Conducted Energy Weapons and Selected Police Complaints Audits — Issue No. 8

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

1430 Segal Centre, SFU Harbour Centre Campus
515 West Hasting St., Vancouver, B.C.

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

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

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	109
J. Butt
K. Heed
R. Gordon
E. Dowdeswell

M. Coell (Chair): We have an afternoon of witnesses — Dr. John Butt being our first witness; Kash Heed, MLA, former Solicitor General and police chief; and Dr. Robert Gordon — and then a conference call with the Council of Canadian Academies — Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Cathleen Meechan and Andrew Taylor. Then at the end of the session, if we have any time, just to go over the next few meeting dates and the start of the writing of the report.

With that, Dr. Butt, thank you very much for being here. You're with Pathfinder Forum Consulting Inc. and an expert witness. We're grateful for you to take time to brief us today. So I'll turn it over to you.

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

J. Butt: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm pleased to be here. I'm a forensic pathologist. To tell you what that is, forensic pathology is basically the study of sudden death. It uses the autopsy as the technique for determining sudden death. That will bring us, at some point in this discussion…. But I may as well say it now that in Taser deaths, there's basically no pathology — the majority of them. There are some exceptions, but that's very few. We can go over those issues as you may see fit.

I must be mindful of the time here. I think it's 25 minutes plus 20 minutes for discussion. Is that correct?

J. Butt: I have actually done three or four things to put this talk together. The first is that I had a review done of the current literature. There are two articles that I'm going to use here, and I make no excuse. I'm going to quote verbatim from these articles, because these are the most up-to-date articles available, and the library service has provided me with those. I have a thumb drive here that I can leave with you so that you have those articles and also a copy of the presentation.

There are basically four articles. I'm only going to quote from two of them. The references for the articles are cited on the handout, and the other two you can choose to read, if you like. It's up to you. But I highly advise you to look at the two articles that are going to be cited in my evidence to you today.

The other thing I put into this, which I put at the end of this, beginning on page 5, is the issue of excited delirium and restraint-related death. May I ask if you have had any doctors speak to you on the issue of excited delirium?

M. Coell (Chair): We have had a number of people mention it and describe in detail varying visions of exactly what you're speaking about.

J. Butt: Were they doctors talking about it? And could you tell me who they were, please?

S. Sourial (Committee Clerk): Dr. Shao-Hua Lu, addiction and consult psychiatrist.

J. Butt: Okay. Well, the psychiatrists obviously have a significant interest in this matter. I don't know whether you want me to go through the issue of restraint-related death and excited delirium, but if I do, this would be the appropriate time to do it. I put it at the back because I wasn't quite sure how you saw these issues at this point. I wondered whether you had somebody talk to you about it.

I can just go over this very quickly. If you go to page 5, with the caption…. I put under that "and restraint-related death." Now, may I tell you what the dilemma is here that you are looking at in part? It's that you ought not to feel — may I be so bold — that these deaths have not occurred before the Taser came along. It's very difficult. I think you're balancing between two things. One is: would this death have happened but for the Taser? The other thing is: what is causing deaths that are similar to this that have nothing to do with the Taser?

That's the dilemma, and it's the dilemma for the public as well, except that the public really doesn't know that physical restraint, neck holds and capsicum spray have all been associated with similar deaths to what you saw with Mr. Dziekanski, for example, where you were able to see part of what happened to him. I must advise you, if you think that you saw everything…. I think you're probably aware that you didn't. There may have been some form of restraint there that one didn't understand.

The similar terms that have come out in this are custodial death syndrome, restraint death, acute exhaustive mania. What is mainly associated with the cause of this condition are three things. The most common one is No. 3, which is listed on page 6: "Drugs of abuse." Those are stimulatory drugs, and the commonest ones are cocaine — that above all others — and the amphetamine groups. But LSD and PCP, which is very uncommon now, called angel dust…. It was common in the 1980s. Those drugs, particularly cocaine, are common in causing excitement. We know that from the behaviour of people who take cocaine.
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The issue of excitement also comes in people who are psychotic. The number of those that are involved out of a percentage of 100 would probably be something in the order of 5 or 10 percent of all persons who experience this so-called excited delirium. The two commonest conditions are the manic phase of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and you probably have heard that from your psychiatric consultant.

The use of cocaine with psychiatric disorder, of course, is double jeopardy. Those people are to be seen, for example, on the streets of the east end of Vancouver. I won't go into the physiological features of excited delirium, but one of the most important, and perhaps a diagnostic sign, is hyperthermia. The commonest complaint that occurs from the public about such people is that they're seen running around, yelling, and very often are attracted to flashing objects like reflections in glass and in mirrors.

The consequences of this condition are without question that you can drop dead from this condition alone. Whether a simple form of cocaine intoxication — that is, an overdose of cocaine — looks any different than this…. I would have to say that if you have a large overdose of cocaine, the chances are that it hits the heart before anything else. But the risk with cocaine and hyperactivity together is that you experience arrhythmias of the heart.

When people are faced with the dilemma of a so-called Taser death, the most common feature is that the person suddenly died when they didn't expect them to. They write it off after the toxicology results come to the autopsy as: "The medical cause of death is cocaine intoxication associated with restraint." Then you might put in brackets after that "Taser."

I can say this as an aside. In the United States if people have put down the Taser in the primary cause of death as being sort of, say, an underlying feature in the death — for example, if you put down "restraint-related death due to a Taser" — the Taser International company will go after the state or the jurisdiction to try to get the death certificate changed. I know that they've done that successfully. I can't say how many times.

So the symptoms are all there. I won't go any further, I don't think, with that.

What is the cause of the sudden death? Well, I think it has to be said at this time that we have to go back, first of all, to look at the fact that capsicum spray and neck holds and restraints on the ground using knees on the backs of individuals, pulling their arms behind their back and handcuffing them behind the back, and tying those to their feet in what's called a hobble restraint have all been associated with sudden death.

Going back to about 1984 when the first of these deaths came about, in San Diego County there was a very prominent case in which the county was sued over a restraint-related death.

Now, why did it happen in 1984? It's surprising that it hadn't happened before, but the issue was cocaine. There had been a lot of cocaine hydrochloride available for recreational use. It had been used, you may have heard, largely amongst partying people — people who had money. It was associated with alcohol, and cocaine commonly is associated with the abuse of alcohol.

Cocaine often requires something to bring people down. They take cocaine, and then they can take heroin, they can take Dilaudid — a variety of things — so that you have some sort of a balance. The cocaine person becomes excited. He feels he wants to get down. He pops some sort of thing, including alcohol.

What happened in the 1980s — or the '70s, even — was that cocaine hydrochloride no longer was the cocaine drug of choice. The cocaine drug of choice became a freebased cocaine — you know, the freebased cocaine that is common on the streets. Crack cocaine is the name of it. It can be prepared very cheaply. It suddenly became the rage amongst people who had no money. That's why you find cocaine-related deaths on the east end of Vancouver.

All of the ingredients are there for excited-related deaths, the ingredients being mental illness, cocaine, alcohol. Sometimes heroin is involved because of the need to bring things down, but that's a pretty expensive habit.

Within that framework, and I don't know that you want me to go into the details, there are a lot of compromises for the individual's well-being — a lot. If you bring in the issue of restraint or anything that causes the individual to be more excited, you risk increasing the autonomic nervous response to the cocaine.

Cocaine is a dopamine-like drug. It acts in concert, for example, with adrenaline. We all have had the adrenaline experience. If you've been frightened badly or you've been involved in something that required an enormous amount of energy, then your pulse goes up. This is the release of adrenaline. Cocaine is a similar drug. It adds to that.

If you add to that fleeing from something unknown or fleeing from a police officer, running, if you add to that the issue of restraint by a takedown, if you add to that the issue of a Taser, then you see the sort of behaviour that you saw with Mr. Dziekanski before you couldn't see him any longer. After that period where you couldn't see him any longer, we don't know what happened.

These issues where people put knees on people's backs have been said by some people…. I caution you about those people. One of their articles is in the package that I’m going to leave with you, the group of Vilke and Chan and Neuman. These were the people who were emergency room doctors and anaesthetists in San Diego County in the 1980s who rose to the defence of the county and the San Diego police department, if not the sheriff's office, when this death occurred.

I think I'd like to leave that part. The last part of what I discussed is basically on page 8. Pretty well everything
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that's on that page we've talked about, except the last slide of all, which at onset, once the diagnosis…. Well, that isn't really the way I'd like to go. I'm sorry. I've misled you on that one. Let me just say this.

The one thing that you can take from all of this is that I feel — if I leave you with nothing else today, and I will have the opportunity to say it again — that when these people are seen and the call goes in to 911, the dispatchers have to learn that they have to send an ambulance at the same time. This has become protocol in many jurisdictions when there is a suspected excited delirium death. The trigger words are easy. He's running around, yelling, makes no sense, etc. He's banging on doors or banging on glass.

