Conducted Energy Weapons and Selected Police Complaints Audits — Issue No. 4

SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO INQUIRE INTO THE USE OF CONDUCTED ENERGY WEAPONS AND TO AUDIT SELECTED POLICE COMPLAINTS

Present: Murray Coell, MLA (Chair); Kathy Corrigan, MLA (Deputy Chair); Eric Foster, MLA; Leonard Krog, MLA; Gordon Hogg, MLA; John Slater, MLA; Joe Trasolini, MLA

3. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions:

• Clayton J.D. Pecknold, Assistant Deputy Minister and Director of Police Services

• Lynne McInally, Executive Director, Standards and Evaluation, Police Services Division

• Jane Naydiuk, Police Training and Curriculum, Standards and Evaluation, Police Services Division

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO
INQUIRE INTO THE USE OF CONDUCTED ENERGY WEAPONS
AND TO AUDIT SELECTED POLICE COMPLAINTS


CONTENTS
Page
Restoring Public Confidence: Restricting the Use of Conducted Energy Weapons in British Columbia	11
C. Pecknold
L. McInally
K. Kirby
G. Hoffmann
J. Naydiuk
S. Lu

M. Coell (Chair): Good morning. Welcome to the Special Committee to Inquire into the Use of Conducted Energy Weapons and to Audit Selected Police Complaints. My name is Murray Coell, and I am the Chair.

I'd like to start out by asking members, starting with our Deputy Chair, to introduce themselves and the riding they're from.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Kathy Corrigan, MLA for Burnaby–Deer Lake and Deputy Chair of this committee.

M. Coell (Chair): Thank you very much, and to my left is Susan Sourial. She is the Committee Clerk. Matthew Cleeves is our researcher.

Restoring Public Confidence:
Restricting the Use of Conducted
Energy Weapons in British Columbia

M. Coell (Chair): Today we're beginning the expert testimony on the topic of the implementation of the recommendations contained in the 2009 report Restoring Public Confidence: Restricting the Use of Conducted Energy Weapons by Justice Thomas Braidwood. Our first presenter today is the assistant deputy minister and director of police services, Clayton Pecknold.

Before we move to Clayton and the ministry staff, there are two letters that I've provided. Our Deputy Chair and myself have confirmed the objective and scope of the audit with the Auditor General. Those two letters are before you. At the end of today, we will have additional items for the next few meetings of the presenters that will be presenting, which we can share with you as well.

Today we're hearing in the morning from staff of the ministry on the recommendations of the committee. I'll turn it over to Clayton Pecknold, assistant deputy minister and director of police services, who is going to go through the binder that we were provided. We were also provided with the electronic stick to that very large binder. I know if anyone wants a hard copy, we will have them as well.

Before I forget, we have a request from media to be part of the meeting as well. If that's all right with members of the committee, we would allow that. It's usual. Okay? Thank you.

Clayton, I wonder if maybe you could give a little bit of background of yourself. I know you bring a pretty specific range of perspective to this job we have before us. I'll turn it over to you.

C. Pecknold: Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning, committee. I have a bit of a cold, so please pardon me if I have to clear my throat from time to time.

Before I talk about my background at your request, Mr. Chair, I'd just like to introduce my staff, if that's all right. To my far left is Kathy Kirby. Kathy Kirby is the director of policy, legislation and strategic initiatives. Kathy's key role with respect to the Braidwood implementation was to work on the amendments that were made to the Police Act to fulfil Mr. Justice Braidwood's recommendations.

Beside Ms. Kirby is Dr. Gabi Hoffmann. Dr. Hoffmann is a senior program manager in the standards and evaluation unit. Dr. Hoffmann is our in-house civilian use-of-force expert, and she participated in drafting the related standards and conducting research into use-of-force data.

Beside Dr. Hoffmann is Lynne McInally. Lynne McInally is the executive director of the standards and evaluation unit, the unit tasked with implementing the Braidwood recommendations for policing.

To my right is Ms. Jenni Bard. Jenni Bard is the senior program manager in the standards and evaluation unit. Her main role was to coordinate and manage the standards development process.

To my far right is Ms. Jane Naydiuk. Jane Naydiuk is a sergeant with the Saanich police department. She is seconded to our ministry, and she is the program manager related to curriculum development and the management and development of the two Braidwood-related training courses. She has advanced education in training and education.

Just by way of background, I've been the statutory director of police services and the assistant deputy minister of policing for about 18 months, coming to the job from policing. I was ten years as a deputy chief of the Central Saanich police service, four years as in-house counsel for the Victoria police service in a civilian senior leadership role and 11 years in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in various parts of the country. I have a law degree from Dalhousie University, and I'm a non-practising member of the bar.

C. Pecknold: I have some prepared remarks. At your pleasure, I'd just like to go through them.
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The purpose of my presentation today is to provide you with an overview of the use of conducted energy weapons, or CEWs, in policing. I'll also talk about how the implementation of recommendations from Justice Braidwood's first report has impacted on the use and management of CEWs by police today.

Much of the information I'm going to talk about today is found in the binders before you. We apologize for the size of the binders, but we understood that you wanted a fulsome accounting. We're endeavouring to give you a fulsome accounting of all the work that was done.

There is an overview paper in the binders that walks you through the implementation of the recommendations from what we call the first Braidwood report. That would be the report dealing with the use of CEWs in British Columbia. The second report, of course, as you may know, dealt with the circumstances of the unfortunate death of Mr. Robert Dziekanski and resulted in the development of the independent investigation office.

Before I discuss the specific aspects of Justice Braidwood's findings and recommendations, as well as police services division's — my branch — response to these recommendations, I would like to provide you with some background and information to help you set the context.

I suggest it's important to know that police services division has a broad and complex mandate with respect to overseeing or superintending policing in British Columbia. Today I'll limit my comments to our responsibilities around the statutory functions related to oversight, audits, training and police standards.

By way of a little background on the evolution of the powers under the act, in 1974 British Columbia's first provincial Police Act was passed, as you may know. This act embodied the model of policing that was prevalent at the time. The so-called professional model of policing, as it was known then, placed emphasis on the independence of the police, hierarchical rank structure and centralized command. The police were viewed in the same way as other professions, such as doctors and lawyers and other self-regulating professions, who set their own standards of operation and conduct.

In 1974 the Police Act established the British Columbia Police Commission as a primary oversight body for police. The commission was independent of both government and the police, and was staffed primarily by seconded police officers. The key objectives of the Police Commission were to bring a degree of consistency to the municipal policing community by setting policing standards, auditing municipal forces and overseeing the police complaints process.

During the 1980s and early 1990s a number of high-profile police shootings and emergency response deployments resulted in the government appointing Mr. Justice Oppal, as he was at the time, to conduct an inquiry into policing. A major recommendation of Mr. Oppal's report was that a community-based policing model should be implemented in the province. Justice Oppal also recommended that an independent Police Complaint Commissioner be established and that all oversight duties and functions be carried out by government.

Amendments to the Police Act in 1998, subsequent to Mr. Oppal's report: the Police Commission was disbanded, and the independent Police Complaint Commissioner's office was established. In 1998 Police Act amendments also established the role of the director of police services, the role I presently hold.

It is important to note that while these Police Act amendments were successful in creating the powers of my office, in practice, part 8 of the act did not vest my office with the authority to set legally binding policing standards at that time. However, the release of the first Braidwood report served as a catalyst to amend the Police Act in 2010 to allow the director, with the approval of the minister, to set legally binding standards for all police in the province, including the RCMP. I'll discuss the evolution of that a little bit more in a few minutes.

Moving on to CEWs, to give you some context about CEWs in British Columbia. In order to understand them as well as understand Mr. Braidwood's findings, it's helpful to summarize what specifically CEWs are and how they are used. Conducted energy weapons or devices are commonly known as Tasers and have been available for more than three decades. CEWs are designed to use a conducted electrical current in order to incapacitate a person or to ensure compliance through pain.

The only conducted energy weapons authorized for use in Canada are those manufactured by Taser International, Inc. Policing bodies in British Columbia use two models — Taser M26 and Taser X26.

CEW, or the Taser, can be used in two modes. In what's referred to as the push-stun or contact mode, the end of the weapon is pressed against the target's body and a pulsed electrical current is transferred to the adjacent muscles. The electrical current is localized in the muscles of that area. It also serves as a pain compliance purpose to persuade the person to let go of something or otherwise comply with the lawful direction of a police officer.

The second mode is what's referred to as the probe mode. The weapon fires two metal darts, or probes, using compressed nitrogen as a propellant. These probes embed in the target's skin or clothing. The probes, which have hooked tips, can penetrate up to nine millimetres into the subject's skin. The probes are connected to the weapon by wires that conduct a pulsed electrical current from the weapon into the target's body.

The trigger activates a five-second electrical-current cycle, which can be repeated by re-pressing the trigger after the completion of the first cycle. In addition to the same pain experienced in the push-stun mode, the electrical current interferes with the person's neuromuscular
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system, and the person typically becomes incapacitated, falling to the ground.

With respect to how and when CEWs have come to be used in British Columbia, B.C. was the first jurisdiction in Canada to use CEWs, following a six-month field study conducted by the Victoria police department in 1998.

In 1999 the Attorney General authorized the municipal police departments in British Columbia to use CEWs. The approval was based on assurances that CEWs were safe to use and that they saved lives by reducing the instances in which a police officer might have otherwise been required to use a firearm or deadly force.

Approval was also based on the premise that the weapons would be used sparingly, only in situations where the subject was assaultive or combative or a threat to themselves, the police officer or a third party. By 2001 all 11 municipal police departments in British Columbia were using CEWs, and the RCMP authorized use in its detachments across Canada in December of 2001.

Between 2003 and 2009, it's reported, 25 people in Canada, including eight in British Columbia, died proximate to the CEW deployment. These deaths contributed to public concern about whether police are appropriately using CEWs. In particular, the death of Mr. Dziekanski received extensive national media and international media attention, as the committee knows, and the use of CEWs then came into spotlight and into question.

On October 14, 2007, Mr. Dziekanski died after RCMP officers at the Vancouver International Airport used a CEW to subdue him. The incident, as we know, was captured on cellphone video and received, as I've indicated, significant national coverage.

In late 2007 the government announced that a public inquiry would be conducted into the incident. The inquiry consisted, as you know, of two phases: (1) a study commission of inquiry to examine CEW use by law enforcement in B.C. and (2) an inquiry into the circumstances of Mr. Dziekanski's death. The study commission, led by Mr. Justice Braidwood, began its work in April 2008. The commission heard from a wide range of stakeholders and also heard from my predecessor, Mr. Kevin Begg. That commission released its report on July 23, 2009.

Some of the key conclusions, for our purposes today, are that CEWs do have the capacity, even in healthy adult subjects, to cause heart arrhythmia, which can lead to ventricular tachycardia and/or fibrillation. If not treated immediately, these conditions can cause death. Circumstances such as persons in a heightened state of agitation can increase the risk. However, Mr. Justice Braidwood also noted that there were ways to reduce those risks, and there was no doubt that in the great majority of deployments the CEW is effective.

