VANCOUVER — "The country's only armed transit police have been tasering passengers who try to avoid paying fares. According to documents provided in response to a Freedom of Information request, police patrolling public transit in the Metro Vancouver area have used tasers 10 times in the past 18 months, including five occasions when victims had been accosted for riding free."
The Globe & Mail
Maybe the nation needs a one-year moratorium on tasers so it can get back to real policing.
Just like video reports makes a reporters job easier, the reporter usually becomes lax and reliant on the video rather than develop word pictures.
Same with policing. Tasers become a crutch and police find it too convenient to resort to the taser rather than do the spadework that is progressive policing.
Posted by Anonymous | 12:20 pm, April 16, 2008
Canada has definitely been affected by 'authoritarian creep' - if we don't speak out against crap like this, any one of us could be tasered for the weakest of reasons by some right wing cowboy with any minor authority.
Posted by leftdog | 12:25 pm, April 16, 2008