That's one of the recommendations that I would give. I've buried some other recommendations in here at the beginning. I'd like to get back to that.

I apologize to a degree that I'm going to just read you some things that have come from the articles that I cited to you. I emphasize again — dare I say this — that if you're going to do any homework on this, please read these two articles. One is from the annals of Emergency Medicine. It's an American organization, but the nice part of it is that the article is written by Swiss people, so it's pretty neutral.

The second article is a justice article. It's from a justice publication. It's not a medical publication. You'll see the references right here — the first couple of slides on page 1, the first three slides. Then let's pick up this issue of why, probably, I'm here or any other doctor is here. That's because of…. There are five bullets there.

One is the medical background of the victims, and I've alluded to that a number of times already. The second issue is their behaviour. The third issue is restraint-related deaths in all modalities, and the fourth issue is assessment and selection. By that I mean two things — assessment of the subject, which I gave to you as a blanket assessment. Call an ambulance. Given a set of circumstances, call an ambulance. Now, the ambulance will not intervene when a person is dangerous, but that doesn't mean to say that the ambulance isn't going to be valuable.

The stories that you may have heard and will hear about the suddenness of this is absolutely shocking. It is shocking. It's unexpected. Think of what would have happened with Mr. Dziekanski. I can't give you the answer, but think what would have happened if there had been an ambulance there. I'm not saying Mr. Dziekanski would have lived, but I'm saying that it would have helped so many of the problems that have come up.

This comes into the issue of assessment and selection. The selection means choosing the weapon and whether it's necessary or not to use it.

Now, you probably all know the case, I think, of Mr. Wall. This death occurred on south Granville Street when Mr. Wall, who had a bipolar disorder, had a length of chain. I don't know what it was; it may have been a bicycle chain. It was in excess of three feet, and he was wielding it on south Granville Street during the day. He was shot to death eight times by the Vancouver police department. There's a lot to be said about that case, but I'm not the one to say it. But some of the issues were a little disturbing, to say the least.

What happened is that Mr. Wall's assessment was perhaps not done as skilfully as it could have been. And if you bring into the issue the possibility that there would have been somebody around with a Taser…. So it has been said many times — and I think it's true — that the Taser has saved far more lives than it has cost.

You'd be surprised, I think, to know that there are very few deaths that are directly associated with a Taser. You can cover that in the articles that I've given you. The statistics are there. There's a lot of statistical material there — I don't think to the extent that it'll bore you.

The first article is called "Electronic Control Device...." As you know, these devices are called conducted energy devices, conducted energy weapons, electronic control devices, neuromuscular interruption, and that's basically how they work. I'm not going to go into the details.

I hope that you will have the opportunity to have an electrophysiologist explain what happens to you, but roughly what happens is that the high voltage, low amperage…. About 21 milliamps is the current. People say: "Well, this is too much." It's generally not enough to cause an interruption in the proper conduction of the heart.

Yes, there could be circumstances. Given the dart, for example, is nine millimetres long — nine millimetres is roughly a third of an inch — the stainless steel dart…. If you got somebody, for example, in the chest area and the dart went well into the chest wall — for example, it went into a space between the ribs — and the electrical discharge was discharged, perhaps, near the heart, then I wouldn't be able to say that that wouldn't be a dangerous situation.

I would ask the question of somebody who does know that. I think that's a good question to ask, because it now happens that as of about three years ago, in their literature to the buyers, to the purchasers, Taser recommended to avoid the trunk, the anterior part of the trunk or the torso. They recommended that that not be the target if possible, so better to have the person in the back.

They never shoot them to the head, but there have been…. You will see some of the complications of that. I don't want to run out of time here.

Here are some of the things that have occurred. This is all taken from this article, and these are reported non-lethal complications of these devices. These are the dart injuries that I was talking about.

You can get superficial puncture wounds. Those are called lacerations. You can get penetration of bones. In some cases the skull has been penetrated — that would
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be a thin skull — so that you can have the dart actually entering into the…. Where it says "intracranial perforation," that means the dart actually entered into the vault of the skull. The eye injuries are not that uncommon with Taser. Now, when we say they're not that uncommon, I'm talking in fractions of 1 percent.

Very, very few of these things are reported. We're looking here at all of the bad consequences, but these are all injuries with the Taser. They have to be paid attention to.

One of the recommendations that this article gives, which I would give you as the second recommendation, is that all Taser injuries be logged in a central reference — that they all be logged.

The third one that I would give you is that all Taser victims would be required through police protocol to be taken to a hospital.

There are other things here. Pharyngeal penetration, for example. That would be penetration just below the jawline of the throat. Testicular torsion. I'm not sure how that one worked. Pneumothorax, which introduces air into the chest, and that certainly can occur by the dart penetrating, which causes collapse of the lung.

Electrical injuries. Most of those are uncontrollable spasm, which you've seen. If you haven't, you should see a demonstration of the Taser on a tape. That's what it does. It causes uncontrollable, painful spasms. You can get compression fractures of the vertebrae, just as people with epilepsy who have uncontrolled convulsions can have compression fractures.

Then, you can get burns, and those burns are not uncommon. I've seen a number of them, and they're very small. They're just around the site. The site is basically a tiny little area about two times the size of the head of a pin. There may be a little red ring around that.

Now, the other injuries that occur are easy to understand. I won't go through the details of them. Those are injuries from falls. Sometimes you can have serious falls. A person can be, for example, tasered on a loading dock and fall four or five feet onto the pavement below.

This is the question that I posed to you before. We're now looking at the top right slide on page 2. The population that experiences a neuromuscular-incapacitating-device discharge in the field typically includes a high proportion of drug-intoxicated psychiatric individuals or those in a state of excited delirium. We've reviewed all of this.

In such individuals the question of the detrimental effects of the electronic-controlled-device discharge cannot be answered — this is the important part of this — according to the current data from clinical studies performed in healthy volunteers, and additional research is warranted. So here's the question. The practical question is the question that is underneath that: would the death have occurred but for the Taser?

The answer to that is: we don't know, but it seems unlikely. Now, the last sentence there requires explanation. The healthy volunteers are submitted to a mock-up of a Taser. They don't stand against a wall and have somebody fire the darts at them. They set them up on a stretcher where they can monitor them, and they give them exactly the same impulse that they would get from the Taser, and then they record the results — which is a good thing to do if people will volunteer for it.

Okay. Now, let's have some answers here. I've got you four answers here, and this all comes from this article, a prospective multicentric case series. That means a number of centres are involved in this, but this is reviewed by one group from Switzerland. Basically, 1,200 electronic-controlled-device exposures in the field failed to prove that the device contributed to the two deaths that occurred.

Similarly, a retrospective…. The first one was a prospective study. In other words, they set out a number of criteria and watched to see these occur. A retrospective study is that they looked at the literature and reviewed that. They reviewed 1,100 subjects exposed to the device and did not find any deaths related to that device.

Further answer. In a retrospective study of 56 cases of sudden death occurring within 15 minutes after the neuromuscular-incapacitating device, most of the victims — that's 90 percent of them — also had experienced an overdose of stimulants or psychoactive drugs, and 45 percent showed evidence of heart disease at autopsy.

Here are some of the things you can say. There are at-risk victims. But a police officer doesn't go to some place and say: "Have you ever had a heart attack?" or "Are you subject to epilepsy?" or "Are you a pregnant woman?" There are some populations that should be avoided. Now, generally, the police don't use this against elderly people, against children and against pregnant women. All of those are cohorts that are usually visible.

But here's a short aside. I was in Savannah, Georgia, in October of 2007 when Mr. Dziekanski was tasered. I was contacted by one of the Canadian television networks and went to a studio in Savannah, Georgia, and the studio was basically closed down. It was about eight or nine o'clock at night, and I think CTV was looking for a feed into their Canadian network so they linked up with this NBC studio. The gentleman who took me there, a taxi driver, said: "What would you be doing here at this time of the night?"

I told him, and he said: "Oh, I've heard of those. They're using them in the schools here." Pretty awful.

As you know, the Taser is now produced in a camouflage pattern and a polka-dot pink pattern. It has a different electrical discharge, but the persons who buy them — women, largely, who are going into parking lots — don't know boom-all about how the device works. They, of course, are not for sale in Canada. That's a little aside.

Now, let's follow up with some answers, and then we'll
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see where you want me to be in this and whether you would like to stop and have some questions.

The following answer…. This is the last slide on the left side at the bottom of page 2. The timeline of most of these incapacitating devices associated with death is not typical of what you've heard of ventricular fibrillation. In other words, here's a scenario. A person is shot with a Taser. They are fine for a matter of minutes — minutes — or maybe until they get to the hospital, and then they die suddenly. That isn't ventricular fibrillation.

If you have seen a cardiac victim, if any of you have seen a person have a heart attack, the person has gone into ventricular fibrillation if they become unconscious from a heart attack. The thing that has put them into unconsciousness is ventricular fibrillation.