Mr. Justice Braidwood concluded that on balance, society was better off with these weapons in use than without them. However, he expressed concern about slippage in terms of CEWs being used in increasingly lower-risk encounters and believed an appropriate threshold of use must be established for all policing agencies. In other words, Justice Braidwood's support for the continued use of CEWs was conditional on significant changes being made to when and how the weapon was deployed.

The commissioner was also critical of the government for not establishing binding provincial policing standards. He stated that the use of CEWs should be significantly restricted, that detailed provincial standards and rules regarding CEW policy, training and usage reporting were required and that it was the role of government to set such standards.

The first report contained 19 recommendations, and I'm briefly summarizing those recommendations for you: setting provincial-wide standards to address a number of issues, including restricting the threshold and circumstances of CEW use; developing medical assistance policies and developing internal control policies; ensuring that provincewide training programs were established for CEW trainers and operators; ensuring that provincewide crisis intervention and de-escalation training programs were established for all officers; setting provincial rules for collection and reporting of CEW-use data; developing standards concerning the technical management of CEWs, such as testing protocols and schedules; and requiring the RCMP to follow provincial standards and guidelines through contractual agreements.

Our initial response to the directive after the report was released in July 2009. The ministry responded to the recommendations pending a requirement for legislative change to allow for binding standards. The response was to send several directives from the Solicitor General at the time to police agencies in British Columbia to address the current concerns. These directives were sent to all police agencies in the province, including the RCMP. Likely, the directive that had the most immediate impact was sent on July 23, 2009, and established at that time a higher threshold for the use of CEWs by police.

The Solicitor General then directed all police agencies to instruct their officers that CEWs were only to be deployed when the threshold for use in the circumstances recommended by Mr. Braidwood were satisfied. The Solicitor General also directed agencies that paramedic medical assistance must be sought in every medically high-risk situation where a CEW was deployed.

With respect to use-of-force reporting, on August 12, 2009, municipal police agencies were directed by the assistant deputy minister at the time that all use-of-force reports were to be forwarded to police services division for data collection and analysis purposes. An agreement was reached between the RCMP and the director of police services at that time that E division — British Columbia's RCMP — would share its use-of-force data sets.
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With respect to testing CEWs, police agencies were also directed to withdraw a CEW from service and test it if that CEW was involved in a serious injury or death proximate to its use. In addition to issuing these immediate directives, police services division began the work that would be required to transfer those directives into binding police standards.

In short, the substantive recommendations from Mr. Justice Braidwood fall under three themes: standards, training, and use-of-force data collection and analysis. Justice Braidwood also made other recommendations that we'll touch on briefly.

With respect to standards, by June of 2010 amendments were made to the Police Act that enhance the government's ability to regulate some critical aspects of policing. The amendments give the director of police services the authority to set binding provincial policing standards with respect to police training, use of force, and places of detention and equipment and supplies to be used in relation to policing and law enforcement.

Delayed coming-into-force dates were set for these amendments to allow time for Ministry of Justice staff to consult with stakeholders on the content of these standards. It was made clear in Mr. Braidwood's report that it was his expectation that the development of the standards would involve stakeholders.

With respect to that consultation, a committee was struck that included representatives from policing, Public Safety Canada, corrections, sheriffs, mental health and addiction agencies, civil liberties groups, First Nations and the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner, as well as police boards, police unions and police training academics.

The committee provided a forum for ministry staff to share information, consult and seek consensus on strategies for implementing the recommendations in the report. The committee at that time was named the Braidwood Recommendation Implementation Committee, or BRIC for short.

In our estimation, BRIC was a highly successful initiative, establishing common ground among stakeholders and gaining acceptance of proposed provincial policing standards and training initiatives. In fact, it's our intent to use a similar model moving forward for all police standards which will be developed in the future.

In terms of the development of those standards, they received ministerial approval in late 2011 with most standards coming into effect January 30, 2012. These standards were made public through the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General's website.

Seven standards were developed that pertain directly to Mr. Braidwood's recommendations around CEW use. You will find copies of these standards in your binders. They are — and I'll just run through them quickly — CEW threshold and circumstance of use, approved CEW models, internal CEW controls and monitoring, medical assistance to CEW discharges, CEW testing, CEW operator training, crisis intervention and de-escalation training and intermediate weapon and restraint approval process.

With a new legislative framework in place enabling the creation of these binding standards, the provincial government has changed how it regulates policing in the province.

I'll just touch briefly on training. Justice Braidwood made a number of recommendations related to police training in phase 1 of the report. That material you'll find in your binder as well. Summarized, Justice Braidwood recommended development of qualification requirements; curriculum training for crisis intervention and de-escalation for all police officers, both at the recruit and for CEW operators, and that we establish a time frame for that training.

He also recommended the development of qualification requirements, curriculum and training for the trainers that will deliver CID, or crisis intervention training, and CEW training. He recommended that that training be centralized at the Police Academy of British Columbia and that they be responsible for training officers in the use of CEWs as an integral component of use-of-force training. And he recommended that we prohibit a trainer's and trainee's exposure to the electrical current of CEWs during that training process.

In response to these recommendations, police services division developed two training courses that police agencies are required to complete through the associated standards. The CEW operator training course and the crisis intervention and de-escalation training course are now the standard for training for CEW operators and for crisis intervention and de-escalation in British Columbia.

The courses were developed using methodologies and, in our estimation, are well-suited for police training. Both courses were developed in collaboration with police and non-police subject matter experts.

Quickly, a brief overview of those two courses. The detail, as I've said, is in the material before you. The B.C. CID, or crisis intervention and de-escalation course, is designed to ensure police officers are able to use crisis intervention communication techniques to effectively de-escalate crises, including cases involving intervention in mental health crises. The training provides an opportunity for police to learn to apply CID communication models in the field during their duties. The techniques taught are known to be effective when de-escalating crises involving emotionally disturbed persons.

This program, the B.C. CID, was launched for police across British Columbia in January of 2012 and also became part of the JIBC Police Academy recruit training at that time. This course, or a provincially approved equivalent, is mandatory training for all front-line police officers and supervisors in both the independent municipal police forces and in RCMP agencies in British Columbia.
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With respect to the CEW operator training, CEW operator training is consistent with the B.C. policing standards and is designed to ensure police officers are able to articulate legal, technical, medical and accountability requirements for the discharge of the CEW and safely and appropriately discharge the CEW. This course outlines the threshold of use for CEWs and also examines the medical and reporting requirements established under the standards.

As per Mr. Braidwood's recommendations, the B.C. CEW operator course prohibits a trainer or trainee's exposure to the electrical current of the CEW. The B.C. CEW course was launched in January of 2012, and successful completion of this course or equivalent is mandatory for certification of police officers in British Columbia who operate CEWs.

It's also important to note that the standard requires that the B.C. CEW operator course be delivered by a Police Academy–certified use-of-force instructor or equivalent. At this time the ministry is working on continuing the work with the JIBC Police Academy as they develop this course and create the required documentation.

Until a use-of-force instructor course is provincially approved, existing CEW instructors continue to provide CEW training within their police agencies using the provincially standardized training materials. The RCMP have revised its existing national CEW operator training to reflect B.C.'s standards for officers working in British Columbia.

Moving on, briefly, to use-of-force data collection and reporting, and referring to the SBOR, or subject behaviour–officer response report. Justice Braidwood recommended that the government develop a provincewide CEW incident report form to be completed whenever an officer deploys a CEW. This form was to be forwarded to the ministry and entered into a provincewide electronic system for the reporting and analysis of CEW incidents. Police services division expanded the requirement to included all use-of-force incidents, not just those concerning CEWs.

In 2009 the ministry facilitated the implementation of a detailed and standardized use-of-force report form that was under development by the police, referred to as the SBOR. In August of 2009 the ministry directed police agencies to complete SBOR forms for all CEW displays and discharges as well as specific uses of force.

Also, in response to the recommendations of the report, police services division developed an in-house database known as the B.C. force incident database, or BCFID for short. This database houses the SBOR data that we're provided.

Police services division has monitored the overall trends in CEW usage by police from the aggregate data from 2007 onwards. A report produced in 2011, covering data from 2007 to 2011, found that there had been a major and consistent decrease in CEWs in B.C. over the past five years. Specifically, there was an 87 percent decrease in discharge incidents in 2011 compared to 2007. That would be 85 incidents in 2011 compared to 640 incidents in 2007.

Clearly, it appears that police officers are discharging CEWs in much more limited circumstances than they were in 2007. A more detailed analysis and report of CEW discharge incidents in 2010 and 2011 has been compiled, and that report has been provided to this committee.

Just speaking briefly on RCMP compliance. Mr. Braidwood recommended that the RCMP in B.C. be required to comply with the binding standards. The B.C. provincial policing standards developed were written in a manner that includes the RCMP and in consultation with them. The RCMP were included in the BRIC committee membership.

Canada and the province entered into a new provincial police services agreement effective April 1, 2012, which includes a commitment from Canada and from the RCMP commissioner to harmonize RCMP standards and procedures to a substantially similar level to, or a level that exceeds, provincial standards and procedures.

Justice Braidwood also recommended that the province seek support for the funding of national independent and science-based research programs concerning CEWs. In response, the Solicitor General wrote to the Public Safety Minister to encourage support for the recommendation and to develop and fund national research programs for CEWs.

Since 2008 B.C. has co-chaired a FPT working group on CEWs. This group was originally created to share information on policies and practices about CEWs across jurisdictions, but more recently it has worked with Public Safety Canada to set research priorities regarding research into CEWs.

Just before I conclude, I would like to note that police services division has followed up on Mr. Braidwood's concerns about the medical risks associated with the use of CEWs. As this committee knows, one of the tasks is to review the scientific research into the medical risk to persons against whom conducted energy weapons are deployed.

In support of that task, the ministry has prepared an annotated bibliography on research respecting CEW use reported between January 2009 and the end of 2011, and that has been provided to you. A total of 149 published articles were summarized and are detailed in the annotated bibliography. This collection consists of research in a number of categories, such as theoretical modelling studies, animal studies and policy papers. It's intended to be used as an aid in further examining CEWs, and we hope it's useful to you.

Concluding now, I want to touch on the importance of Mr. Braidwood's recommendations within the larger
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context of policing reform and the ever-evolving and complex nature of the relationship between government and police.

In short, over the last 30 years the relationship between policing and government has evolved significantly, and it's continuing to evolve at a rapid pace. It is part of my responsibilities and the responsibilities of the Solicitor General to ensure that the public have trust and confidence in the police and the actions they undertake.

We recognize that these challenges are not always easy to meet. But singularly, it's our view that the changes that were implemented as a result of Mr. Braidwood's review, and subsequently the development of the independent investigation office, have contributed greatly to meeting this responsibility.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Mr. Pecknold. I've got to say that having read the binders over the last few days, I am very impressed. I think the Ministry of Justice has done an awful lot of work, and I commend you for the work that has been done — a great improvement, I think, for the people of British Columbia.

I do have some questions. I don't know. Do you want me to ask a number of them? I'm sure lots of people are going to have questions. Ask two or three…

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): …and then give somebody else a go. I'll come back, because I have about 26 on my list, and I probably won't get to all of them today.

