessier noted the officers who made the arrest were poorly trained and broke the department’s rules on Taser use.

“It was a criminal act,” Philip told the public safety commission. “It is the responsibility of the city to protect human life. We have to really look at what is the right of the person and what is justice in our society. Why is it necessary to use tasers?”

Since the Registre death, Montreal police and RCMP officers who are armed with the taser have had to participate in more extensive training.

There are only 17 tasers in use by Montreal police; they were used a total of 11 times in 2009.

“We have to teach them that the taser gun is not a harmless weapon,” Rudel-Tessier wrote in her report. “The controversy that follows its use around the world certainly proves this. It can lead to serious injuries.”

The weapon’s manufacturer, Taser International, has continued to maintain that the stun gun has not directly led to the death of a suspect. 25 Canadians have died after being shot with a taser gun; over 300 in the United States.

“We don’t have any proof that the taser was responsible directly for the death of a person,” said Marc Parent, an assistant director with the Montreal police department, echoing the claims of Taser International. “We still believe it can help us intervene without injuries.”

During the hearing, councillors peppered citizens with questions. Councillor Réal Ménard wondered if the 17 tasers were removed from the arsenal, and what weapon would replace them. Hampstead mayor William Steinberg pressed Patrick Bolland to come up with statistics to prove the tasers were harmful, while ignoring the lack of information available to the city to support its use — apart from data provided by Taser International.

“Everyone thinks that the taser is inoffensive, but from what I see, it kills,” said Bolland, who is part of the Coalition pour le Retrait du Taser.

“The police forces of San Francisco, of Washington D.C., of Detroit and Boston have decided not the use tasers. Why can Montreal not be one of those cities?”

On the role the weapon played in the Registre death, Rudel-Tessier stopped short of saying the taser was the cause, but did say doctors who treated him wondered if the weapon was part of a “bad cocktail,” including drug and alcohol use, which led to his death.

“According to the doctors, if it is impossible to affirm that the electrical discharges were solely responsible for Registre’s condition, it is just as difficult to determine that it played no role in his death.”

Montreal’s public safety commission is expected to produce a report outlining its recommendations in June.

Family wants inquiry into taser death

August 29, 2008
Montreal Gazette

MONTREAL - Ask Marie-Jésula Registre whether she feels any anger over the fact a police taser that fires a 50,000-volt charge was used six times on her son Quilem and she replies softly, her eyes rimmed with tears. "I'm a Christian. I don't keep anger in my heart. But this has been devastating blow for myself and our family. He was our only son."

Maria-Jesula, her husband Augustin-François and their, daughters Francine and Chantal, met with reporters Friday after a Quebec coroner added more questions to those the Registre family have had since Quilem's death on Oct. 18, 2008, days after being tasered by Montreal police officers.

"The main question is: 'Why?'," said Evans Sanelus, Quilem's cousin, "No one deserved the fate (Quilem experienced), no matter what they've done in life. If a (police officer) is there to do their job, their first objective is to protect and to analyse a situation before intervening."

Quilem's father called for an independent, public inquiry into his son's death, an exercise he said would result in "justice" being done.

That call for a public inquiry, echoed by Dan Philip of the Black Coalition of Quebec, follows the publication of a coroner's report into Registre's death that concludes that while the cocaine and alcohol in Registre's system may have contributed to his demise, the fact police found it necessary to subdue him with six 50,000-volt electrical charges made it "difficult to believe (the taserings) played no role in his death."

Coroner Catherine Rudel-Tessier was also critical of the lack of information personnel at Sacré Coeur Hospital received about Registre's condition once he was transported by Urgences Santé from the scene of his arrest on Rivard St. for running a stop sign. "Mr. Registre was first received at Sacré Coeur Hospital as a traffic accident victim who was intoxicated," she wrote. "The treating physicians deplored ... the fact they had been given so little details on the use of (a Taser) and Mr. Registre's condition beforehand."

Rudel-Tessier also noted she was unable to personally interview the two officers who arrested Registre, their version of events provided to her only in incident reports filed two days after his arrest on Oct. 16 and one day before his death.