The pumping chamber of the heart — that is the ventricle — that sends blood to the body, 25 percent of which goes to the brain, is no longer functional. It wiggles like this; it doesn't go like this. It doesn't pump like this. It wiggles like that, and there's no effective blood pressure. Within a period of 30 seconds, some often less, the person is unconscious, and within a period of four minutes, as you know, unless he has had resuscitation with clearing of the airway, the chance of cerebral damage is very significant.

Most of these Taser deaths don't occur that way. That's what this is saying. So the immediate induction of ventricular fibrillation does not seem to be an issue with the Taser. All right? It's important to clear that up.

Only one case in the study…. I don't know which one this was, whether this was the 1,200 or the 1,100, but one case was consistent with an electronic control device with induced ventricular fibrillation.

The next three slides I wouldn't bother terribly about — in fact, the next four slides. If you go to page 3, look at "Answer." That's the middle slide on page 3 on the right-hand side. In the absence of clear evidence of an increase of arrest-related deaths in people exposed to an electronic-control-device discharge and because it is not possible to confirm that the individual would have survived if the electronic control device had not been used, the role of electronic control device in mortality remains speculative.

There is more to say. There are another two pages of slides, but it's now 20 minutes to one. So I think it's probably time for me to stop and hear what you….

M. Coell (Chair): Well, thank you very much — greatly appreciated. You had asked if there were any other doctors. Dr. Hall from Victoria also spoke about excited delirium. She's with VIHA, Vancouver Island Health Authority.

G. Hogg: You make reference to excited delirium in here. Murray has made reference to two of the witnesses, and there was some controversy or disagreement between the two of them when they came before us. One of them said, I believe, that excited delirium does not exist in the DSM but is referenced more obliquely and therefore a diagnosis of excited delirium was not possible. Then a second witness said that a lot of things exist prior to being included within the DSM.

Can you clarify any of that for us or give us a position with respect to it? And is it important that we understand what excited delirium is, even though it's not in the DSM?

J. Butt: I've been party to similar discussions. I know Dr. Hall's perspective. I know the psychiatrists' perspective, which is that it's not in the DSM. My advice would be to look at this as a symptom complex that's related often to takedowns and restraints. You can call it what you like, but the most important underlying part of this is what causes it.

So I think that as an entity, it's fair to say there is a form of delirium associated with the behaviour of individuals under the circumstances that I described. I know that Dr. Hall is a big proponent of that. Emergency room doctors are the big proponents of it because they see the condition before anybody else does. Nobody calls a psychiatrist on a street. But I don't disparage the psychiatrists, because I think what they feel is that the word "delirium" is just enough and it ought to be left at that.

There are types of delirium. There is a form of delirium associated with alcohol. I've dealt with one of these cases where the overdose was related to alcohol, which is kind of strange when you think about it, because alcohol is a depressive drug. But there is a state in alcoholism called the delirium tremens, in which you do get an excited state with alcohol.

So I think it's semantics. I know that's not the answer you're looking for, but I think the point is to focus on the symptom complex. That's the practicality of it in terms of having the police and the ambulance people and the dispatchers recognize what they're dealing with and get some coverage. I hope you're not going to hear from anybody who's going to say this is a device that should be taken off the street, because I don't think that's so.

I think the average person in the public is the person that you're answering to. That person wants to say: "This is what we want to know about the condition." The answer to that is: this has been going on for some time. It didn't take the Taser to do this.

It's the behaviour that is the problem. The issue is: are we going to shoot these people, or are we going to take them down with something that is going to perhaps save
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their lives? I'm not a big proponent of the Taser. Don't get me wrong. But it is life-saving in many respects, especially in American jurisdictions where they shoot twice and think maybe a little bit less about it than they do in Canada. So that's all I can say.

G. Hogg: So if I can — one follow-up — interpret, what I think you're saying is that it's the symptomatology or the complexity of the symptomatology that's important, and the nomenclature is something that is somewhat irrelevant to that whole process. Is that a fair interpretation?

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Thank you for that presentation. So whatever we call it, if we call it excited delirium or some form of delirium, one of the changes in the practice and the standards for police since the Braidwood report has been that there's a requirement that officers try to de-escalate a situation first and also that they don't use a Taser unless there's a threat of death or serious injury.

I'm wondering. If somebody was in that state of excited delirium, do you think it's possible to de-escalate them? You're talking about a very specific set of symptoms. Do you think it's possible to de-escalate somebody in that situation?

J. Butt: Yes, and I think that's a question, really, that belongs with the emergency room doctors and less so even with the psychiatrists, who tend not to see people in that acute phase where they're outside the hospital, which is what you're talking about.

I go back to the ambulance. Of course, the ambulance is patched through to the emergency ward. So the big thing is to try and get some form of medication into these people to quiet them down very quickly. I think it is possible to do that, but you won't find that the ambulance people will intervene when the person is still excited and they're at risk.

What else can I say that might be helpful to you? Well, things that are negative, like these people have died in the emergency ward. There's no question about that. And they've died in the emergency ward where they didn't have the Taser. They've died in the emergency ward just from excited delirium.

I can recall a case in which the person was taken to the emergency ward, and they died after they were transferred from the stretcher in the ambulance onto the gurney taking them into the emergency department. So it happens.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): I have a couple more questions. Just as a general conclusion or your general feeling. After the articles that you've read and your personal knowledge, is your conclusion, then, that we don't really know whether Tasers have caused death, whether those deaths would have happened or not — at least some of them? We just really can't tell.

Maybe just a little bit, as well, about…. You're a pathologist. You're saying there is nothing you can tell post-death that will tell you conclusively one way or the other. Is that correct?

J. Butt: The only thing a pathologist would find in these deaths has nothing to do with the Taser. So you can find from the toxicological analysis, as I mentioned. You can find a background of disease in the individual. For example, the most common one would be coronary artery disease, which is commonly called hardening of the arteries to the heart muscle. That would be all that you would find.

You may find scars on the heart, and you may find some coincidental conditions in the individual, particularly if they have drug habits. But to go back to your first question, I think the chances of having a pure, unadulterated Taser death are very, very small.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): If we have some of these other circumstances — like excited delirium or use of a drug, those things — can you make any conclusion about whether or not, if the Taser hadn't been introduced, those people would have died?

J. Butt: That's the $64,000 question, isn't it? That's the question I asked earlier. I don't think anybody can be 100 percent certain of that. But there's a lot of periphery to that. I don't want to go over it again. Some of the periphery is, "Well, these people die anyhow," and we know that happens.

There have been lots of these cases that have been very well documented. I've seen one case, for example, where the sister of the victim's wife had a video camera on the deck and watched these two police officers as they applied restraints to this individual. You can actually see him die in the thing. Well, in those cases, the first answer was commonly — before the issue of metabolic acidosis — that this was a restraint-related death due to hypoxia, due to lack of oxygen.

I believe that those deaths still do occur. But in terms of bringing that space down so close that you couldn't shove a piece of paper between the two sides of the story — one is the Taser; one is something that we don't clearly understand — quite frankly, I don't know where I'd err in that situation. I just don't think you can make that call yet. Whether one will be able to, I don’t know.

Look at the other issue, and I'll leave it at that. Here you have people experimenting now, setting up experiments and doing this — making studies of the electrocardio-
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grams, for example, and monitoring every other thing that goes with a person, including their metabolic function, by drawing blood, for example. They have found certain things associated with this.

Yes, they have found that the pH drops a little bit in the individual, which, given the issue of metabolic acidosis, may not be in the best interest of the individual, because we know that people who have ventricular fibrillation develop metabolic acidosis very quickly.

L. Krog: Thank you, doctor, for your presentation. I take it from what you've said today that in an ordinarily healthy individual, the possibility of the Taser actually causing death may exist, but it is extremely slight.

L. Krog: However, in an individual who may be in a state of excited delirium or has pre-existing heart issues or all of those things, then the risk is in fact elevated with the use of the Taser. Is that fair to say?

J. Butt: Well, I'm going to waffle on that by saying that any excitement…. I mentioned these before. Even the capsicum spray, which one has to say is a pretty simple and relatively innocuous thing, except it makes people tear a lot, or lacrimate, as it's said. But all of these things have been involved in that. So the answer to your question is yes. Anything that adds to the pre-existing problem of excitement may be an influence.

L. Krog: Would you go so far as to say it would be likely? Or would it be unlikely?

J. Butt: I think it's unlikely. The data is getting better; there's no question about that. That's why I put that Swiss article in. It cites so many papers that it'll drive you nuts. I mean, there are 108 papers that have been reviewed in order to produce that article. So I think it's unlikely.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Just to be clear on the cause of death. I mean, other things are associated, but it is usually defibrillation that is the cause of death in the Taser cases. Are we clear on that?

