Use of RCMP Tasers rises dramatically, records show

Last Updated: Monday, March 24, 2008 | 4:47 PM ET

CBC News

The number of incidents involving RCMP stun guns has more than doubled since 2005, according to records obtained by CBC News.

Statistics prepared by RCMP officers on the use of stun guns, or Tasers, show Mounties across the country drew or threatened to draw their Tasers more than 1,400 times last year — a dramatic rise in incidents, compared with 597 in 2005.

The spike was greatest in jurisdictions such as British Columbia, where the number of Taser incidents rose from 218 in 2005 to 496 in 2007, and in Alberta, where it grew from 89 to 371 over the same period.

But while reliance on stun guns has increased sharply since the force began using them in 2001, documents obtained under the federal Access to Information Act indicate that record-keeping about Taser incidents has either become less comprehensive or that the RCMP is unwilling to share all the details of the cases with the public.

More than 2,800 Tasers are in use across the country by the 9,100-plus RCMP officers trained to use them. The RCMP forms that are supposed to be filled out every time an officer even threatens to use a Taser formerly included details such as whether the person encountered by police was armed or suffering from a mental illness. That data was previously disclosed under the Access to Information Act in RCMP Taser reports from 2002 to 2005.

But records recently released to the CBC and the Canadian Press have been stripped of this information, as well as the precise date of each incident, actions taken by the officer before resorting to the Taser, and whether the stun gun caused any injuries — leading some to criticize the RCMP for a lack of transparency.

"The RCMP is a public police force. They are accountable to Canadians," Liberal public safety critic Ujjal Dosanjh told CBC News. "They have to be on the up and up, they have to be transparent, they have to be accountable. They have to provide that information so that people can judge for themselves whether or not their police force is acting appropriately."

"The more I look at how [the RCMP] function, the more I see the lack of transparency and lack of accountability. I am flabbergasted," said Dosanjh, who was the attorney general in B.C. when Tasers were introduced there.