"I therefore have no explanation why the use of other forms of force (rather than the Taser) were insufficient or inefficient," she wrote. "I had no access to the process of their decision making nor any details on their strategic thinking. We can ask if there was another way, other means of subduing Mr. Registre and calming him. Since he was visibly agitated, one would think back-up could have been called in, ambulance technicians in particular, since this was a medical emergency. Even if Mr. Registre did not pull a gun, was the fact he didn't respond to an order to raise his hands sufficient reason to immediate resort to (the Taser)?"

What the coroner did glean from the police reports was that only one of the two officers who arrested Registre - who they described as being "hysterical" after attempting to drive away from the traffic stop and slamming his car into another vehicle parked nearby - was trained to use a Taser.

Rudel-Tessier recommended that the Montreal police ensure all members of a team equipped with a Taser be trained to use it, and that training programs educate officers in how to restrain a suspect once they've been it with an electrical charge.

She also called on Quebec's Public Security Department to examine the possibility of ordering the province's police departments to equip their tasers with cameras to record the circumstances of their use.

A spokesperson for Claude Dauphin, chairperson of the city's executive committee and responsible for public security, said the police department has been asked to examine the coroner's findings and produce a report that would detail what changes, if necessary, would be made to existing procedures.

Complaint filed after Montreal taser death

March 6, 2008
Irwin Block, The Montreal Gazette

The father of Quilem Registre, who died after Montreal police use a Taser gun to subdue him, has filed an excessive-force complaint with the Police Ethics Commission. The complaint, sent Tuesday by Augustin Registre, also alleges that officers were negligent and abused their powers when they tasered Quilem Registre Oct. 14. It also alleges the use of the Taser by police who were trying to arrest him caused his death four days later.

Police have said Registre was suspected of drunk driving when he was stopped. He was pronounced dead four days later at Sacré Coeur Hospital after suffering multiple heart attacks. The Black Coalition of Quebec, which supported the complaint, is part of a group that is calling for a moratorium on Taser use until an independent study can look at the medical and psychological consequences of being hit by 50,000 volts of electricity.

The taser will be a permanent part of police arsenal

March 4, 2008
Henry Aubin, Montreal Gazette

The videotape of RCMP officers' gratuitous and fatal use of a Taser against a man in Vancouver last fall prompted a nationwide eruption of public horror over police forces' use of this weapon. In the wake of that incident, many law-enforcement officials have voiced concern and reviewed their use. So, problem over, right? Wrong.

Don't let officialdom's regretful tone fool you. Now that the Vancouver affair has blown over, Tasers are creeping back in much of the country.

Let's start with Quebec.

Although the incidents drew little attention because they were not videotaped, two men died in Quebec last year in the days after police shot them with the electric-shock device.

Quebec City police tasered a 32-year-old translator, Claudio Castagnetta, after they stopped him for loitering and, according to witnesses, he resisted being placed in a patrol car by making his body rigid.

In Montreal, police tasered 38-year-old Quilem Registre after they stopped him for erratic driving and, they say, he became aggressive.

Quebec's public security ministry, which oversees police forces across the province, issued a report on Tasers in mid-December. The ministry immediately accepted all the report's recommendations for restricting the police's use of Tasers, but those restrictions are slight.

For example, the province's earlier rules, apparently ignored by the officers who zapped Castagnetta with impunity, barred tasering people who were only "passively resisting" arrest. The new rules say officers can use the Taser on people whose "resistance represents a significant risk to the safety of the officer or anyone else." Despite the change in wording, the versions differ little in their practical application.

Indeed, the new rules also say officers should assess a person's "potential for violence." The word "potential" is a loophole giving officers enormous discretionary power. Officers might claim after the fact that even mild-mannered individuals had given them reason to believe they would become aggressive.

The report also cavalierly dismissed France's practice of clipping a camera (made by the Taser's manufacturer) onto the weapon and recording all the action in video and audio. The report says current training "conditions police to place their hands (on the Taser) in a way that would obstruct the camera's view."

The panel that wrote the report had 26 members and associates, of whom 25 are from the world of law enforcement -- that is, from the police departments, the police academy or the ministry. (The exception is a doctor employed by the province.) So much for taking into account the broad public interest.

Incidentally, Montreal could set tougher rules for its own force. So far, however, the current administration has given no sign of concern.