J. Butt: You can't be sure of that, no. That's a mechanism, in any event. What that does is lead basically to…. You may as well say that the heart stopped. I mean, I don't think that's a valid cause of death because everybody has that when they die. Ventricular fibrillation is just too speculative. You can't tell that from an autopsy.

If the person was tasered and died from the Taser, the likelihood of it being a cardiac arrhythmia is very, very high. That's what you want. I wouldn't choose ventricular fibrillation necessarily. If it was the Taser, that's…. Supposing you shot a little kid in the chest and got the probe right into his heart — you know, stuck right on the heart — and gave him this, it would be an arrhythmia related to an electrically stimulated death.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): I used the word "defibrillation" instead of "fibrillation" because I was….

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Yes. Actually, I was thinking ahead to my next question and looking down at what I'd written, which is "defibrillation." If somebody has a defibrillator and uses it in those cases, that's effective — is it not? — in reversing…. If somebody goes into fibrillation….

J. Butt: Oh, defibrillators are absolutely life-saving. Whether they would save a life in this condition or not, I wouldn't be sure. I can tell you that one thing I do know from the literature is that when people die suddenly with this syndrome that we're talking about — delirium — they die. The chances of resuscitation in these conditions are very slim. Why? I don't know. I don't understand that.

In many of them there's an overdose of cocaine or a high dose of cocaine, and cocaine is a cardiac excitant. Cocaine is a bad, bad drug. It puts blood pressure up, it causes arrhythmias in the heart, and it causes strokes. And it causes drop-dead cardiac situations not infrequently.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Well, that's interesting. You have looked at the literature. Obviously, you've spent a great deal of time looking at the literature. Are there cases where people have been tasered, they've had a heart event — arrhythmia or fibrillation — and then a defibrillator has been available and applied, and they've died anyway?

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Okay. But you're not clear that a defibrillator would….

J. Butt: I'm not clear about it because I know the literature says that people who die in these circumstances — forget the Taser — are very difficult to resuscitate.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): We don't know whether and you wouldn't conclude whether a defibrillator would….

J. Butt: No, I wouldn't. To bridge that to one of the recommendations I would have for you, which is that you
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should have the ambulance people there…. That's tough. I dealt with a case in Denver, representing the Denver city police about seven or eight years ago. The ambulance people were standing by. They were right there. They were there before the man died, and the police couldn't get him controlled enough for the ambulance people to make approach. Then suddenly he was gone. He was resuscitated right away.

I'm not saying one swallow makes a summer, but that tends to be my understanding of what happens in these cases where the person drops dead and they can't get on with doing anything for them.

M. Coell (Chair): That was very insightful, and we greatly appreciate you taking the time to be with us. You have a….

J. Butt: Yeah. I have this. If you'd like to send it back to me, it's fine. If you don't….

This has the articles on it. Don't be overwhelmed by them, but the two that I've got cited here are the ones that I think you should have a look at, if I may.

It's just four minutes to one. I think we'll just take a break for five minutes before we have our next presenter, in case members of the media wanted to hear him.

M. Coell (Chair): Our next presenter is Kash Heed, former Solicitor General, police chief and MLA.

Kash, thank you very much for coming to share some perspective with us on the Taser committee inquiry.

K. Heed: Thank you very much for allowing me to say a few words today. I will begin with a bit of a prepared speech. I don't have any handouts for you, but as I mentioned to the Committee Clerk, if you require something based on what I've said today or a copy of my notes, I'd be more than willing to make that available to the Clerk upon completion.

Most if not all of you know me. What I want to say right up front is that in over three decades as a police officer, I have learned that the public confidence in the police is imperative and that the most powerful asset in a police officer's arsenal is public support.

It's imperative for the police, because we give them power and authority that the rest of us don't have. It is imperative for us as British Columbians, because the police are here to protect us and keep us safe, and we have to trust them.

I strongly believe that. I did as a police officer and when I was the Solicitor General and accepted all 19 of Justice Braidwood's recommendations on part 1 on July 23, 2009. That day I directed all B.C. municipal police, sheriffs and correctional officers to severely restrict the use of Tasers. Officers were told to use Tasers only in instances where they are enforcing criminal law and in cases where the safety of the public, the officer or the subject is clearly at risk.

At that time — and I still feel the same way now — Justice Braidwood did a good job of finding the balance between officers' safety and the safety of the public. If used appropriately — and I stress "appropriately" — we are still better off with the conducted energy weapons than without them.

Now, I have witnessed firsthand the appropriate use of a Taser from my days on the street and as a supervisor and a police chief which I feel strongly prevented serious injury and possibly saved a life. I've also witnessed firsthand the inappropriate use of the Taser by police officers.

I myself have been tasered because I wanted to see what it felt like. I wanted to know that if I was a commanding officer of a particular incident and I gave a direction to the police officer to deploy a Taser…. I wanted to experience what that individual would be going through.

The decision was made to use them, but we wanted to change the way they were used, and with that, we thought the public would be safer.

Before the unfortunate death at the airport the police in B.C. had already recognized the need to change the use of Tasers. They had actually drafted a report titled Conducted Energy Weapons Provincial Policy Review and Recommended Options. This was in July of 2007. This was forwarded to police services. This was three months before the incident at the airport. Police chiefs recognized the need for change. There were 20 recommendations for policy, training and other changes. These recommended options were intended to support existing policies.

Now, some agencies had already started to move towards changing the use of Taser. Matter of fact, when I took over as the chief of West Vancouver, I directed our officers to only use Tasers in incidents where they were protecting themselves or others from grievous bodily injury or death.

At that time I also outfitted every police vehicle with defibrillators because of the science that indicated they needed to be at hand when in fact a CEW was utilized. That was in 2007. That was shortly before the unfortunate incident at the airport.

The report I indicated to you was never acted upon by police services, even though its recommendations were endorsed by the B.C. Association of Municipal Chiefs of Police. I learned that the director of police services would say later that the report was never acted upon because he did not believe it went far enough. That is available publicly on line, that particular report.

Now, everyone has agreed that a reduction in the unnecessary CEW use was a requirement and a very positive step, not only in British Columbia but elsewhere in Canada. However, an 87 percent reduction in CEW use is not necessarily a positive step.

Let me explain that a bit. Other force response options have filled that void. The reality is that de-escalation and/or confrontation management skills are important and always have been used.

When I first started as a young police officer, we had our handcuffs and our .38 revolver, and that was it. We had to learn to de-escalate our confrontations that we were having in public spaces and with individuals. We then moved toward being trained with some open-handed combat; then to a baton; then to OC, which is known as pepper spray; and then to continue with force to vascular neck restraint; Taser; and, of course, deadly force.

Police officers have historically been very successful at resolving problems through presence and communication. They utilize skills such as de-escalation, verbal judo, crisis intervention — those techniques that they are trained to utilize.

The best research indicates that physical force is used by police in only .04 percent of their encounters with the public. This is 2008 to 2011 data by a major urban police force here in western Canada.

Now, force option experts have told me recently that the void represented by an 87 percent reduction in CEW use is being filled largely with physical control tactics and techniques, such as grappling, wrestling, joint locks, arm bars, hair control, stuns, strikes, etc. — none of which is fully captured in the current reporting system. Unless someone is injured to the extent that they require medical treatment, these encounters most likely will go unreported.

If these were CEW encounters, they would all be required to be reported. It's as simple as this. Members don't report physical control encounters, so the 87 percent reduction in CEW use without an apparent use-of-force replacement stat might make it appear as though members are using de-escalation skills to resolve conflict at a greater rate than previously. But this is through rose-coloured glasses.

Municipal subject behaviour–officer reporting, which is a term they use — SBOR, you may have heard that — remains unfriendly for reporting these incidents. It was intended to become a far more user-friendly system as a details page in the PRIME record system that is utilized by all police agencies. SBOR, and this is according to the experts in the field, remains an awkward, daunting-in-appearance, multi-page template that drives officers away from completing it.

I know, after 31 years in policing, that if there is an easy way out for that police officer so that they don't have to sit in the car or sit in the office and do paperwork, they're going to find that easy way out.

The RCMP have developed a faster, user-friendly SBOR reporting format with dropdowns. This is the faster one, with dropdowns, but it's 20-some-odd pages long. This is the faster one. You can see how time-consuming and complicated it could get for the police officers. It has a pick list where you just use the dropdowns. It allows members to move directly to relevant input areas and makes the collection of the data far more useful and usable so that you can analyze that data through programs like SPSS, or something like that. This is the easy one.

I am advised that CEWs are not being carried in the field by the vast majority of police officers. A patrol supervisor related to me that he experienced this in an area of the city that desperately needed to have them deployed to such an extent that he wrote two memos of serious concern regarding the situation through his chain of command.

He relates where he attended one call in an SRO, single-room occupancy, in the Downtown Eastside in 2012 with an armed, suicidal female. He requested a less lethal option, specifically a CEW, a Taser.