My first question is: why did government decide to let the use-of-force regulation lapse — we had a regulation — and instead move to policy and not have it in the form of regulation? My guess is that if there is regulation covering the standards and training and so on, that has greater force. It has greater force in terms of enforcement. I think about the fact that when it's policy, that means, essentially, that individual police departments are the ones responsible for enforcing the standards and so on.

It seems to me that there would have been greater force attached to the standards if they had been embodied in regulation. There was a use-of-force regulation previously, I believe. That's my first question.

C. Pecknold: I'll let some of my staff answer the detail, but it's my understanding that the move towards placing it in standards would then allow us to incorporate the RCMP. Also, we had to repeal the regulation in order to actually bring in the standard. We do have the ability to create a binding standard on use of force. It just hasn't been created yet.

L. McInally: The standards as they are now are binding on the police. They're in the Police Act. It gives the director of police services the authority to create those standards. They have the same effect in law.

We had to repeal the use-of-force regulation because we were creating standards that didn't mesh with the old regulation. We've actually broadened our ability to create binding standards. They're not policy directives. We started with policy directives in the beginning. We amended the Police Act to allow ourselves to actually create binding standards, and that's what's in there now. It's actually a step forward.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Is it not true, though, that there could have been regulation? That would not preclude having standards. There could be regulation, and that regulation would have more force than having standards.

K. Kirby: I'll answer that question. The reason why we put in these standards the way that they are is the way that the Police Act was written before we put in the standards…. Some of the other pieces were not actually binding and were, as Lynne said, more by policy. This actually makes the standards binding.

The other issue is that when we took a look at Braidwood's report, we were actually criticized for not being able to adapt quickly enough to deal with some of the ever-changing things that happen in policing.

Putting the standards in the actual act and making them binding makes us able to adapt more quickly when we get to issues in policing. For instance, if there was something like training — because things change; equipment changes — we would be able to do a director standard; work with our committee, Lynne's committee; and establish it the standards way instead of going through a sometimes timely process with regards to regulations. So we were trying to respond to Braidwood's criticism of us, of not responding quickly enough to setting standards for policing.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Related to that, I wanted to ask about the relationship with the RCMP, because of course the event with Mr. Dziekanski that triggered this was with the RCMP. I have seen the provision in the policing agreement wherein the RCMP says it will strive to harmonize, but it basically says, "If it makes sense or if it's consistent with our policies," and so on.

There's a gesture there, I guess, and an intention, but I just want to make it clear. The RCMP are not bound to follow the standards, but how compliant are they with the standards?
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C. Pecknold: The commanding officer at the time — and I believe we can point to some documentation in your binder — Mr. Gary Bass, committed to meeting the standards. In practice, they have been full participants, I'm advised by my staff, and I'll let them elaborate. We have the commitment from the commanding officer.

Granted, we have a provision of the policing agreement that says they will strive to harmonize and meet or exceed our standards. There is, obviously, a constitutional division-of-powers issue. But in E division and in British Columbia and with respect to the commitment we got from national headquarters, they have committed to fully complying with the standards. We are reviewing their use-of-force data.

In addition, we signed off on their training standards to make sure they were provincially compliant, and they made training to those standards.

L. McInally: No, that's exactly right. They've been very helpful. They participated fully in all of the consultation that we did on Braidwood, and they've amended some of their national standards around training to meet B.C.'s requirement. So they came to the table.

M. Coell (Chair): If I can add, too, that on the 15th of October we will be having the assistant commissioner, Randy Beck, who's the officer in charge of criminal operations and core policing, attend this meeting to answer questions as well.

J. Slater: Thanks, guys. There's a lot of information in that — a thousand pages.

CEWs started in 1998, and you state that nine people have died from discharge of those. How many have been shot by police? I mean, that's the thing. We're trying to save lives by using a less lethal weapon. In 2007, 647 discharges were done, and now we're down to 85. So what has happened in the last five years?

J. Slater: Shot. The other alternative to CEWs is using a gun — right? If the officer feels that there is peril to the public or peril to themselves, that happens — right? So what is the difference since 1998?

C. Pecknold: We can probably speak to a little bit of the statistics that surround that report, because we also want to look at incidence of assaults on police officers as indicators of that other behaviour.

G. Hoffmann: Yes. There has not been a huge increase in shootings. First, I would like to comment…. At the beginning of your question you said that seven people had died from CEW.

G. Hoffmann: Not meaning to quibble, but it's not necessarily accepted that it was from the CEW. There may have been some cases. But there are many cases, clearly….

G. Hoffmann: Yeah. It could be drug use or…. Potentially, there have always been citizens that have died in interactions with police in high-risk situations. The CEW is not the single factor.

We are looking at overall data, and that was one of the things we were trying to do when we expanded Braidwood's recommendation about collecting reports on CEW usage. Now we've implemented that, the same sort of detailed report is to be completed with other use-of-force incidents.

More specifically, we did look at one agency in particular a couple of years ago when we conducted the Victoria police audit, where we looked at all of the use-of-force incidents there. The pattern there was that it was overall — intermediate weapon decreased, use decreased, shootings did not go up. Clearly, police were finding other alternative means for potentially resolving situations. The lower….

J. Slater: I guess my point is: when you go from 647 down to 85, what is the other side of that picture?

G. Hoffmann: It's a complex picture, so it's not always possible to give really simple answers. Certainly, there would be an increasing emphasis on communication skills, defusing situations and also using, say, physical means of controlling people — soft or hard physical control.

What clearly the data has shown is that CEWs became the tool of choice, and a very convenient tool of choice, and really were used in situations increasingly, where maybe they shouldn't have been. I think one could clearly say that that has been pulled back to more appropriate levels so that they are used in high-risk situations where there is potential danger to the officer and to the suspect.

C. Pecknold: If I may add, Mr. Chair, I think it's fair to note that you may hear from some senior police officers — and this is, I think, a legitimate concern — that
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some police officers may actually be withdrawing from wanting to use the CEW because of the attention that it's got. I think that's something that we need to be mindful of: the right tool at the right time for the right purpose, and it needs to be appropriately available. So far the data is not showing that, but we are mindful of that concern.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): I wanted to ask a question about the subject behaviour–officer response incident reporting. There's a form in our binders. I'm not sure if this is just one example of the form — I'm not clear from the materials that we have — or whether this is the standard form that is used. That's in tab 10.

I took a look at that. One of the recommendations, and this is included in the standards, is that officers must go through a fairly rigid type of analysis before they…. I'm sure it would be quick in some situations. They have to try to de-escalate, if that's possible. They have to establish to their own satisfaction that there's no other way that you could deal with this person. There are a whole bunch of things. Part of it is the crisis intervention training.

Yet in the report, the sample that they have here, there's only one question, when the officer is reporting back on an incident, it seems to me, that in any way would reflect the fact that there is supposed to be de-escalation and a consideration of the circumstances before the Taser or conductive energy weapon is used. It says: "Did you use communication in this incident?"

Now, maybe that's not the purpose of the form. But it seems to me that if we're trying to ensure that we have data and we're trying to ensure that officers, in fact, do go through a process, that the form would better reflect the fact that that process is going on. I'm wondering if you have any comments on that.

C. Pecknold: I'll turn it over to my staff for the more detailed comment. But I think it's fair to say that this level of detailed reporting is a bit of a work in progress, and we do need to evolve to the best reporting we can.

G. Hoffmann: Yes, I take your point. This form was developed before the detailed crisis intervention and de-escalation training. It's always a bit of a balance trying to get as much as possible onto a form and yet not overburdening the police officer with report writing.

Certainly, in the narrative that the officer completes at the end in the summary of what happened, there is the requirement that they would have to justify their decision-making at the time as to why they found it was necessary to use, for example, a Taser or other types of force. But it could be possible to expand the form to ask for more detail about the type of communication.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Yeah, and it did seem to me that there are an awful lot of questions about the visibility, footing, lighting — "Did you use a vascular neck restraint?" — pre-assault cues, a whole bunch of…. "Were there influences?" — drugs, alcohol and so on. So if there can be that amount of specificity with regard to a whole bunch of other things, it's surprising to me. To me, it might be something that would be an improvement — to have a little bit more detail about the process that the officer went through before deploying the Taser.

I also wanted to ask about the gathering of information — maybe a little bit more on what happened with PRIME. It seemed to me, from reading the materials, that it was expected originally that PRIME-BC, which is a pretty expensive data system, was contemplated to be able to be used in order to not only report the information and put the incidents in there but also to gather the information and to analyze it. Somewhere in there — and I can't remember what page it's on — it says that you can't do that with PRIME.

Instead, we're having manual reporting. It looks like people are having to individually enter the data In a separate data bank. So what's happened with PRIME? Was it expected that it was going to be able to be used to gather and analyze the information, and if not, why not?

C. Pecknold: This form is actually a page in PRIME. However, I believe that comment in the binder is that we can't data-mine into PRIME to verify any provisions of the report because we don't have the capacity. We also in the ministry don't have direct access to PRIME. That sits externally and is a police database.

With respect to the capacity, it just doesn't have it right now. It's not designed for the capacity for us to data-mine and verify it. But the reporting itself, for independence, does come through PRIME.

L. McInally: We've put in a change request. We're in the process of getting what they call a details page to sit behind the data-entry page so that we can mine it. I believe that should happen in the next version of PRIME. Also, if we had the….

L. McInally: We are. We're looking at it. We're trying. Believe me. We don't want to enter the data manually.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): I wanted to ask a little bit about the training. One of the recommendations from Mr. Justice Braidwood was that the training should take place at the Police Academy, and that is not happening in all cases. In fact, I don't know if it's happening at all. I don't think it is happening at the Police Academy. There's an introduction to the use of conductive energy weapons, I believe, but actually the training is happening at the various police authorities. I'm wondering why that is.

I'd also like a little bit more background on why it is that we don't have the training-the-trainers course — basically the master trainer course — in place yet. It seems to me that if we want to really get at having harmonization and high standards, we need to make sure that we are training the trainers. I'm wondering what the delay is there.

J. Naydiuk: With regards to your first question about why we don't see the training happening exclusively over at the Police Academy, we looked at that option at the very beginning, but one of the really important factors was training accessibility. We couldn't reconcile the notion of having to actually shift officers from all over B.C. over to one place, where you could accomplish the exact same thing by creating a really comprehensive training manual with everything a trainer could want or need and have that placed in the hands of the actual trainers that do the training anyway.

All that would happen at the police academy was that they would pay to have trainers from all of the different agencies go to the police academy and provide training there, using the material that, historically, each of those trainers created themselves. Instead, what we did was created a package that each trainer could take with them wherever they were in the province. We just felt it was a far more economical and accessible option to achieve the exact same goal.

M. Coell (Chair): I wonder if I can follow up with that question. I wonder if you could take just a minute to sort of show us what the training was prior to 2005 to what it is today. I know you touched on it, Clayton, in your initial remarks, but I think a little bit more detail would be helpful for us.