Elsewhere in Canada, it's much the same lethargy.

After the Vancouver incident, the Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP made recommendations for changes. The RCMP, however, rejected a key one: The elevation of Tasers from the category of "intermediate weapon," a relatively humdrum status that includes pepper spray, to the serious category of "impact weapon."

If Tasers were in the latter group, they could be used only against people who are "combative" or otherwise dangerous.

In New Brunswick, police chiefs ordered a review of Taser use, and have concluded no substantive changes are needed.

As for Toronto, its police chief is certainly demanding change -- but it's not in the direction that reformers would like. He wants to buy 500 additional Tasers.

The devices are supposed to be substitutes for firearms. Too often they are substitutes for talk.

In Montreal, a coalition of critics that includes two councillors from the city's ruling party -- Warren Allmand and Marvin Rotrand -- is asking to suspend the use of Tasers until impartial research is in on how these 50,000-volt guns affect people with various health problems or who are high on drugs.

Twenty people in Canada have died after being tasered, says Amnesty. If governments require the pharmaceutical industry to test its wares for health effects before selling them, why not ask the same of Taser International?

The company is poised to launch later this year a new model that will make the current one look like a peashooter. The current handgun-style model zaps people as far away as eight metres. The new model is a 12-gauge shotgun with a range of 30 metres.

Unless politicians suddenly wake up, we ain't seen nothing yet.

Montreal police used tasers inappropriately in one in five cases

February 14, 2008
Irwin Block, Montreal Gazette

MONTREAL - Reports that Montreal police used Taser guns inappropriately in 11 of 53 incidents over two years add urgency to calls for a moratorium on their use, critics of the weapons say. Internal police studies obtained by Radio Canada found that officers did not follow operational instructions in one in five cases where the Taser was used in the past two years.

"These reports increase our concern about how this weapon is used," said Anne Sainte-Maire, spokeperson for Amnesty International's francophone branch. The group is part of a coalition, including the Ligue des droits et libertés and Montreal city councillors Warren Allmand and Marvin Rotrand, that has called for a Taser ban pending an independent study of its effects.

Montreal police can only use the Taser if the person to be apprehended represents a high risk of violence or there is a high risk he'll be injured or cause injury to police or bystanders. But police reports indicated the weapon was used in cases where a subject refused to obey instructions or offered passive resistance.

Police officials declined an interview request yesterday, but stood by a comment Inspector René Allard gave to Radio Canada where he said the department will not tolerate inappropriate Taser use. "There may have been cases where people did no use it (the Taser ) adequately. For us, this is not acceptable," Allard said. "Is there a need for training? Is it because the (Taser) user was surprised by the type of situation he faced and perhaps exercised a lack of judgment?" he asked.

The Quebec coroner's office is investigating the cause and circumstances of two deaths that followed police firing Tasers at them. Montreal police used a Taser to subdue 38-year-old Quilem Register on Oct. 18. He died four days later of multiple heart attacks. Claudio Castagnetta, 32, an Italian immigrant who was walking around Quebec City barefoot and refused to leave a shop, died in a police cell in September two days after police used a Taser three or four times to subdue him.

Quebec coalition calls for taser moratorium

February 7, 2008
Shuyee Lee, CJAD Radio, Montreal

A renewed call by a growing coalition for a moratorium on the use of Tasers by police. The coalition includes Amnesty International, the Quebec Black Coalition and politicians of all stripes including Montreal city councillors, the NDP, and the PQ.

They want an independent study and a public Montreal meeting on Taser use, dissatisfied with the recent RCMP review and Quebec public security report on Tasers because they were compiled mostly by police officials.

Councillor for Loyola Warren Allmand: "There are some worthwhile things that are in the report but it doesn't get to the basic problem which, (is) what is the real danger and impact of these weapons on a wide range of people."

Chantal Registre's brother Quilem was killed after police allegedly tasered him six times last October while trying to arrest him on a drunk driving charge. She says they still have no answers into his death. "On attend toujours des réponses et on n'a pas de réponses."

The coalition says politicians and police have to take a closer look at the use of Tasers in the wake of almost 20 deaths of people in Canada after being tasered by police in the past five years.