A beanbag shotgun operator arrived, as the only less lethal force available. The beanbag shotgun would have been entirely inappropriate, he tells me, in this environment because there was insufficient safe standoff distance, close quarters, hazard to other members, etc. He says: "Thankfully, the incident was resolved without having to utilize unnecessary force."

Now, there is a push on with police departments to get more officers trained, but it's a hard sell. I'm going to offer the thoughts from two trainers of B.C. police forces. I'm going to read word for word. The first one:

"I find that members do not want to carry the CEW, and I am having a hard time getting qualified members to apply."

"We are finding that the only members who want to carry a CEW generally are the junior members, two years or less service, and these members do not have the experience or tactical knowledge to safely deploy with a CEW. We have units that do not have a CEW at all, and nobody wants one.

"I am also hearing that there are still members who have a CEW assigned but did not carry it regularly on patrol. Members are worried about being in a situation requiring the use of an AED. We do not require a member who has shot somebody to then provide specialized life-saving and medical attention to the subject, yet if a member uses a CEW and the subject goes into cardiac arrest, the law expects the member to then provide this life-saving medical attention."

"We have been trying to deal with the aftermath of Braidwood
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and have been trying to inform and educate as best we can. We are dealing with the same issues as everyone else in terms of departmental policy rewrites to comply with the new provincial policing standards as well as testing, monitoring and reporting protocols that are very onerous. There is also a general loss of motivation in some, not all, to carry a CEW for a variety of reasons. The issues are varying levels of understanding when it comes to policy, deployment thresholds considerations, general apathy and a lack of trust."

Now, it's my understanding, based on the terms of reference that were provided, that this committee, Mr. Chair, was generally looking at part 1 of Braidwood. Since I have it, unless the Chair wants to stop me, I would like to comment on some particular concerns I have with part 2 of Braidwood.

K. Heed: This relates to the IIO. Bill 12 was created here, a piece of legislation.

Now, having an independent office investigating police-involved incidents that cause serious harm or death to anyone is good, good policy. I think, clearly, in British Columbia we should be thinking of combining what we currently have with the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner and moving to the next step of combining the IIO with them.

However, my concerns, which I've also taken to the minister through her staff, relate to the formation of the IIO. The IIO was formed under the Police Act as a police force here in British Columbia. Every police force created under the B.C. Police Act has a governing body. They have a board. All municipal departments and Transit have a police board. They are the arm's-length distance from an elected political body to policing that particular community or entity.

The IIO, created as a police force, does not have a police board. The police board has specific duties. Mr. Chair, you have been part of a police board. You've been the chair of a police board. You know that the duties are, first of all, to hire and fire the chief or chief operating officer. You deal with policy, and you deal with budgets.

The concern I have with the IIO is that they are reporting directly to an elected official, that being the Attorney General. So if in fact….

There appears to be an increase in incidents here in B.C. that require the attention of the IIO and that are very, very costly. These investigations are very, very costly. For example — and I'll just go through this as an example — more funding may be required to deal with these incidents.

The chief at this point would have to go to the AG. If it was set up the way every other police force is set up here in British Columbia that has a police board, he or she would take their case to their police board. The police board, which is appointed, would then deal with that particular situation.

If we're looking at service and policy from the IIO and there is a void where there needs to be changes or if there are complaints, that would, in fact, go to the board. I have some difficulty, given that this was created as a police force, that they do not have a governing board to look after those significant issues.

The other issue I have is with respect to contemplation of charges, if it gets to that point, of police officers during the course of their duties, and the charge approval process; whereas under the legislation, the charge approval goes through the regular system. It does not go through any special branch such as a special prosecutor for that.

Every incident investigated by IIO will not lead to a review by Crown counsel. However, if there are those few that need to go, in my opinion, and if we want true transparency of an IIO, that should go through a special prosecutor type of charge approval and prosecution, simply because — and I've experienced this — the relationships created by police officers and the Crown counsel office are very fine, very secure, because you spend so much time trying to prosecute cases together.

G. Hogg: If I were to interpret the first part of your submission, can I deduce that there is an inconsistency with respect to reported usages of the Taser and actual usage?

K. Heed: I've examined that area because when I first heard the 87 percent reduction — which is phenomenal, which is unheard of, which in my opinion would not be the case — I discovered that in reality every time a Taser is utilized, it is most likely reported here in British Columbia simply because medical assistance is required. The police officers on the streets here in British Columbia know that. It's well ingrained within their mindset, and they're actually filling out the proper paper.

Where it becomes difficult is the fact that in all likelihood other force options were utilized, and that is not captured. That's the difficulty that I have. That's a difficulty that a lot of trainers, force options experts, have with respect to the figure that's been thrown around of an 87 percent reduction.

G. Hogg: So in the continuum of force there is a big void in the first section of that continuum until we reach the Taser. Is that a fair interpretation of that?

G. Hogg: Yes. So an important component of a con-
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tinuum of force would be the utilization or the reporting of those pieces to show that the continuum had been utilized in terms of getting to the Taser, and the juxtaposition of that is that people who are out in the cars, working the streets and so busy, are very reluctant to want to provide the information necessary. It takes a lot of time to sit in their office or to do that.

So when you showed us the 26-page pop-down report, were you suggesting that there's a better or more appropriate way of reporting that, given the continuum of force and the utilization of the Taser — that there is a better, more effective way of doing all of this?

K. Heed: I don't know if there is, but I certainly think it has to be explored. PRIME, if you've had an opportunity, and you may not have…. If you're utilizing that records management system, it is time-consuming, but there's a wealth of information that goes in there. But it's getting that information in there and making it as easy as possible for the police officer to do that.

When we introduced the new records management system, PRIME, in British Columbia — and I was a sergeant at that time — we told police officers that this was going to save time. This was going to make your job easier. You would not have to sit in your car or in your office and fill out copious amounts of written paperwork. In fact, the opposite took place, especially during the learning curve, where these officers were spending more time having to write the report in the PRIME system than they did if they were just doing a written report. So it's very time-consuming.

I'm not sure if there is a better product, but I can tell you that it needs to be explored. We need the simplest piece of material out there for those police officers so they can give you that information. They're not going to be reluctant to give you that information, but they're going to take a shortcut. If there is a shortcut, it's going to be taken.

The issue of use of force. For example — and I've seen this — if a police officer is out there…. And I'm just going to give it as an example. I'm not going to go into an incident that I was involved in, but it's very similar. If a police officer has to deal with an individual where you would be justified in using a Taser…. You're protecting yourself or others from grievous bodily injury or death, and you had to utilize the Taser. You have to fill in all the reports. You have to call an ambulance. You have to babysit the individual in the hospital for a lengthy period of time while he or she is treated.

If there was a different way for you to deal with that, you're going to deal with it now. My understanding is that if they could pull out their ASP baton and whack that person as hard as they can on the wrist, on the back, on the thigh, they're going to do it. If they can utilize a police dog, they're going to utilize a police dog. They would prefer to use those use-of-force methods versus a Taser.

If they are doing that — which I'm saying is not a bad thing; it may be inappropriate at times, when the level of force calls for the utilization of a Taser — you need to document that. You need to have that so we have a better understanding of why we've had such a significant reduction in Taser use in such a short period of time. No miracles have happened out there. This is not a safer community that we're policing. The issues are similar. The drug issues are out there. The mental instability issues are out there. People are still acting the same way they acted on the streets prior to Braidwood.

G. Hogg: It may well be that the use of a baton or others can be far more damaging in some circumstances.

The form you showed us, the 27-page monster — that is for use only arising out of a situation where the Taser has been employed?

K. Heed: This is the RCMP's version of it, which is the shorter version. The PRIME version — I do not have a copy of that.

L. Krog: No, that's the general report. If I've arrested you and employed the Taser during the course of that arrest, then that's the standard report I'm going to fill out.

K. Heed: Yes, or if you utilized OC spray or you hit someone with a baton or some other less lethal…. You would fill out this report.

L. Krog: The purpose of that report is what? Just in a practical way — if the Chair will bear with me — where does that report go, what's the purpose of it, and who sees it?

K. Heed: Use-of-force stats are reported monthly to police services. They require that, and they've required it for quite some time. It used to be yearly, but now it's moved to monthly reporting on all use of force.

L. Krog: Just so I'm clear, it's use of force only. So if I pull you over and you're impaired and I don't employ any force, then there's a different form.
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L. Krog: No. So that 27-pager is only employed when there is any kind of use of force.

K. Heed: My understanding with the drop-down form…. I was just talking to the experts. By my recollection, it was 20 minutes to fill this one out. The other one, of course, was indicated to me as a lot longer.

L. Krog: And the point of the form is to cover off any future allegations that might arise around the misuse of force, or for Crown counsel purposes for charging...? What's the purpose of the form?

K. Heed: It's captured to determine how often police officers have to utilize force. It's my understanding and I'm led to believe it does not become part of a disclosure package at this particular time. It does not become part of a Crown counsel package. It is strictly a report that's gathered by the planning and research section of the department so they can analyze the use of force, and they would provide the stats of police services on a monthly basis.