J. Naydiuk: Well, it's an excellent question, but it's impossible to answer because prior to this the training was developed by individual use-of-force instructors in each individual and independent municipal police agency or in the RCMP, and provided locally to whoever needed it. There was no standard of what was actually taught. They would take different courses. They'd go down and take the Taser International course, or there might be a Taser instructor…. Did they ever offer a Taser instructor course at the JIBC? The PRTC, Pacific region training centre, may also offer one. But you could not find one or two Taser instructors that had the same background in terms of the courses they had taken.

That said, the material isn't that complicated. To be a Taser instructor isn't really complicated. What's complicated are the circumstances of use and teaching that aspect of the use of force, and the minutiae around when the Taser is the best option. Again, the solution was not so much retraining all of the trainers but giving them a really fulsome documentation of what it was they were required to teach, what the new provincial standards were saying, what the new threshold of use was, so that they could take that information out into the field and instruct it in a consistent manner.

I think there was another question in there about: why the delay in the use-of-force instructor course? Again, it's pulling all of these threads together and getting all of the use-in-force instructors agreeing upon an approach to use-of-force instructor training and creating the proper documentation for that. That's a complex process.

C. Pecknold: If I might add, one of the tasks that I set for myself was to try to rationalize the relationship that we have with the Justice Institute of B.C. Police Academy. We've recently signed an agreement in the last, I think, three or four months with the Justice Institute to rationalize what they'd deliver for us. They have to produce a yearly strategic plan around the types of courses they will deliver. Out of our branch budget, we fund the police academy — the police academy, not the Justice Institute as a whole — and there are accountability mechanisms in that agreement.

In fact, we are in the throes of going through the process to hire a permanent director now. It has been filled on a secondment basis for some time. I'd like to move towards putting curriculum development in the Justice Institute and in the police academy and harmonize it over some time, and also look at harmonizing and coordinating activities between the RCMP's PRTC, Pacific region training centre, and the JIBC, but it's a long-term plan.

E. Foster: I guess to Jane, just to be clear on this. Before there was any attempt to standardize the training, essentially the training was how to charge them, how to aim them, where to shoot them. There was no training involved as far as when. Would that be the correct assumption — limited?

J. Naydiuk: Well, no. The when would be. It was considered an intermediate weapon like all the other intermediate weapons, like batons….

E. Foster: So basically the same standards you'd have for any use of deadly force.

J. Naydiuk: So it was as soon as you started to get active resistance. As soon as someone started to push back and things were escalating, it kind of opened that big…. You cross that threshold where you could start to use a Taser. What we've effectively done is tighten that
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up so that it has to now be imminent bodily harm and you have to have attempted to de-escalate using communication skills.

E. Foster: At the end of the day, though, it's still the call of the policeman on the site. I guess my question is: how do you train that? How do you teach that? I mean, you can do all the psychological stuff. You can do a thousand case histories, but when the guy's standing there with a knife in his hand, you've got to make a decision whether he's just holding the knife in his hand or he plans to stab you. You've got to make that call before he decides to stabs you, because then it's too late. My question to all the learned people: how do you teach that?

J. Naydiuk: It's an excellent question, and there's ongoing debate about what the best way is to train to these spur-of-the-moment decisions. All we know, all that the literature tells us about training is that you have to give them a broader context.

The training does that. It takes them right back to the basis of the use of force and the national use-of-force model and how that works, then digs down into more detail around the threshold and circumstances of use where Taser is now appropriate.

It is retraining in a lot of ways — an officer's previous belief around when they could use that piece of equipment. It's not easy, but it's part of police training.

G. Hogg: I get concerned when we focus too tightly around one issue. I notice you started by providing some context by talking about, historically, the Police Act and, prior to that, the amount of independence that existed within all professions and, contextually, how that has changed culturally and societally as we've seen many professions getting all kinds of different points of oversight. I think there are probably some pretty common principles or values that have been reflected within those changes within the context of all the professions.

As you've looked at and monitored those changes which have taken place — in particular, in reference to policing — what would be the pre-eminent principles and values which are reflected within each of those?

C. Pecknold: I started policing in the early '80s. It's fair to say very significant changes since then, in terms of both the equipment available and the training available and the accountability regimes around policing. The principles that are often cited and I believe in, obviously, are transparency and accountability. Every one of these mechanisms is intended to be transparent and to hold police appropriately accountable.

The challenge, as this committee well knows, is finding the right balance between the appropriate level of accountability and oversight and allowing the police to do the job we need them to do in very difficult circumstances — frequently having to make split-second decisions in complex scenarios. We do our best, I think, within the resources we have to give them the tools they need to make sure that the accountability mechanisms that the Legislature provides, as far as we can influence those, are working effectively.

G. Hogg: So it's accountability, I assume — that we want to ensure the safety of both the police officers and the public within that. Public confidence, I think you made reference to. I think those are probably principles that apply to the medical profession or child protection or a number of others.

Where I'm coming from with this is…. Having worked in child protection and having been a warden of a detention centre, a jail, and looking at the initiatives and the judgment calls, as Eric made reference to.

You're always looking at who you hire and then the training and the old notion of being able to have the moral will to do the right thing and the moral skill to determine what the right thing is and be able to do that in quick response. So what are the training mechanisms? Certainly, there are a number of mechanisms that are being reflected in terms of intuitive responses and what comes out of the practices that are generated in that. I'm still very interested, I guess, in articulating what those principles might be and how they apply in other areas.

My fear is…. It's happened in some areas of child protection, where social workers have come up with a set of regulations, police have come up with a set of regulations, judges have a set of regulations, and the emergency response, in terms of the medical response, has come up with a set of regulations — which are all independent and take discretion out of it.

There was an example of a parent who took his 12-year-old son to a baseball game and asked him if he'd like a drink. He went to get lemonade. His father happened to be a professor and probably not too plugged in with what's happening in the world. He bought a Mike's Hard Lemonade. The security people saw him. They called the police. The police took the child away, who went in an ambulance. The medical people checked him. The father wasn't allowed to see him.

Everybody said it was the wrong thing to do, but everybody said: "We followed the regulations. We followed the dictates of what had to happen." So there's an incredibly important balance that has to generate, which continues to give discretion while trying to address those principles.

I guess, for me, I still need to get back to having some confidence in terms of what those principles are and then the discretion which is allowed in terms of the development of that. It's similar to what Eric was saying, but probably in a far more confusing way of addressing it.
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I think, for me, that's the crux or the seminal part of what all of this is about. It's how we get to that type of balance and that type of understanding. I think if we're able to put it within the framework or the context of….

Well, those of us who are elected are going through the same types of processes. What are the accountabilities that we must…? What are the transparencies? What is public confidence? All of those things I think are principles that apply to elected representatives as well. So if we could put them within that framework of a societal or a cultural change and then how this fits into all of that without focusing too tightly on just this, while recognizing that there are processes for doing that.

I guess I'm still not feeling like I've been able to articulate for myself what those cultural and societal shifts are that we've had, since you made the reference, back to the 1900s to today.

Then how are those articulated in a way that will allow us to actually make decisions, where we can say, "Yes, we need to give some discretion, and here are the principles that are generated out of that," so that we can be accountable to the public, the people of British Columbia, with respect to that and say it in a way that reflects values that allow us to look at the various circumstances that come forward, allow you to make judgments and allow people to make judgments about that founded on good values and principles that are part of an ever-changing societal matrix?

C. Pecknold: There are a lot of important thoughts, I think, in that question. First of all, going back to the role of training, I think giving police officers the tools they need at the right time to make these difficult decisions is a combination of hiring the right people, training the right people, developing the right people, refreshing their training at the appropriate time and giving them the tools they need.

It isn't a situation where I would ever suggest that we can create a standard or a regulation and everything's solved. It's one piece in a mosaic of managing and helping police have the tools they need.

It's certainly not my intention as director, and I doubt very much — I wouldn't speak for the Legislature — whether it's your intention, to impact police decision-making and discretion to the point where they can no longer do what we want them to do. It's that balance, I think, I referred to. The police will obviously operate on their principles of protecting the public and preserving property and protecting life and all of their common-law and statutory responsibilities.

They're expected to exercise their authorities under the supervision of the court and the supervision of all the agencies that supervise them. I think the level of complexity, the complexity index, has increased manyfold in the 30 years I've been involved.

It's a very difficult job for young people, but I constantly get feedback from both the young people who are coming into the profession and from the leaders of the profession on how they accept and acknowledge that they must be transparent and accountable to the public they serve.

In order to give them that level of transparency and accountability, we have to have the appropriate regulatory environment. "Appropriate" is the word I would suggest, and that's the balance.

I think that's a constant discussion and a constant tug that needs to take place — the independence of the police, the importance of giving them the right regulatory framework and letting them do their job but, by the same token, making sure that we preserve public confidence by ensuring that their level of accountability and transparency meets public expectations.

G. Hogg: I don't think there is an ultimate answer, but I think there are some ultimate values or principles, and I think those become the foundation of all of the rest of this. I'm just not sure that we've been able to articulate what those are yet.

I guess we probably all have a sense or a feeling of what those might be. But from my perspective, I would certainly find it helpful, in terms of looking at the tasks we have as a committee, to be able to have some discussion, some ideas about what those are as they've evolved — as other jurisdictions have looked at them, as other professions have looked at them, in terms of what those look at — so that we have a constant foundation or reference point upon which to look at these issues more broadly.

M. Coell (Chair): We do also have the ability and probably will take the opportunity after we've heard from all of the expert witnesses to have the ministry back again to have a further discussion with them.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Well, apart from the values and principles…. I think your comments were very interesting.

I'm glad, though, that we do have a framework. The framework that came from Mr. Justice Braidwood is that the officers are not to deploy CEWs unless they're enforcing a federal criminal law and the subject is causing bodily harm or will imminently cause bodily harm and that no lesser-force option has been or will be effective in eliminating the risk of bodily harm and de-escalation or crisis intervention techniques have not been or will not be effective in eliminating the risk of bodily harm.

I'm really glad that those principles have been articulated and that they have, in slightly varied form, essentially all been encapsulated or included in the standards that have been set. I think they're good standards in that respect.
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But I wanted to ask a very specific question about medical assistance to CEW discharges. We have the provincial policing standard that has been put together for this.

Mr. Justice Braidwood had said that when there is a high-risk situation — and there are a number of variables that could create high-risk situations — they're supposed to have, essentially, paramedics called preferably, if possible, before the discharge of the weapon.

It looks to me, from looking at the regulation — and maybe it's a typo; maybe it's my interpretation — that instead, it says that "if an officer uses an AED" — or a defibrillator — "on a person, emergency medical assistance, either from paramedics or a hospital, is sought as soon as possible."

I'm wondering if I can get a little bit of clarity on that. I thought the recommendation from Braidwood was that if there is going to be the use of a Taser, medical assistance should be brought in beforehand if possible. But it looks to me like what this is saying is that if there is the use of a defibrillator…. In that case, then we bring in medical assistance. Can I get some clarity on that?

L. McInally: I'm not quite sure what section you're looking at. The standard is 1.3.4 — right?

L. McInally: The actual request for medical assistance is No. 5, on the back. So it's met there.

We've included the discussion of AEDs, and the recommendation around requesting paramedic assistance is in one standard. I think that might be what's a little….

