The Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) has come out swinging again over alleged infringement of its trademark rights. Having failed to dissuade the Olympia Pizza and Souvlakia House on Denman Street from using a rings and torch logo, VANOC has set its sights on an opponent closer to its own size: petroleum giant Imperial Oil Limited. It seems that Esso has an advertising campaign promoting Canada’s hockey teams and offering prizes of trips to Torino. Although no mention is made of the Olympic Games, VANOC is apparently concerned that some folks might infer that Esso is an Olympic sponsor, when in fact only Petro-Canada can claim that distinction.

It might be fun watching these two heavyweights slug it out in court, if only VANOC wasn’t spending our tax dollars on the fight.

Check out Olympia’s website at www.998denman.com:

There’s also a fuss about this:

A British Columbia Supreme Court justice has declared a mistrial in the case of a man killed by Vancouver police.

The family of Thomas Evon Stevenson had sued the City of Vancouver and two of its police officers for damages for wrongful death. The trial by judge and jury was in progress when the family’s lawyer, Cameron Ward, applied for an appropriate remedy to deal with alleged defence misconduct. On October 11, 2005, Madam Justice Boyd delivered oral reasons granting a mistrial, stating that “there is no acceptable excuse for defence counsel’s delay in producing…documents”. A new trial date has not yet been set.

…….

A coroner’s jury heard evidence about the fatal incident at the coroner’s inquest during the week of January 12-15, 2004.

On December 7, 2002, a Vancouver police officer came upon a car parked in the 400 block of East Pender Street that had been reported stolen. He disabled it, staked it out and called for assistance. When a man opened the unlocked door and got in, two police officers approached. The man ignored police commands to get out, locked the door and attempted to light a pipe with his bare hands. Moments later both officers fired a total of six bullets into the car, killing Stevenson instantly.

Some 60 Vancouver Police Department members converged on the scene and ambulances were called. The police did not tell the ambulance attendants how Stevenson had sustained his injuries.

VPD Identification Unit photographs of the scene depicted a children’s toy plastic pistol lying behind the left rear wheel of the car, metres from Stevenson’s dead body. At a VPD media briefing two days later, VPD Inspector Chris Beach stated that the replice handgun was in Stevenson’s lap or waist area before the shooting and that he had made a threatening gesture, as if to reach for it.

The VPD investigated the homicide, even though two of its members were involved. VPD Investigators did not interview any police officers, including the two who fired the shots. Those two members were not separated or taken into custody. They left work and consulted the same lawyer, who delivered prepared statements to the investigators some fifteen days later. VPD investigators did not attempt to reconstruct the incident to determine whether the explanation for the shooting was plausible. The autopsy report revealed that two bullets went through both Stevenson’s bare hands before entering his chest. The plastic gun was undamaged and did not have Stevenson’s fingerprints on it.

The coroner’s jury made the following recommendations to then Solicitor General Rich Coleman:

“1. Implement a special investigations unit similar to the SIU in Ontario, independent of the police, to investigate circumstances involving the police which result in serious injury, assault or death.

2. Circumstances involving the police which result in serious injury, assault or death be investigated by members of police investigation team independent of police force under investigation.

3. Specific protocol be developed related to the investigation of police shooting.”

None of these recommendations have been adopted.

Some Vancouver social activists have recently expressed concerns that homeless people may be targeted by police as the 2010 Olympic Games draw nearer. These fears are rooted in recent experiences in Salt Lake City and Atlanta, where homeless people were arrested or shipped out of town by the authorities as the Olympic Games got under way.

I was invited to comment on this issue from a civil liberties perspective. Since my remarks may have been misinterpreted by some, including a newly appointed member of Canada’s Senate, I want to repeat my views here.

I am concerned that the Vancouver Police Department’s “breaching” policy may be abused. “Breaching” is police slang for taking people into custody for breach of the peace pursuant to s. 31 of the Criminal Code, then releasing them later in another part of the city. When six Vancouver police constables took three people from Granville Mall to Stanley Park and assaulted them in the middle of the night, they relied on the VPD’s “breaching” policy to attempt to justify their actions.

As long as the VPD condones the practice of “breaching”, there is a risk that police officers may feel that they have the authority to toss people into paddy wagons and drive them across town, whether or not any offence has been committed. We must all be vigilant to endure that the civil liberties of Vancouver residents, including the disadvantaged among us, are not infringed in this fashion, now or in the future.

The Canadian Police Research Centre today issued a technical report entitled “Review of Conducted Energy Devices” at the Ottawa conference of the Canadian Association Chiefs of Police. While the CPRC report acknowledges that “there is [sic] no known, scientifically tested, independently verified, and globally accepted CED safety parameters”, it concludes that CEDs, or Tasers, are “safe in the vast majority of cases”.

The report downplays the 151 cases of death in North America proximal to Taser use. Ten such deaths have occurred in July of this year alone, a fact that seems to have escaped the attention of the authors.

The CPRC report states “definitive research or evidence does not exist that implicates a causal relationship between the use of CEDs and death”. That statement does not square with the opinion of Dr. Scott Denton, Medical Examiner for Cook County, Illinois, who concluded in a postmortem report dated July 29, 2005 that “the cause of death in this 54 year old White male, Ronald Hasse, is from electrocution due to Taser application”.