L. Krog: So I'm a traffic cop, and I pull you over. I determine you're impaired. I make you do the standard test. I make you blow. I arrest you.

During the course of that, as the accused, perhaps I shove the officer. The officer is required to use force of some nature, whether it's a Taser or a baton or a shove or a chokehold or whatever. Then I'm going to fill out the 27 pages because I used force. Then I'm going to prepare what I will call — and you tell me what it is — an ordinary form for passing on to Crown counsel with respect to the charge. Or are there other forms in addition that I'm going to have to complete?

K. Heed: You would, of course, if forms are required…. The example you're using for the breath test analysis…. Generally, the police officer would submit the subject behaviour–officer report, which would go into the database. Then he or she would also do a Crown counsel report through the PRIME system for the charge, if a criminal charge was pursued.

If a criminal charge was not pursued and it was dealt with through the drinking-and-driving regulations some other way, they would do a PRIME report — an incident report in PRIME.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Kash. Very, very interesting presentation.

Originally, you said that the statistic you're aware of is that only 0.04 percentage of encounters with the public end up in a use of force.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): So we're not talking many incidents in a police officer's week or month.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): We're not asking them to be, every single day, filling out forms that are 20 pages.

K. Heed: No, but just a bit of a rider on that. For example, a police officer that's working — I'll use Vancouver, for example — a couple of blocks away in the Downtown Eastside. He or she may utilize force more often than a police officer that's working and patrolling the Shaughnessy area.

I'm interested in your comment that members don't want to carry…. A trainer told you that members don't want to carry the conducted energy weapons. And you implied — or you almost said — that what you think is happening is that sometimes even if they have them or don't have them, they are substituting other types of force. Correct? This is because they are concerned about the scrutiny, perhaps, or the consequences that can happen as a result of the fact that they would have to report — also that there is so much scrutiny in the use of Tasers, and what if there is a negative event?

K. Heed: Yes, they don't want the hassle. It's as simple as that. They do not want the hassle. This, unfortunately, has garnered a lot of publicity, and they don't want the hassle. They don't want to put themselves through the possibility of the scrutinization by the public, by their department, by the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner or the IIO if there was a different way to deal with the circumstances than use a Taser. That's what I'm led to believe from my observations and in several discussions with practising police officers and force option experts.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): So you've got officers that are using other types of force on the continuum, but you're suggesting that even though they're required to fill out the SBOR or the RCMP equivalent, essentially they're not filling them out. I mean, why would they feel that they don't have to fill it out in one case, and then they do in others? Is it because when you have a Taser, you mentioned the fact that you have an ambulance there, and that puts more scrutiny?
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K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Are you suggesting that if an ambulance was not going to be there, they wouldn't fill the form out?

K. Heed: No. I strongly believe that on any use of Taser, they are actually filling out the report — any utilization of Tasers at this particular time. What I'm explaining to you is that in other uses of force, they are not necessarily filling out the SBOR.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): But they're required to. So what do you think is going on there, and on what basis do you come to that conclusion?

K. Heed: Well, it's a very complicated report, especially from the municipal police that have not even gone to this RCMP version of an SBOR. It's very, very time-consuming. The officers will tell you that they're unsure what's going to happen when they actually fill out all those reports, because we've got early warning systems for officers using force frequently in comparison to other officers. That's part of it. There's early warning, which in my opinion is good at times. There's an array of issues surrounding that.

I think, in my opinion, police leaders have not gone out and encouraged their members to do it in a very meaningful way other than, "You will do it because I'm your commanding officer and telling you that you will do it" — not really explaining why we need to capture this data and how we're not going to use this data against you unless you're abusing your authority or abusing your powers.

I've gone through shifts where I've had to….. We didn't have to fill out these reports years ago — let's remember that — unless there was a serious injury caused to the individual. Then you had to fill out a casualty report along with it. I've gone through nights when I've gotten in fisticuffs. I've had to spray people. This is as a supervisor. I have to whack them with my baton — four or five incidents in one night, and then for the rest of the week I won't have one confrontation with an individual.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): I'm trying to get it straight, though, because you said they're reporting with Tasers, but they're not…. You're pretty clear from your discussions with officers, trainers — well, officers, I guess — that other types of force are being used that are not being reported.

When I ask you, "Well, what's the difference?" you're not clear. Why do you think it is? If it's not the fact that there are other personnel like the paramedics there, why do you think it is that they are reporting on Tasers when they're not reporting on other uses of force sometimes?

K. Heed: I think we've amplified the Taser use to such an extent that if they don't, there are going to be consequences as a result of that. It's well documented within the police reporting system — the requirement to call an EHS. It's all within the dispatch system.

If that's not there, they're going to find the easy way out, and that's to not fill out the SBOR report.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): I think that's really interesting. We've talked quite a bit about the reporting in various sessions that we've had with various witnesses. One of the concerns I had about the SBOR — and I suppose this would add to the length or the requirements for reporting — is that the de-escalation or crisis intervention is not specifically captured in the report. There's simply: "Did you talk to the individual? Did you have a conversation with them?"

My feeling was that there should be, since it's now a requirement. It's part of the standards that you first try to de-escalate a situation. There should be something in the reporting that documents that you've done that or how you've done that. Would you agree or disagree that that should be part of the reporting process?

K. Heed: Given the compliance level so far, I would disagree that it should be part of it. As police officers we've been talking to people from day one. You're always de-escalating situations. You're always communicating. I'll tell you, presence and communication is the number one deterrence for physical violence against the police officer or anyone else. The minute you're there in your uniform, the minute they know you are the police and you start communicating with that person, that is the largest deterrent. That is the major de-escalation, in my opinion, in my 31 years of experience of dealing with a volatile situation.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Would you not think, then, if that is the major thing…? My hunch says you're absolutely right. Would you not think, then, that it's important to have that reflected? If you want to analyze data…. You want to capture data so you can take a look at it and say: "How can we do better in policing?" Why wouldn't you want to have something very specific in your reporting that says: "This is what I did in order to de-escalate the situation"?

K. Heed: It would become administratively impossible for the officer to go out and be successful on the street during his or her shift if he had to do it. For example, a panhandler out front of the campus here that's
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aggressively panhandling. I've had to deal with it many times — just pulling up in the car, in uniform, giving them clear direction on what they're supposed to do to calm that situation.

If I had to go back in my car and fill out — especially the way it is now — a large report with respect to what I just did, it would just consume so much of my time.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): I was only talking about use-of-force situations, particularly the Taser — that if you used the Taser, did you, or other use of force? That's what I'm talking about.

You said the SBOR. You don't have to fill that out if you don't use force — right?

K. Heed: No, I misinterpreted. I thought you were saying communicating, de-escalating — whatever.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): No, I'm talking about situations where…. Well, I think you always should anyways, if there's some potential for physical confrontation or something, but I'm talking about when you use force.

K. Heed: When you use force, yes. If you use open-handed technique, OC, ASP baton, vascular neck restraint, a kick or something like that, yes, an SBOR should be completed. That incident should be documented.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Okay, then I'm going to go back to my earlier question, to make sure that you weren't misunderstanding. Do you not think, when there is use of force, including a Taser, that it would be useful and advisable to have more information about how you tried to de-escalate a situation?

K. Heed: I think the confusion, Deputy Chair, is that verbal communication in the presence. I think that's where the confusion is. But once you start to move up that continuum of use of force, it should be documented.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Can I ask a few more questions? If anybody else wants to jump in, I'll get out of the way for a few minutes, but I've got a few more here.

I thought it was interesting that you said, from talking to trainers, that it was hard to get members to apply for the training. Do you want to elaborate on that at all? Is it because of the reasons you're talking about — concern about deployment and the stigma, essentially, attached it?

K. Heed: Yes, and I think I quoted one of the trainers at the end: "Varying levels of understanding when it comes to policy, deployment thresholds considerations, general apathy" — all of that.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): I'm not sure if you're aware of what the training is now, the mandatory training for de-escalating situations and crisis intervention because of the new police standards. Are you aware of the training, and if so, do you think that the training — which is partly on line, partly in person — is sufficient?

K. Heed: I think there should be an entire course, especially in the officers' general training. I'm going back to my general training, where there were specific courses given to police officers in crisis intervention. There were scenarios that you went through as a police officer in those crisis interventions. You had a better understanding.

I'm going back 36, 37 years, when, in our opinion, the incidents weren't as frequent as they are now. But we were given that training back then, and it was a significant amount of hours of crisis intervention in our basic training, so you would understand why these people react this way.

I don't think it's adequate to run an on-line course and then a few hours of face to face. I think it has to be more in depth, given the problems that police officers face during their tour of duty now.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Last one. You talked about PRIME and the analysis that is supposed to happen. One of the witnesses — I think from the ministry, actually — had said that it was originally believed you could enter the data from the SBOR or your reporting system, whatever that is — essentially feed it into PRIME and then the analysis would be done — and that that capability is not there. Unfortunately, what's happening is that there is a lot of data entry happening.