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): I didn't read the back of the page. I thought maybe it was a typo. Good. Okay, that's useful.

Another question. To me, one of the crucial pieces and a very positive development is that there has to be crisis intervention training. Everybody has to have crisis intervention training. To me, in some ways, even more than the training in the use of Tasers — not more than but equally important — is the crisis intervention.

I think this goes back to what you were talking about, Gordie — the importance of having the right culture, the right values and so on. To me, it's very important that you try to de-escalate and have the training to de-escalate a situation as opposed to going in there with weapons drawn.

I'm wondering whether or not there is a comfort level that the amount of training that is happening is sufficient. I think it was only several hours, and then some of it is done on line.

Secondly, it's my understanding that you don't have to go to the police academy. Not even new recruits have to go to the police academy. Was there thought to having at least new recruits having standardized de-escalation training as opposed to having it done at the various police agencies?

C. Pecknold: I'll let my staff elaborate, but my understanding is that in what's referred to as block training that the RCMP provide at the Pacific regional training centre — they bring all the officers in for full training on all use-of-force techniques and firearms training, etc. — they've actually incorporated articulation and crisis intervention into that block, or they're in the process of doing that.

J. Naydiuk: This CID course is now embedded in police recruit training at the Justice Institute for all the independent municipal police. There's actually some discussion about aspects of it being put into RCMP training in Regina in Depot, but we don't have jurisdiction over that.

What does happen: when new cadets come to the province of B.C., this course has to be taken within their field-coach months of training. I think it's three months. It has to be taken within their field-coach period. A good comment about the length of the course…. Again, we are balancing a lot of different pressures there. Communication skills training could be weeks long in a perfect world.

What we are seeing is a trend where this information and the methodologies in this course are being found in other use-of-force training sessions. So it's being reflected in different kinds of training throughout the year. That's a really good trend that we're seeing anecdotally, and I'm hoping to do a little bit more work to make sure that's actually happening.

Just to get back to this idea of values, if I may, I really do think that this whole notion of making crisis intervention and de-escalation training such a big deal — it's part of our provincial policing standard — is impacting the value system in the culture of policing. To be required to have to talk about the kinds of communication that you're doing in a use-of-force scenario is new and, I think, a really positive step forward.

It is a work in progress, so it's going to take time for it to become common in the discourse of policing, in the culture, but this is a really good first step, and I'm very enthusiastic about it.

G. Hogg: With respect to crisis intervention, there is a certified course called non-violent crisis intervention. From my limited perspective, just the nomenclature, the naming, the framing of that, is important — crisis intervention versus non-violent crisis intervention.

Certainly, with the staff I had, we had them all certified in non-violent crisis intervention. One of the advantages,
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I think, of us doing that was getting outside of just the limited direction or focus of Corrections. We had people from the outside, which helped with the transparency. It helped with the credibility of not just doing it within the context of the Justice Institute but having people from the outside. I know that the impact it had on our staff was pretty dramatic.

Again, just the narrative. This is non-violent crisis intervention, which really changed their perception of what they had. They all started carrying around these little cards saying they were trained in non-violent crisis intervention, and many times they dealt with the crisis. The fact that it was non-violent gave them a whole different perception narrative and practical understanding of what they were doing.

J. Naydiuk: Well, we're hoping that the de-escalation aspect of this course…. So it's crisis intervention. In the police world, that's why you're called. There is a crisis. But the point is that rather than make it worse by bringing more tension to the situation, these methodologies are intended to de-escalate. It is a new way of looking at it for police. Hopefully, it will establish that same notion that non-violent approaches are just as effective.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): It's a little bit out of the scope, but it's certainly related to the scope of this discussion. Has there been any thought at all by the division to take a look at standards for recruitment? In some way assessing the suitability. And I'm sure police forces do this already.

Again, we have to balance the independence of the various police forces. But has that been thought about in order to try to address what some people see as the real cultural problems that there are, certainly in the RCMP? I think we're very well served in our community by the RCMP, but there has been a lot of discussion, and I know that's federal. But is the ministry taking a look at all at what can be done in that area?

C. Pecknold: We do have the ability to set standards for training and retraining of police officers. We are, as I say, intimately involved with the Police Academy and how they deliver training. We now have an advisory group called the PACC — another acronym — police academy chiefs committee, which provides that type of advice. We can set standards, but we prefer to have an ongoing relationship.

We also have the assessment centre for recruits that assesses their skills. We continue to fund that. Through all those mechanisms we hope we're contributing to making sure that they're hiring the right people for these jobs.

Now, with respect to the RCMP, our influence over RCMP hiring policies is, quite frankly, very limited because they're a federal agency.

J. Slater: Just further to Kathy's comments, RCMP through Regina…. What are the other provinces doing regarding this? I mean, let's not reinvent the wheel here. If they have programs in place in Ontario or Quebec or wherever, are we looking at those at all?

C. Pecknold: I like to think we're on the cutting edge of police training. The Ontario police academy — they have a police college. In Atlantic Canada it's an ad hoc group of the Atlantic Police Academy, but there's also training done by the larger forces. I believe Alberta is exploring some centralized training. I don't think it's been completed yet. So we tend, with our Justice Institute and Police Academy structure, to be a little bit ahead of the curve, generally, on training.

We are connected in. Jane, for example, is connected into the Police Sector Council. So there are national bodies that we tie into to make sure our training is along the same lines. The Police Sector Council just completed a complete review of police-based competencies, which goes to the vice-chair's question. So there is that national discussion going on. Is it harmonized? No. And do we learn from each jurisdiction? Yes, we do.

With respect to CEWs, I think we're well ahead of the curve, but I'll invite any of my staff to make that comment.

J. Naydiuk: Well, certainly the first step in our training processes was to do a national scan and see what was going on across Canada with regards to this training, so we're pretty confident that these specific training courses will stand up across the country.

But it's a work in progress, and it's a tremendous amount of work to gather all that information. Because policing occurs provincially, it's different in every province. Sometimes it's very much apples and oranges to compare training programs, but we do make that effort as much as possible.

J. Slater: I guess my point is, though, that if Ontario police have stats…. We've got ours — 647 down to 85. What are theirs? Are they way different than ours? Are they cutting back? Are they using less enforcement with the Tasers?

G. Hoffmann: Well, sort of an answer. In terms of use-of-force data collection, B.C. really is at the head of the curve. In conjunction with the RCMP now, B.C. was
[ Page 24 ]
the first province to develop such detailed use-of-force reporting requirements, which the RCMP then took on board as well, and we are the only ones who have such detailed reporting requirements. Most of the other provinces have very little. Maybe it's: "Did you shoot someone? Yes or no?" or "Did you use a Taser?" And that may be it.

We are members of a federal-provincial-territorial working group regarding use-of-force issues. It was originally created just to look at CEW issues, but now the mandate has been expanded to look at general use-of-force issues. Use-of-force reporting and data collection is one of the key priorities that we will be looking at in order to get some national data and comparability.

The other issues are actually use-of-force training and use-of-force skills perishability. So that is also on the agenda, apart from just generally having a mechanism for being able to share information on practices and policies across agencies in Canada. We're very much trying to do what you're talking about.

M. Coell (Chair): Would it be safe to say, then, that British Columbia is collecting data that the other provinces are not presently, so they wouldn't be able to tell us whether they've had an increase or a decrease in use of CEWs?

G. Hoffmann: That would generally be correct. I did speak to Alberta some time ago, and they, again, were struggling with the numbers they had or that they've been collecting. They said: "We could generally say there's been a decrease." Certainly, what happened with Robert Dziekanski and everything that flowed on from that have impacted the country as a whole.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): I just have a couple more questions. First of all — the first one is not really a question — just to confirm that we are talking about policing only. We're not talking about sheriffs or correctional officers.

C. Pecknold: That's correct. My mandate is policing. Those fall under other ADMs. You may or may not want to invite them.

And then more of a question. I'm wondering if you could take me through, going back to this issue of enforceability and that fact that the standards are binding. If there was an incident where a Taser was used, there would have to be the reporting through the incident report. Then what would the process be and what is there in place to ensure accountability and reporting of the specific incident and that the standards have been met?

In other words, what would the process be for that individual officer to say: "Okay. This happened"? How do we know that this person went through that consideration of whether or not there was an attempt at de-escalation, was there a criminal offence taking place and all those things that are included in the principles? Can you go through that for me, please?

C. Pecknold: The first line of that is the supervisory function of the police officer's supervisor. Whoever is reviewing the report or reviewing the incident should be making that analysis. It's their responsibility and, ultimately, the chief constable's responsibility to make sure that they're complying with the standards.

Ultimately, we would then, on a more wide-angle view, measure compliance through an audit. It's our intention, as these standards have been rolled out, to do some compliance auditing in the future to see: is the reporting being reported accurately — we have no reason to believe it's not — and are there instances of non-reporting? To rephrase it, are there incidents where the reporting is not being done when it should have been done? And generally, what's the compliance, and what action is being taken when there's non-compliance internally, ultimately? We will do that through an audit as opposed to a case-by-case basis.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): In a follow-up to that, then, what mechanism is in place to ensure that the information that you could then audit is there? The incident report itself doesn't include that — at least the one I see. So what is the mechanism? You know, where is the information kept that they went through that you then could audit?

C. Pecknold: That would be kept on the PRIME file. That would be kept on the file or the incident file, and if their recordkeeping processes are appropriate, there should be an indication that the supervisor has reviewed and approved the SBOR. I don't know, on an informal basis, whether staff do that or not.

L. McInally: There's a standard called internal controls — document 5. In his report Justice Braidwood talked about some of what you're talking about: his concern about making sure that the police departments were in fact reviewing the reports. There's actually a standard. It's not as specific as case by case, but that's what they have to do internally according to their own internal policies. But as a department, collectively, the executive need to look at their CEW reports quarterly to make sure that there's nothing in there, no patterns that are starting to emerge. They need to provide the province with a reporting out of that annually.

Justice Braidwood had some of those concerns, so some of that is actually in the internal controls standard.
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C. Pecknold: But to be clear, our mechanism is an audit and an evaluation of their compliance with the standard.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): A further follow-up on that, then. The SBOR, the report that I was looking at that didn't have that information, is not the only place that the information is there. So is there a standard form that is filled out on the use of CEWs, then, that would contain the information that would let you be able to determine whether or not the appropriate processes had been gone through?

G. Hoffmann: The SBOR would be the form that should have that information completely. A lot of it would be in the narrative at the end of the document where the officer must describe the whole incident and his or her rationale for using the CEW.

L. McInally: So, essentially, every quarter the police department is responsible for going through all the SBOR reports and making sure that a pattern isn't emerging or there might be a training issue — you know, something has come up a couple of times. That's a second check against the individual review of the use-of-force report by the supervisor on every shift.

C. Pecknold: This form would be part of an operational file normally. There'd be a call. There might be witness statements. There might be the normal reporting. If there was an offence, it might be reported to Crown counsel. And the SBOR is just one page in that overall report.

J. Naydiuk: There would still be police reports, as well as the officer's notes, as well as a report to Crown counsel. All that would document the incident, in addition.

E. Foster: I want to go back to the training again and the de-escalation. I'm not pooh-poohing it at all. I think it's an excellent idea.

