Tuesday, June 24, 2008

One More Death

The lead sentence of this article says it all:
NORFOLK COUNTY, Ont. - An Ontario man is dead after police used a Taser.
Not surprisingly, this is all over the Canadian News (here, here, here, here, or here). Not one of the articles I've read states that the man was armed, only that he was combative and disturbing others.

You wouldn't know it from the TV news here in the states, but Canada just held a major inquiry into taser use by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and a Canadian parliamentary committee is threatening a moratorium on the devices if the RCMP doesn't curb taser usage.

PostBlog: I've found an article citing "unconfirmed reports" that the man was waiving a piece of wood or pipe and that police can't comment on this because the case is under special investigation. They can only label the dead man as having been "combative." I have a hard time believing that the police department involved wouldn't make the leap to the phrase "armed and combative" if the man truly had been armed. Their silence smells rotten.