K. Heed: My understanding is that the contractor with PRIME, Versaterm, in order for them to make the changes to PRIME…. It would have to be something similar to this and not just the details page, which they're utilizing now. It is a very costly endeavour. Versaterm would have to make that change in order for that capability of PRIME to be in place for SBOR.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Did we know about SBOR when PRIME was being contracted?
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G. Hogg: In your opening comments, or your contextualizing comments, you said that public confidence in police is imperative, in terms of the power and authority which the state grants to police officers to carry it out, somewhat similar to what we grant to social workers who apprehend children — again, an incredible amount of authority which is granted by the state to special people to be able to carry out their responsibilities on behalf of the state.

You made references to a suggested process by which we ensure that some of those things are guarded in terms of the IIO office and that the IIO office should perhaps, similar to other police forces, be reporting to a board of some sort.

With respect to those people who have authority in our states to apprehend children, we have a reporting relationship, but we also have the Representative for Children and Youth who oversees and references and looks at those. Are there other organizational models that might work in that? That's my first question.

My other point is that you made a comment with respect to police officers understanding the context of their roles. You made reference that in some instances the only time you can provide that is by a direct order, a hierarchical response which doesn't allow for the understanding of an important principle, which I think you have highlighted.

Is there another way that that principle can be related so that if I am a line social worker or a protection worker or a line police office…? In terms of keeping track of these reports which are so integral to the development of public policy, is there a better way of understanding that? You made reference, in the last questions, to Kathy about the context of those questions and about the importance of being able to track those.

I'm looking at sort of the broad picture and then wondering, within the context of that, about some of the specifics you have referred to — whether the one organizational model you've talked about is the right one, and it seems intuitively that it is; and secondly, whether or not the hierarchical model of direction to a person granted extreme authority by the state, the role we can look at in terms of addressing their comprehension and understanding of the importance of that role rather than just as a power figure within the framework.

There's been so much publicity based on the use of Tasers here in British Columbia. What's entrenched in our minds, including those police officers that have to police our streets each and every day, is the Paul Pritchard video — that 20-second video that everyone has watched over and over and over.

I feel for the police officers who were at the scene, who experienced what has taken place since that. We're known all over the world, based on the Braidwood report. Everyone knows about it. The negative stigma attached to tasering, the use of Taser, is so large that that's really fogging the minds of a lot of these police officers. They're hesitating on using it or taking it out.

I mentioned that it's the young officers. When you're a young officer, boy, you're going to go out there, and you're going to solve the world's problems. You know: "Give me whatever I can get. Give me the Taser. I want to look good in my uniform. I want everything attached."

Yeah, I can understand why they're doing it. But the senior officers — the ones that have been working the streets, have been going out there and using verbal communication, verbal judo, de-escalating through presence and conversation — are the ones that should have it, because you know that they're going to make sure that they've tried these things before having to utilize that level of force.

We've got officers now — I hate to say it — that have not experienced what it's like to try and talk your way out of a problem. If they have that Taser, they're not going to get their hands dirty. They're not going to get messy. They're not going to roll around in the mud. They're not going to risk getting hurt. They're going to go to that force option almost right away. So I think just the stigma attached to Taser use here in British Columbia is affecting the minds of a lot of these police officers, and I don't blame them.

You know, eventually, hopefully, this will dissipate, and they may start to go back to using them. Hopefully, when they do, we can govern it a lot stronger — making sure we have appropriate training, appropriate policy and appropriate reporting — and be able to respond if we foresee a potential problem with it.

Your first question. Yes, I'm very concerned that we have a police force reporting directly to a politician. Are there other models such as what we have? Yes, and the ones I know of are in the United States, where in many jurisdictions they have a completely different governance model than we have here in Canada for our police forces.

Now, in my discussions with some people within the ministry, they wanted to follow the Ontario model, but they did not respond to the fact that Ontario did not create it as a police force. They created it as an investigative unit attached to the Attorney General's ministry, which is a little different.

When I asked the question surrounding that, the ex-
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planation given to me by the bureaucrat was that they wanted to have an office in place so they could share the information. But we already have protocols here in B.C. where various ministries and various agencies can share information, even PRIME information.

So that is a significant concern. But the ones I know of that do not have a board attached that are police forces are mainly the American system.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Thank you. I'll be very quick. I just wanted to get it on the record that I expressed some of those concerns about the makeup of the IIO as well when we dealt with the legislation in Bill 12 at the time, particularly the — well, a number of things…. Certainly, one of them was their reporting to the minister as opposed to one of the alternatives that we suggested, which was that the IIO report to a committee of the Legislature or the Ombudsperson or some other body. I did have concerns about that, and I think several of us expressed concerns as well consistent with yours about the charge approval process.

I agree with you. I'm a little nervous to hear you saying — because I know you have a lot of contacts — that the budget will go up. I certainly asked a lot of questions about whether that budget was going to be sufficient in the future as well. So we'll wait and see. That all being said, I think it is a real improvement in our province overall.

M. Coell (Chair): Well, thank you, Kash. It's greatly appreciated, having you here as a witness.

Thank you very much for being with us. We also understand that you're part of the Council of Canadian Academies that we'll be meeting with shortly. If you can stay for their phone call, that would be great — if you can.

I also understand you just got back from Australia, and you may have some comments from….

I did have a little bit of a handout here. Hopefully, it will be helpful. They're just speaking points more than anything else.

Should you need to contact me afterwards, there are contact details there on the first PowerPoint.

You're obviously aware of the fact that I'm a member of the Council of Canadian Academies' expert panel that's been assembled. What I'm saying is my opinion and not that of the expert panel. The panel has not finished its deliberations and won't have finished until next year. These are just an assembly of views that I've garnered so far, so please don't assume that it's the expert panel's viewpoint. Mr. Justice Goudge would hang, draw and quarter me.

All right. I'll make a few comments, and then there's obviously time for a conversation, which I think is usually more fruitful.

Just so you know what's going on, Defence Research and Development Canada and the Council of Canadian Academies have assembled an expert panel to look at the whole issue of the medical and physiological impacts of conducted energy weapons. It's not narrowed to Canada, and indeed, a lot of the research is not Canadian, as you might imagine. It comes from a variety of different jurisdictions.

Our focus is entirely on the medical and the physiological impacts. There is no mandate to look at policy or practice or any other issue. What we're supposed to do is come up with some independent, definitive statements about the medical and physiological impacts of conducted energy weapons such as Taser.

In part, this is to counterbalance a lot of information that's floating around that has question marks hanging over the top of it because of connections to Taser International. The idea is that we do this work without any strings attached and without any contamination or aroma whatsoever. Hopefully, we'll arrive at some reasonably definitive conclusions.

I think they have, probably, unreasonable expectations about what medical researchers and medical practitioners can say about Tasers. I always sort of liken this debate to that affecting ECT in the mental health context. It seems to do something, but nobody really knows why, and from time to time it has adverse impacts. That's pretty much summarizing what I've gleaned so far.

As you'll hear shortly, the expert panel is chaired by Mr. Justice Goudge from the Ontario Court of Appeal, plus ten medical practitioners and researchers; a biomedical engineer who is an expert in the impacts of electricity on the human body; an ethicist — we all need those; and, of
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course, the token criminologist. That's me. For those of you who don't know, I have had significant life experience as an active police officer, but not for some time.

The idea is that we review all the research there is to review, we draw these independent, unbiased conclusions, and we identify gaps in the literature, in the research that might reasonably be filled in order to arrive at a better understanding of the impact of conducted energy weapons. As I say, the final report is due in October 2013.

Now, I raise this issue because I saw the ad for your proceedings, and I thought: "Oh my goodness, there's a real danger here that you guys are going to be trying to reinvent the wheel that we've not actually started rolling yet but which, from my perspective, is a very large wheel and will take you a lot of time to try to turn." What I'm doing is offering you a cost-saving device.

I don't know what your mandate is. You might want to wait until we've done our work before you tackle that second part of the mandate. Obviously, that's just a suggestion, nothing more.

We've had a couple of meetings. These folks are drawn from all over Canada and, indeed, the United States. We have, also, someone from the United Kingdom who's on speakerphone at the meetings.

There is a team of individuals who are doing all the donkey work. I have to say that they're first-rate researchers. I've been incredibly impressed with them. They do excellent work. So you can rely on the findings that are produced ultimately in the report. I don't see any reason to doubt the integrity or the thoroughness of what's done by that research team.

If you thought that I was in a library all day long looking at stuff, you're wrong. There are half a dozen folks who are doing that for us.

As we've worked through some of the literature — and there is a lot…. One of the exercises has involved sorting the wheat from the chaff. The wheat is quite interesting to look at.

