Taser: Legal or illegal?

Was it justifiable for a Taser to be used in the Robert Dziekanski case? In my opinion, I think not. I am sure there were other ways in which Robert Dziekanski could’ve been captured. For anyone who doesn’t know what a Taser is and what it does, this might help!

Now that we know what a Taser is, we can begin to identify whether this case was justifiable or not.


No one knows what Dziekanski was feeling because he could not speak English, so wouldn't it make sense if the police or anyone at the airport could have brought someone who is Russian to try to help them understand why Dziekanski was so agitated and what he actually needed? Maybe the fact of him being at the airport for more than 10 hours with no food, water and did not speak English contributed to him losing his actions. But imagine for a second that you were in his situation, what would you have done? Yes, everyone might act differently in situations like these and maybe Dziekanski acted in a unreasonable way but we can't judge unless we were in that same situation! However, did this give the RCMP the right to Taser Dziekanski to the point where he was killed? Personally...I don't think so. I think that there must have been other methods that could've been used in approaching this situation.

To me, it's not the issue of the Taser being used, it's more the idea that he was tackled down, tasered, and as the RCMP saw him dying, they did not help in giving him CPR or something to try and save his life. They did not try to calm him down, but instead, used force and killed the man.

In the youtube video shown above, Dr. John Butt believes that the Tazer was not the primary factor that killed him, but it was more the fact that he was agitated and tired. Although that may be true, I still think that the Taser did have something to do with it as well. It added on to the fact that he was agitated already. And keeping that in mind, why would the police Taser him when they could fully see that he was agitated and not normal?! Also, how can Dr. Butt make such an assumption? It has been proven that there were other deaths because of the Taser as the reporter mentioned in the video. Therefore, there is a huge chance that it really was the Taser that caused Dziekanski's death.


Here's a full video at the Vancouver Airport of Robert Dziekanski's Taser Death. . .

It truly is tragic and I must say that I am quite ashamed of the RCMP for causing harm to this human being.

Work Cited:
http://a123.g.akamai.net/f/123/12465/1d/media.canada.com/1fd7df5f-ce32-4170-8bbe-95bbc214da27/chairtosscopy.jpg?size=l

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=03824bfe-b406-45c0-b439-b3708b8b7282&k=15023

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CR_k-dTnDU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBDcnO6gsK4

http://www.nancarrow-webdesk.com/warehouse/storage2/2007-w45/img.65974_t.jpg