At the end of the day — the people who are doing the training, the people that are being trained and everybody having this discussion — you've got to remember that this whole thing takes…. In the length of time it took you to read those three things, it's done. The incident is over. Somebody has either been tasered, not tasered, shot or not. The whole thing doesn't take but seconds.

The policeman comes in. The policeman makes a decision on what they have to do, and then they act. That's it. It's over. Generally, the whole issue is over in 25, 30 seconds.

There's got to be some reality in this as well. The policemen that are on the street have got to have faith that they can carry out their job. And if they don't, two things are going to happen: it's going to stop people joining police forces and people are going to die. It's that simple.

I support this process. I think it's great. What happened at the airport and so on shouldn't have happened. There's no question about that. But at the end of the day, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater here, because we'll lose big time on it. If you start to analyze every situation as you walk into it…. I mean, every policeman does that every time they walk through the door. If they don't, they don't generally walk out. They don't make it. No bad cops. They either quit or worse.

Let's just remember that. What we're doing here is dealing with what's going to happen on the doorsteps when the phone rings or the call comes in that somebody has just beat his wife near to death. That person is not in their right mind, obviously, or they wouldn't have done that.

C. Pecknold: If I could just add, that is that tension that I spoke to earlier. That's why we went through such a collaborative process — it predates me — and why these staff members went through such a collaborative process on the Braidwood implementation committee to talk to police, to flesh out these on-the-street issues, because we're not the day-to-day experts on policing.

It's my intention to make sure that every standard we bring in goes through that same rigorous discussion process as well. Also, something else has to be done about the cost to municipalities with respect to implementing these standards. I can tell you, that's a dialogue I hear from the mayors of municipalities, as you can appreciate.

M. Coell (Chair): Clayton, if I could just ask a further question to Eric's comments. Quite often, when you put things together like you're doing, it's how the front line reacts to it. I just wondered whether we've got anything other than the audits that have been referred to — and possibly, that's enough — to check with the people who are on the front line of policing as to how they are handling the changes.

C. Pecknold: I'd probably defer that to the command structure that you're going to ask to come, the senior leadership. I do hear from some senior leaders some concern that some officers are detaching from the use of the Taser because they're concerned about the public scrutiny of that. I don't know. We haven't tested that empirically. I don't how true that is.

Then on an informal basis, all of our staff liaise with police officers at a managerial or at an expert level, and there's a constant dialogue that's going on. Of course, Sergeant Naydiuk is a serving police officer, so maybe she wants to make a comment on that.

J. Naydiuk: Well, I can say that the feedback we get…. After the on-line training, there's an opportunity for members to anonymously submit their feedback on what
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they thought of the training. In the training world we don't put a lot of weight on that because a lot of people may not like training if it's demanding. They prefer training that's easy and quick to get through.

But when you weed through all of that, we are getting comments that the CEW operator training has taught the members new information that they didn't have before, that they feel more confident doing their job as a result of it. They are happy with the length of the training.

With the CID training, this is where we get comments on both sides. We get some officers…. I think, Mr. Foster, speaking to what you're referring to, it's a little bit about sometimes there's no time to talk. "Why are we being trained to talk when sometimes there isn't an opportunity?"

For the most part, we're getting lots of feedback — very positive — about finally officers having a voice to articulate. Some of this de-escalation work they are already doing; they just didn't know how to explain it. There was never an emphasis to document it or write it down so it would get forgotten over time. By the time you got to court, you couldn't remember what exactly you said because you hadn't taken notes on it.

The other really positive piece…. I've actually had unsolicited phone calls from colleagues of mine in the field who've taken the CID face-to-face training and have said that interacting…. This training also involves bringing people in from the mental health service community and mental health consumers themselves. This has really demystified a lot of that crisis intervention in mental health. The actual training, while it's not comfortable to practice communicating in front of colleagues in that simulation environment, they're actually feeling better about after the fact.

We would love to do a formal assessment to see how this is going, but that's time-consuming and expensive. It's just one of those things that if we can we will, but I don't know if I would get the green light on that.

L. Krog: The use of the Taser has dropped, I recall. What was it — 600-plus down to about 85? One of the growing concerns expressed by police officers around the country, let alone in British Columbia, is the frequent involvement of the police with people who may be suffering from some form of mental illness. I'll use the term "rational" or "irrational" behaviour.

I'm just wondering, with respect to those statistics — the 600-plus and 85 — can you shed any light on how many of the people involved in that would be described as persons suffering from either a mental illness or an irrational state? I think it would be sort of interesting to know, because that is the most common use of it, I suspect. I'd be interested to know if the statistics back it up.

G. Hoffmann: The statistics that we have from the 2010-2011 data from the independent police agencies…. you would have that, I think. This is all based on the discharge incidents. It is reported that 56 percent of subjects were considered to be emotionally disturbed, so that's the terminology that the police use, and 18 percent of the subjects were actively engaging in self-harm at the incident, with another 9 percent behaving in a way — telling police to shoot or kill them.

I think there were 11 percent of those subjects overall that were subsequently apprehended under the Mental Health Act, as reported in the SBOR. The numbers could be higher, but that's where it was explicitly written. Certainly, it's a substantial number. I cannot comment whether that is more, less or the same compared to ten years ago, because we didn't have that sort of detailed information then.

L. Krog: Also, are there any statistics or studies dealing with those who have been the repeat subjects of the use of the Taser? In other words, John is last year tasered because of an outrageous incident in a public place, and then next year the same thing. In other words, are there "repeat" recipients of the use of that intermediate force?

L. Krog: Is any of that information being analyzed? The point I'm getting at is…. I mean, there is a growing concern. I'm expressing it not necessarily on behalf of myself, but on behalf of the community at large. People with serious issues are being released into the community without supervision, without assistance.

I'm curious to know if there is, as I say, any data or any studies being done that deal with those who have, shall I say, serial involvement with the police when, in fact, they should be involved more intensively with our health care system as opposed to our justice system.

C. Pecknold: We don't have that specific to tasering, but your point is very much on my mind. Vancouver police did a very involved study. I'm just trying to bring the title of it to mind. Lost In Transition, I believe it was called. They did a case study of examining a particular individual as the narrative thread who had come from a very high-functioning state into, ultimately, a tragic state. I know that Vancouver police, and in particular Deputy Chief LePard, are very interested in collecting data on that.

We would like to do some work around there. I think there's a large amount of data that we could look at, or a large amount of information we should get at — perhaps there's a gap in the data — to find out exactly what is going on in terms of the interface with the emotionally disturbed and mentally ill in the community and how they
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interface with the police and what strategies we could employ that would do a better job of that.

When the Taser or the CEW was originally brought out, through the Victoria police, I was actually part of the senior management of the Victoria police at the time. You may recall there were a number of very high-profile incidents where emotionally disturbed individuals had been, unfortunately, fatally shot by the police. The goal at the time was to give the police some tools to fix that gap. Obviously we've come full circle to that.

Your point is well-taken, and I don't think do we have enough analysis of the data right now, but we are looking at it.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Just one comment. Eric, I think you bring a good perspective as a reminder that in these situations it's sometimes almost instantaneous. On the other hand, I don't think that means that this is not very useful.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): No, and you weren't suggesting that. I appreciate that.

If the training is good training and it's effective training, then it can become part of that instantaneous evaluation that the mind will go to: "Okay, can I de-escalate?"

I mean, it might have anyways, and probably good police officers have been doing a lot of this anyway throughout their careers. But I think it can happen very quickly; the evaluation can be very quick. If the triggers are there in your mind — "These are the things I should be looking at" — it probably can happen in a matter of seconds sometimes.

I don't have any more questions. I don't know if anybody else does. I just wanted to say how much I appreciate the presentation today, how much I appreciate the depth of the materials, how detailed they were. Sometimes we don't appreciate getting huge binders, but it was very, very useful in this case and very important to know exactly the work that has gone on.

As I said at the beginning, I do congratulate the ministry on the great work, actually, that has happened in this regard. I think it serves the people of British Columbia very well. So thank you all for your presentation today.

I have a couple of questions. You possibly don't need to answer them here if you're coming back. One of the themes, I guess, of today has been training and the effectiveness of training. Is there anything that you, as professionals, can see that recommendations from this committee would be helpful?

The Legislature is expecting that we report out by the end of the year and would be tabling a report in the legislative session in the spring. Is there anything, from your perspectives, that you would see being helpful as a directive of this committee?

C. Pecknold: I would like to take that away. I could either write back to the committee or I can appear again. I'd like to consult.

M. Coell (Chair): I agree with Kathy's comments. The amount and detail of your presentation has been very well received. Our job, of course, will be to make recommendations as to: have the recommendations of Justice Braidwood been implemented, and is there a need to go further with some of the implementations that you've had? I think we'll get some feedback from the RCMP and from the sheriffs as to how they see the implementation of the recommendations as well.

With that, are there any other comments or requests that members would have of the ministry at this point?

Seeing none, I thank you very much. I know you're going to be watching the other expert witnesses as they come forward. If there is anything that you would see the necessity to comment on or to clarify from your perspective, please just give us a call and we'll set up another time for you to come back before the committee.

M. Coell (Chair): We have Dr. Lu with us this afternoon, from the department of psychiatry at UBC. He is an assistant professor as well as an addiction and psychiatric consultant. We're very pleased to have him and his expertise here to testify before the committee today.

S. Lu: I want to thank the committee for inviting me to come here to present on a topic that I deal with on a day-to-day basis. I have been a psychiatrist at VGH looking after folks with delirium for the past 13 years, and I treat patients with delirium every single day, so I think it's a topic that I'm quite familiar with. I also work with addiction psychiatrists and have worked with folks with severe addiction and mental health problems.

Although today in my presentation I appear before you as a single individual, the material that I've sent you I have sent to a number of my different colleagues, including the folks at VGH and Royal Columbian Hospital who have also dealt with delirium. I have to say this is a consensus submission that I made and that this represents what we clinicians as a whole understand as Taser — I'm going to use "Taser" rath-
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er than "conducted energy weapons" from a generic standpoint — and its potential impact on delirium.

A quick disclosure. I have no financial disclosure whatsoever with regard to any companies or so on. I have done volunteer teaching to the RCMP and other first responders on agitation, delirium and confusion, but I have never been formally affiliated with any of the other organizations.

I think the objective today is to provide an overview of what we mean by delirium. What does that mean? Who gets it? What happens? What does it look like? And also to dispel a term that you guys are going to be hearing quite a bit over the next couple months, which is the term "excited delirium." What is that all about, and how's that different from delirium?

Then I'm going to talk a little bit about the potential risk of conducted energy weapons from a theoretical standpoint and what a person like myself, who treats patients with delirium on a day-to-day basis, thinks about. Also the recommendations — and I think the recommendations are really quite beautifully summarized in the Braidwood report.

So what is delirium? Delirium is essentially a symptom. It's a symptom like pain. A lot of different things can cause pain. It's a symptom; it's not a disease. It's like fever. A whole bunch of different kinds of infections can cause fever. A whole lot of different things can cause delirium.