Police studies on Tasers must be taken with at least a grain of salt. After all, manufacturer Taser International Inc. is a “Gold Sponsor” of this year’s CACP convention, at which the report was released, and has given payments and stock options to CPRC report author Darren Laur.

The clear message emerging from this latest police report is that it really is time for truly independent and rigorous testing of these dangerous weapons.

The report can be found at www.cprc.org

For another critique, see: Police in 5 states sue Taser in past 2 weeks

Note: The following was published in The Vancouver Sun. Since it was written on July 19, 2005, eight more people have died after being Tasered by police, for a total of 147.

With apologies to Bob Dylan, who is here in Vancouver this week for three sold-out shows, how many times must Tasers be used, before they’re forever banned?

Tasers have been involved in the cases of six people who have died in police custody in the past week, bringing the total of North American deaths following police stun-gun use since 1999 to 139. The latest to die were seventeen year old Kevin Omas of Euless, Texas, who died July 12 after having been shot three times by a police Taser, Otis G. Thrasher, 42 of Butte, Montana (July 15), Ernesto Valdez of Phoenix, Arizona (July 15), Paul Sheldon Saulnier, 42 of Digby, Nova Scotia (July 15), Carlos Casillas Fernandez, 31 of Santa Rosa, California (July 16) and Michael Leon Critchfield, 40 of West Palm Beach, Florida (July 17). Each of these people, and the 133 who preceded them, left behind grieving loved ones.

With so many deaths, one would expect more of a public outcry. It is true that police departments in Chicago, Illinois and Birmingham, Alabama have discontinued use of Tasers and that groups like Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference have all been outspoken in their criticism of the use of stun-guns. However, public concern has been muted, likely because the law enforcement community and the manufacturer have waged an effective public relations campaign, asserting that the dozens of reported fatalities have nothing to do with Taser deployment. It is high time for a closer look at these claims.

The Taser is a “conducted energy weapon” that is marketed as a non-lethal force option for police. It is manufactured by TASER International Inc., a public company based in Scottsdale, Arizona. The Taser (an acronym for Thomas A. Swift Electric Rifle) is designed to fire two fishhook-like barbs into a person’s skin which enable 50,000 volts of electricity to be transmitted into the body through wires attached to the weapon. In contrast, a typical cattle prod emits 5,000 volts of electricity. The current causes excruciating pain and causes the central nervous system to shut down, resulting in loss of voluntary muscle control. When used as recommended, i.e. a single burst of no longer than five seconds, the subject is usually incapacitated so police can apply handcuffs or other appropriate restraints. The Taser is not intended to be an alternative to lethal force. In other words, if police are confronted by a suspect armed with a lethal weapon like a handgun, they are justified in using lethal force themselves. The Taser would not usually be the appropriate option.

In principle, the weapon is a good idea. It gives police officers an additional tool whereby they can restrain a potentially violent subject without risk of injury to themselves. If stun guns were entirely safe, it would be hard to argue against giving the police every advantage to assist them in doing their difficult and often dangerous jobs. However, the Taser has frequently been used against unarmed people in various states of medical distress. Many of these people have died, often after receiving repeated jolts of electricity.

The sad case of Richard T. Holcomb is but one example. The previously healthy eighteen year old was found shirtless and muttering incoherently in an Ohio horse pasture at 1:00 a.m. on May 28, 2005, following his high school graduation party. Police responded to a local resident’s call and Tasered Holcomb, who died soon after. His death prompted a march on Akron police headquarters by a large group of protesters. Like most other similar cases, the cause of his death remains unclear.

Police and TASER International spokespeople always assert that the use of the weapon does not cause death. They point to Taser’s studies on pigs, and attribute human deaths to drug abuse, “excited delirium” or perhaps pre-existing medical conditions. They say that the victims would all have died anyway, even if Tasers had not been used to subdue them. If these claims were true, one would expect a similar epidemic of police in-custody deaths occurring in those many jurisdictions that do not yet employ Tasers. This year alone, 45 North Americans have died after being Tasered by police. If “excited delirium”, a controversial phenomenon that attributes cardiac arrest to over-excitement resulting from the arrest and restraint process, caused these deaths, one would expect deaths to occur with similar frequency in the cases of people arrested by police using more conventional methods. I have tried in vain to locate any indication that dozens of people have died this year of “excited delerium” where Tasers weren’t involved.

Furthermore, there is a news report from Oregon that a previously healthy 50 pound dog died recently after being repeatedly Tasered by police. How will TASER International and police officials explain this death away? It is doubtful that the dog was high on cocaine. It seems questionable that an animal could react with “excited delirium” to the presence of police. If the deaths of 139 humans don’t raise serious questions about Taser use, maybe the death of this dog will.

In my view, there simply has not been enough impartial testing of Tasers to rule out the weapon’s potentially serious health and safety implications. Here in Canada, where 13 people have died after being Tasered, there has been no rigorous independent analysis whatsoever.

How many more must die before something is done? The answer, it seems, is blowing in the wind.