It's known by a number of different names: acute confusional state, acute organic brain syndrome and so on. The different names are essentially a reminder to all of us that it's not a clear-cut picture.

The most commonly used definition is the DSM-IV criteria. Those are the criteria that most psychiatrists use throughout North America and indeed in the world. They generally come to a consensus that it is a relatively acute change in mentation, although in rare cases it can be prolonged one. It involves changes in perception — what we see, how we hear and how we experience things.

The disturbance, generally speaking, occurs over a short period of time. It has a fluctuating course, meaning from moment to moment…. A person can look better one minute, and then 20 minutes later they look not so good. Quite different from a lot of common conditions where it's a persistent kind of presentation.

What do we see? Number one is the changes in the level of consciousness. Sometimes people can get drowsy but also agitated. And for the purpose of what we deal with from a law enforcement standpoint, agitation is what worries one. One is concerned about someone who's sedated and kind of drowsy but mostly calls the paramedics, but it is in that agitated state that law enforcement is often called in.

Disruption in sleep-wake cycle is something that happens. Disorientation — they don't know where they are. Poor attention and concentration — meaning police show up and say, "Please put your hands up," and they might not comprehend that particular simple instruction.

Impaired speech and comprehension. Yet they can still remain well-rehearsed statements such as "What the hell are you doing? Go away. Get away from me." In those kinds of well-rehearsed statements they seem like they know what they're doing. For example, elderly individuals who get delirious will tell you: "I don't want to be here. I just want to go home." But they don't really know where they are.

Impaired memory and concentration. Difficulty in planning, organization and executive tasks. For example, if a police officer were to show up and say: "Please put your knife down. Walk over here…." That's too difficult. That's a two-step command. They may not be able to follow a two-step command, based on delirium, so they might appear to be resisting arrest and refusing to cooperate.

Delusional and illogical thinking process. In rare cases, folks can have sort of bizarre ideations of aliens and so on, but generally speaking, most of the disorganized thought processes involve things that they experienced in the past. For example, an elderly Polish man that I've just seen a couple of days ago…. During his delirium he's scared that the Germans are coming again.

You know, it makes sense for an 89-year-old man who experienced World War II to think about the Nazi being the worst thing that can happen. For someone who has dealt with law enforcement, illogical thinking may involve police trying to harass them and so on.

Labile affects — irritability, hallucination, misinterpretation of external stimuli. Agitation and restlessness are the norm. Most individuals with delirium get agitated. In rare cases folks become hyperkinetic, but again, they're not involved with a police setting.

I use the term "defensive aggression." What does that mean? You're scared. The Nazis are coming. What do you do? You strike out. We occasionally see elderly individuals, tiny, frail — but boy, can they hurt somebody. In that defensive state, they just want to get away.

Autonomic instability. This is a real important part. Autonomic is the part of the body that regulates our heart rate, breathing and so on. In delirious states, that general function can be unstable. What are some of the factors? Being older, dementia, male sex, history of drug and alcohol use, unfamiliar setting.

Interestingly, some of the predisposing factors are also some of the potential precipitating factors. A lot of different things can happen. Prolonged sleep deprivation, sensory overload, acute pain, isolation. For example, somebody who is isolated in sensory deprivation for 36 hours. That would be sufficient to cause delirium if in a vulnerable state.

Medical, surgical conditions. I don't really need to go over all of those. It's self-explanatory. But I think what I can say is that delirium can be caused by many given
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medical factors. The best way to think of it is the straw that breaks the camel's back. A lot of different things add together — boom!

I think the graphics that I provided to you guys here are probably the best way to understand delirium and the risk associated with energy weapons. In an elderly individual with dementia, literally changing to a different room can cause delirium. A mild infection of flu can cause delirium. Because they're vulnerable, multiple factors are involved.

On the other hand, if you were to take a young, healthy RCMP officer…. I could probably break a bunch of bones on him and if they have a punctured lung, chances are, if they're really fit and healthy, they might not get delirious.

If a police officer is to encounter an individual who is young, relatively fit-looking, and they seem to be in a delirious state, what does that tell us? That tells us that person probably is undergoing some enormous physiological change, because they shouldn't be delirious. If they're delirious, something bad might be happening. That increases mortality. In an extreme delirium case, it can be a medical emergency.

Now I'm going to touch on the term "excited delirium." Nobody in a medical unit ever uses it. Having worked in two different countries, four different provinces, umpteen different hospitals, treated thousands of patients with delirium, interacted with medical physicians from cardiologists all the way to orthopedic surgeons, nobody — absolutely nobody — in the medical profession ever uses the term "excited delirium." It is a term exclusively used by the law enforcement agency. In fact, it has no medical bearing.

Essentially, what is described is delirium with agitation. As I stated, except in rare cases, delirium in young individuals is often accompanied by agitation. Agitation obviously can be made worse by drug intoxication — cocaine, methamphetamine and so on. Delirium with severe agitation is considered a medical emergency. Excited delirium, if I can translate it back to medical terms, is delirium with severe agitation with unknown cause. I don't know what the cause is yet. I don't know what cause is underlying — could be meningitis, could be severe dehydration, could be severe cocaine intoxication. I don't know.

What we do know is that in delirium with severe agitation, there are often associated metabolic and other events happening. That's why the person is in that state. Unfortunately, we also need to know that delirium, as I said, is a symptom, not a cause. Delirium cannot be a medical cause of death, just as much as pain cannot be a medical cause of death. Fever cannot be a medical cause of death. Fever due to bacterial infection is the cause of death. Delirium caused by something else is a cause of death.

To use the term "excited delirium" as a cause of death is in our understanding, in the medical community, lacking in clarity and sort of muddies the water. Most likely causes are electrolyte imbalance, acute cardiac event, fatal arrhythmia — meaning the heart beating abnormally. An autopsy may not be able to find the underlying medical cause because the electrolyte imbalance can normalize rapidly in the postmortem state.

What happens with conducted energy? Well, it can be increased. It's a form of stress. It's a form of stress on the individual, especially with repeated charge. There is insufficient evidence to know what conducted energy would do in individuals with acute delirium. There is simply not enough research.

The research so far shows that it is relatively safe in most settings, but there is no systematic evaluation in this highly acute, dangerous group. There is just no research, and I just searched through it in preparation of this report. Just before the committee started, I searched through one more time just in case something happened and got published last night, but there's nothing. This could be that additional insult that breaks the camel's back, you know?

I think from a clinical standpoint we believe that the use of conducted energy weapons in the context of severe agitated delirium can be dangerous. That's my take-home message.

Management of delirium, essentially a medical one, social restraint, calming of the individual, pharmacological agent if at all possible…. We also need to know that in a young person with agitated delirium, they may not respond to non-lethal kinetic weapons — meaning the experience of pain may be quite disturbed. So a rubber bullet may not stop the individual.

Is there a role for a conducted energy weapon? Having had patients who acted in those ways and were subdued by Taser and who had good outcomes, I'd much prefer to see them get tased than get hurt another way. Luckily for all the patients of mine who have been through that, they had no harm done.

I'm not in any way saying it should not be used. What I'm saying is: be aware of the risk.

Other recommendations already mentioned in the Braidwood report are availability of defibrillators, because sudden cardiac death…. The new defibrillators are virtually idiot-free, meaning a high school student should be able to do it — my nephew. He's quite brilliant, by the way.

Delay the response until paramedics arrive. If you can talk to the person…. If you see that situation, call 911. Call the paramedics. If paramedics are involved and around at the same time, maybe that would delay potential negative outcome.

In my many courses with the RCMP, what I hear is RCMP officers saying the following: "But I got tased the
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other day in our training session. I'm fine." Of course they're fine. They're young. They're healthy. They're fit.

Those kinds of exercises, I think, give them a sense that it is a safe, safe weapon, because they've been through it. They got tased. They fell down. Their buddies, or the officers, jumped on top of them. Wow. It really works. But they're young, healthy. They're not in a delirious state.

I think that false sense of security may be in part due to the sense that it's a relatively innocuous application. I think one needs to educate a coroner about delirium and absolutely avoid the term "excited delirium" as a cause of death.

Lastly, in my interaction with RCMP officers and also with other first responders, they are dying to know more about delirium. They don't want to have negative outcomes. My course, at the time when it was offered, was extremely well attended, and the questions always lasted longer than the hours that I allotted.

The questions were always about this particular area: "How can we distinguish?" I think with proper training, it's easy. The diagnosis of delirium, the underlying cause, may not be easy, but the information surrounding how to kind of distinguish somebody who is mad from someone who is in a delirious state can be made.

The summary I have is: delirium is a complex medical condition and can be a medical emergency. Excited delirium is a non-medical law enforcement term that invites controversy. If you put that out there and one has a family member and you get a death certificate that says "excited delirium," they're going to have questions. They're going to have questions, because it doesn't answer…. It's better to say, "We don't know," than write down "excited delirium," because no medical textbook has that term.

I think conducted energy weapons are inherently poorly understood weapons. I think first responders can learn, recognize and manage delirium with proper setting. The risks can be mitigated through education.

J. Slater: Thank you, Dr. Lu. It was a really good presentation, but you're both sides of the page — right?

You know, I look at the agitation thing. I look at the RCMP and the civic police that are going through this program. You're a doctor. So how can officers recognize this? There's only so much training that they do — right? I mean, it's all about all the other stuff that they do, and the CEW is part of their program. So how on earth can we train all our RCMP and our civic police officers to recognize what you're talking about? How do we do that?

S. Lu: Well, there are a number of different things that we can do. For example, if I were to show up and someone was really mad at me, they're going to start using a racial slur at me. You know what? That's a good thing, because that tells me that they're able to recognize…. Immediately make some humorous joke. They're alert and oriented. They're aware of the situation, and they're able to use cognitive application. That's a good thing — right?

I think there are times when you can ask specific questions that can help de-escalate. Obviously, there are times when, you know, police officers do not have that luxury of time. In no way am I saying that….

S. Lu: That has to be there. That luxury of time may not be there. But what I'm saying is that in a delirious state, individuals tend to be…. Their aggression is generally due to fear and uncertainty, and in that kind of aggression, if you give them space, they tend to calm down.

It's different from individuals who are mad. When you give them space…. You give them a foot, and they take more — right? You know, you give them an inch and they take a foot. That's different. Somebody who is delirious…. They can be quite disorganized. I mean, that disorganization and that lack of purpose…. I think most individuals, with proper training, if they see enough of it, may be able to distinguish the two.

It's interesting, because when I present to the RCMP, they frequently give me exact scenarios that they themselves have been through and say: "Yeah, you know, it reminds me of a certain case. We did this instead." So I think there is a general gut feeling that one can have, and if you can help the front-line officers to articulate their gut feeling into words, I think that training can be done. It may not be 100 percent, but it would be a vast improvement on the complete lack of training that is there right now.

J. Slater: All I'm saying is, you know, if you're Joe Public and an RCMP officer comes in with the sirens on in the car or whatever, you get negative — right? You get this feeling that: "Oh, they're after me. They're after us." I don't know how you get around that.

If you're innocent or you're not excited, you have this different attitude. I don't know how you can portray that to an officer, to say: "Okay, you're going into this situation." He or she is going into this situation not knowing what's at the other end. So right away the officer is going to be defensive, offensive — right? — because you want to take control of your life and your family and blah, blah, blah.

So how do you…? You can't do that. You can't analyze a situation on a one-off — right?
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S. Lu: It's absolutely true. We face the same problem in the hospital, where we are…. You know, even though I'm a medical doctor working in emergency, it's not unusual that we get called to see somebody. A patient acts agitated. Now, are they agitated because of meningitis or agitated because they're high on crack? I don't know. So I have to go in and quickly make that assessment. Should I bring my security guys with me or go in by myself and be calm?

What I can say is that despite the presentation I give, Tasers are generally shown to be relatively safe — okay? Most of the research seems to suggest that they're relatively safe. I'm talking about those rare incidents where an individual can be so agitated that that little extra insult can trigger them over the edge.

Generally, an individual in that degree of vulnerability usually has some other signs. Usually, it's not just mild intoxication. In that kind of setting, I think the degree of agitation, the degree of disorganization, probably manifests itself. That manifestation is a gut feeling.

I think if somebody who has been through something like this a number of times will be…. Generally speaking, it's about dealing with people, and I think they can tell. I have absolute confidence in that — not because I know the police training too much. It's in having to talk to a lot of police over the years. They can tell.

They will all be able to tell me situations that they can remember. "Wow. That guy that I dealt with…. He was not right, and we ended up taking him to the hospital rather than bringing him to the jail, because it just didn't look right."

I think it's about putting those gut feelings into words and providing that education. Again, it's not going to be foolproof, and there will be situations where they have to react rapidly. That's calling paramedics when a Taser is deployed, having a defibrillator available and understanding — trying to get information on whether or not an individual has a mental health background.

L. Krog: Thank you, Doctor. To sort of follow on what my colleagues had to say, I agree entirely that it is about training. Have you given some thought to what that process would look like? Are we talking an evening course, or two or three? Are we talking a week's intensive training — or a month, six months?

In other words, to get the average police officer, shall I say, to a level where you might feel comfortable in your professional capacity — knowing that they would be able to make, if not the best or a perfect call, at least a good call when it came to diagnosing the delirium — how much training are we talking about, do you think?

S. Lu: I was involved with…. Const. Lara Davidsen with the RCMP ran a first-responder course for a number of years. Mostly, officers voluntarily go to that course. It involves bringing together first responders, meaning paramedics, emergency room nurses and the police officers. The course ran over a period of a week. Myself, I would present for about two hours or so. There were a number of other different physicians and Justice Institute instructors.

The feedback from her has always been absolutely positive. Most officers who go to that course go on their own time. They think it was helpful. Even in that discussion of a couple of hours, it seemed to make a big difference in exchange of information.

I think that forum was really helpful because it was not just the police. Emergency nurses were there. Paramedics were also present. It was a forum of, generally speaking, about 30 to 40 people. There was open discussion, so when we talked, I wouldn't be the only person answering the question. The nurses would pipe up and say: "This is the way we see it. These are some of the problems."

It was a course…. I believe it's not running anymore. She certainly was a really helpful resource to make those links. That's the course that I'm talking about, that I provided training for.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much. I have a few questions. My first question is: overall, in the time period between when you testified before the Braidwood Commission…. I think that was in 2008. Is that correct?

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): You said that there has been no research, particularly with respect to conducted energy weapons and delirium. But has there overall been anything that would change your opinion generally? It seems like it's consistent, from what you've said, but are there other developments that you think are important for us to know about?

S. Lu: Not inasmuch as what we've talked about here. There's a number of research studies that have been published since then, a number published looking at general reviews of the use of Tasers in intoxicated individuals. Again, they find them relatively safe, that there doesn't seem to be a marked change in electrolytes or metabolic change. But because the state…. It's such a rare event. Unless it's a really large, large series, the research may not capture it.

There's also research to show that if there is trauma that occurs as a result of the Taser — meaning not necessarily death but trauma from falling down or having hurt themselves along the way — substance use and intoxication account for the vast majority of the problems. If somebody is high on something and they get tased, generally speaking, they are more likely to suffer a fall or another kind of trauma injury that goes along with it. There is research to show that.
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In that large-series study there is one study that shows that about 1 to 2 percent of the individuals that get tased have criteria that meet excited delirium, and in the series they find generally positive outcomes. Now, the question is: did they capture the one that died? They all are the ones who went into hospital — right? It wasn't a capture of all the conductive energy uses and then a look at whether or not there is a strict number of individuals who died.

What they actually have are folks who have come into the hospital. Then retrospectively, they say: "How many, what percentage of them, may meet the criteria for excited delirium?" But as we said already, excited delirium…. You know, in a young and healthy individual, give them some IV fluid, a bit of medication, calm them down, and they're good to go — right?

So it's kind of self-selected in that sense, because if they're "safe" and arrive at the hospital, generally speaking, unless there is a ruptured heart or something, for a relatively young individual, a modern hospital should be able to revive that individual.

The research isn't looking at consecutive use. It's not like…. In Dade County, in Miami, they've captured every single energy use and then looked at the percentage of individuals and whether or not the individual died.

All the research is conducted in a hospitalized setting, so that's why it's not that useful.

J. Trasolini: Understanding that these are rare occasions, are you suggesting that the officers and/or paramedics have defibrillators available for them to employ? How do you see that scenario?

S. Lu: The biggest risk in terms of in-custody death…. I'm going to use that term "in-custody death," involving maybe a Taser or a sort of back restraint. In-custody deaths are almost always due to acute cardiac events. When the heart stops…. I think any police officer can be trained to take vital signs — it's easy; it can be done — and measure the heart rate.

Deaths in custody are generally due the heart stopping, and you either do CPR or use defibrillators. Defibrillators are much more effective, and CPR in a setting with somebody who's already under handcuffs may be incredibly difficult, because there will be a time lag that goes along with it.

The defibrillators are cheap. I mean, they're under $1,000 a unit now, I believe. You don't need any instruction. The computer…. You slap on it. It will fire based on the rhythm or lack thereof. If it works, it works like a charm. If it doesn't, well, you gave it a good try.

If it's a relatively younger individual, the defibrillator has a much better chance of working than on, let's say, somebody who's elderly and in the hospital with delirium due to multiple medical conditions.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): We had discussions with the ministry this morning quite a bit about the standards and processes that have been put in place as a result of the recommendations. One of the areas we talked about was that, as part of the conducted energy weapon training, officers have to take crisis intervention and de-escalation as well as the use of the taser.

I'm wondering if you believe that there should be a component as part of that training — even if it's just short — that specifically talks about people who are in a state of delirium and the medical risks associated with it.

S. Lu: I think so, because de-escalation…. Mr. Slater mentioned previously: "How do you distinguish the two?"

De-escalation works when, in a domestic violence situation, two people are hyped up. They're angry. Police have showed up. "Oh my god, you did this again." Fists are about to fly. De-escalation works a lot better. Those techniques make sense.

However, when somebody yells, "The Germans are coming" — again, I'm just using my patients as an analogy — de-escalation is not going to help. To be able to distinguish the two rapidly and to understand….

I think, going back to your question, if front-line officers had that de-escalating technique already taught to them — the ability to separate delirium versus someone who is just really mad, in a really difficult state and maybe mildly intoxicated and just not listening anymore — I think it would actually allow us to distinguish the two entities more readily.

Delirium requires different types of de-escalation — a much calmer, less verbal approach, a more body language type of scenario and the use of what's around in the environment to help settle down the individual. Distraction. Some of those things are different from the active de-escalation scenario.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): How long do you think it would take to sufficiently train somebody to recognize the difference and get some techniques in order to deal with it?

S. Lu: I think, conservatively…. If I've got a group and I absolutely have to teach them everything and they have no more time to spare, I think an hour of real, focused discussion — just pointing out these types of issues and allowing the individual to think about it — can make a difference.

Two hours should be good, I have to say, because I'm not teaching it to somebody who doesn't deal with people on a regular basis. The nice thing about teaching this to police is the fact that they deal with people on a day-in, day-out basis.

They all learn to have a sort of a gestalt on reading people relatively rapidly. So they already have a lot of strategies that they employ to separate the various different
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problems. I think a highly focused training probably can be done within an hour or two.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): I had another question as well, related to this same thing. The standards that have been developed with regard to medical assistance to CEW discharges…. Part of it says that it must be ensured "that officers request paramedic attendance at all medically high-risk incidents before discharge of the CEW or, if that is not as feasible, as soon as possible thereafter. Medically high-risk incidents include when a CEW is discharged in probe mode across the chest."

Then it lists a number of people — types: "any mode against an emotionally disturbed person, an elderly person, a person who the officer has reason to believe is pregnant, a child, or a person who the officer has reason to believe has a medical condition." Then it uses "heart disease, implanted pacemaker or defibrillator" as examples of those high-risk types of situations.

Do you think it would be useful to include — in the standard itself, as a separate category or listed within that category of those that have a medical condition — somebody who is in a state of delirium?

J. Slater: Whether they're in a state of delirium? That's the whole thing. I mean, that's what you guys need to do. You're the doctors. You've got to go to the RCMP and the police officers to make sure they recognize that.

S. Lu: You know what? I have to say this. With all due respect to my medical colleagues, even some medical doctors can't figure it out. So it is a tremendous onus that I'm talking about here. Again, there is no way — and I cannot stress that enough — to make it 100 percent. It is just not possible. Even in a hospital-type setting deliriums are missed on a regular basis at Vancouver General Hospital. And you know, it makes us mad.

M. Coell (Chair): Well, thank you very much, Dr. Lu. Your comments have been very much appreciated by the committee. Thank you again for taking the time to come over to meet with us.

M. Coell (Chair): Committee, I don't have any other business, other than the Deputy Chair and myself are going to have a short conversation re our upcoming meetings. I know that a couple of you have to catch airplanes. So a motion to adjourn would be moved.

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Chair:	* Murray Coell (Saanich North and the Islands BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	* Kathy Corrigan (Burnaby–Deer Lake NDP)
Members:	* Eric Foster (Vernon-Monashee BC Liberal)
	* Leonard Krog (Nanaimo NDP)
	* Gordon Hogg (Surrey–White Rock BC Liberal)
	* John Slater (Boundary-Similkameen BC Liberal)
	* Joe Trasolini (Port Moody–Coquitlam NDP)
	* denotes member present
Clerk:	Susan Sourial
Committee Staff:	Matthew Cleeves (Committee Research Analyst)

Witnesses:	Jenni Bard (Ministry of Justice)
	Dr. Gabi Hoffmann (Ministry of Justice)
	Katherine Kirby (Ministry of Justice)
	Dr. Shao-Hua Lu
	Lynne McInally (Ministry of Justice)
	Jane Naydiuk (Ministry of Justice)
	Clayton J.D. Pecknold (Ministry of Justice)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO INQUIRE INTO THE USE OF CONDUCTED ENERGY WEAPONS AND TO AUDIT SELECTED POLICE COMPLAINTS

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO
INQUIRE INTO THE USE OF CONDUCTED ENERGY WEAPONS
AND TO AUDIT SELECTED POLICE COMPLAINTS