There are some issues that have started to appear. Again, this is just my perspective. It's not the expert panel's finding. There are some questions about the value of the original testing protocols. Indeed, one of the mandates is to make some recommendations about how these kinds of tools should be tested in the future before they're actually issued to police services in Canada. It's not attaching blame. It's just simply saying there might be a better way of doing it.

As you probably well know, the police are interested in tools — some people say toys — but there is this tendency to grab hold of something without necessarily understanding the full implications. So there are concerns about that and how Defence Research and Development Canada can participate meaningfully in the testing of these devices that pop up. So that's one of the issues that has appeared.

Another is the impact on different kinds of humans under different conditions. What I can see, at any rate, is a continuum. There are some situations where the use is safe. There are some situations where it's absolutely not safe. You can string people and events along a continuum between the two.

The safe usage of conducted energy weapons clearly reflects the testing that was done by Taser International in the first instance, which was on large, healthy males who were tasered in the back. So there was a series of tests that were done on a particular population.

You'll appreciate that if you taser in the chest area, there are dangers of creating adverse cardiac reactions. So the testing was done under very controlled circumstances. It was done well, with a particular kind of individual being hit in a particular part of the body. The only adverse impacts that were reported unofficially were that they tended to pee themselves. It relaxes all the muscles in the body. You just collapse in a heap. If you're going to be a test dummy, make sure you urinate before you actually do it.

So there is that concern, and I think that that's not fully understood. It's not appreciated. This is a jumble of ideas out there, and a jumble of images, but if you stick them on a continuum, it works. You can see it's okay to taser some under some circumstances but not others. The obvious unsafe-use ones are frail, elderly people with heart conditions. It's probably not safe to do it when they're in hospital beds, even though we've had at least one incident where that's occurred.

There is, I think, a shadow — this, again, is not clear at this point — continuum of acceptability and unacceptability that we all should be aware of. That's the political piece — small p, not big P. You know, there are some situations where people go, "Oh my god. How could they possibly have done that? Where are these guys' heads? This is just totally inappropriate," right through to using the weapons to deal with thuggery, in which case it generally tends to be much more acceptable. So I think we've got that shadow continuum that may or may not match the safe-use and unsafe-use continuum.

Then what's also very obvious is that there are some issues around managing particular kinds of individuals who are behaving in particular ways and communicating with those individuals. This seems to be a key failure. I was watching again the Dziekanski footage and watching again the footage coming from New South Wales, which was before the coroners' court in the last month, where they're going through the protocol of warning a person that the Taser will be applied, but the individual was quite clearly just simply not receiving that information. They're just out of it for whatever reason.

The Taser is nevertheless applied and applied multiple
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times, and the end result is a fatality. It's almost as if the chant "taser, taser, taser" is sufficient to overcome the very obvious non-communication between the police officer and the person who is lying on the ground. You don't need to be an expert. You just watch it. You can see it happening.

So there is a cluster of individuals who are obviously problematic when it comes to communication, a cluster of individuals who are not necessarily hearing what you're saying — those with severe psychiatric disorders; those with drug-induced psychoses, which appears to be what happened in Sydney; those who are extremely agitated and those who don't understand the language that the police officer is using. There are probably other situations, but when you look at the cases, those are the ones that stand out.

Another issue, another problem, is that of the hidden confounding effects. You can't always tell whether or not someone is at the high-risk end of the continuum. If they have cardiac problems of any kind, that's where they should be. But when you look at a person, you don't necessarily know that they've got cardiac problems.

Then there are the issues associated with collateral injuries resulting from the use of the Taser. Dart burns are something that is a problem. Falling down and where you fall — because you will fall if you're hit — are problematic, so you shouldn't really be tasering people who are running away from you down the steps of subways, because they're going to tumble and go. The outcome will be broken bones, etc.

An interesting one — this has come up in Australia — is the impact of tasering somebody who is holding or is close to incendiary material. They had one situation in Australia where a person was carrying a flammable substance, a large quantity, in a backpack. They tasered him, and it blew up, which was quite an unexpected consequence. It was not clear whether or not the person was intending to set fire to themselves or not, but if they were, then obviously the object was achieved, somewhat indirectly.

So you've got this spectre arising of death or serious injury by Taser, which is connected, of course, to the issue of suicide by cop — the agitation of police officers to the point where they actually fire at somebody and kill them, and that was the intention all along. I don't think we've seen any self-immolations in B.C. yet, but it's something to be aware of.

Another issue is: how many applications of a conducted energy weapon can occur at any one time? Is there a safe limit here? Is there an unsafe line that should never be crossed? And under what conditions are these applications safe or unsafe? If it's somebody who is extremely agitated and is hit in the chest area because they're moving all the time, then multiple applications are probably going to result in a death. Whereas if the person is hit in the back and is standing still, it doesn't necessarily result in that outcome.

In Australia I had long discussions with individual senior officers from the Victoria state police — who, by the way, have embraced Braidwood in its entirety and see it as best practice. They were talking about the problems that they're having with training individuals to actually use a Taser on somebody — to be able to hit them in the back as opposed to hitting them in the front.

In real life, people are not standing still, waiting to be tasered, as they are if they're test dummies. They're moving all the time, and you've got to hit them as best you can. It's almost invariably the case that they're coming at you, so the application is in the chest area, especially if you're a police officer on your own.

You've probably looked at the Dziekanski footage. If you go back and look at that, you'll see that one of the officers tried to circle Dziekanski — go around the back to apply the Taser. That is consistent with best application. The outcome was not exactly what was expected.

They're supposed to do that — to move away from the front of the individual. I think it's unrealistic, quite frankly, to expect that to happen, except under ideal circumstances.

Then another issue that's coming up is the use of various labels in this context. The one that's troubling me and a lot of others is "excited delirium" — exactly what that means — because it's not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. It's not in the diagnostic and statistics manual. It seems to be a concept that has been developed by the parallel group of emergency room physicians, an august body but not a body that's concerned, necessarily, with psychiatric disorders.

Then you look at the way in which the term "excited delirium" is being applied, and it's difficult to see whether it's seen as a cause or an effect — exactly whether it explains a death or explains the application of the Tasers. A lot of unsettling confusion, I think, and one of the things that will come out of the expert panel deliberations will be some kind of levelling of that.

The reference in your notes, by the way — in the speaking notes here — to inattentional blindness is coming out of the Paul Boyd case, where there was some concern about the police officer shooting Paul Boyd, who was crawling along the ground towards the police officer. I think most people have seen the footage.

In that context this bizarre behaviour was explained away as being inattentional blindness, which again is a term…. It's a concept that nobody really understands, nor has it any medical application.

Those are the issues that are popping up. There are going to be more, I'm sure, as the weeks go by and as the panel looks at more information. Are there any questions at this point about those issues, or would you rather wait until I finish?
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M. Coell (Chair): I don't see any questions at this point, Dr. Gordon, so continue, please.

Now, the issue of usage is very important. There is, as you know, evidence of declining use. A lot of that, internationally, swings around how you go about defining usage. Some jurisdictions define usage from the moment the weapon is pulled from its holster, before it's even deployed. Others are gathering information about usage where the weapon is actually deployed. So there's some fuzziness in the data on that particular front.

But I think there's evidence appearing now of a successful use of what I'm referring to as the Braidwood policy, plus this very interesting development where police officers themselves are reluctant to use Tasers, to carry them. I just came in on the tail end of Kash Heed's conversation and heard him talking about that, so that's obviously something that's popped up for you.

Also — I don't know whether Kash covered this — there is growing evidence of a fear of deployment on the part of potential targets. People are actually seeing police officers carrying Tasers. They hear the warning, and they stop.

So there is, ironically, a deterrent effect, in part because of the fatalities associated with Tasers. And there's some anecdotal evidence that some potential targets are saying, "I'd rather be shot than tasered," which I find kind of interesting. But again, it's anecdotal. Do move very carefully through that brier patch.

The Australians have found that what they call red-dot warnings work really well. This is where the weapon is pointed at the person. When you do that, the aim is actually a red-point laser that comes out and presents itself on the target, and the person sees that they've got a red dot on them. That apparently is sufficient to get the person to do other things.

They haven't yet got to a point where de-escalation techniques have been refined, but I think they're quite happy to see that's clearly something that's on the agenda for Braidwood.

As I said earlier on, the Braidwood policy appears to be seen as best practice, and there are a number of jurisdictions that salute the Braidwood flag when it goes up. I think that's probably great, personally, and a lot of other people seem to be very satisfied with it.

It's being followed in Victoria, in Australia — followed to the letter. It's not followed in other jurisdictions in Australia, most notably New South Wales, where, clearly, if a Braidwood policy had been in place, the weapon would not have been deployed at a fleeing individual who was actually presenting no threat to anybody. He was just on a rampage, having stolen three packets of biscuits from a store.

I'll get to Australia in just a second. An interesting footnote is that we looked at the use of Tasers by other criminal justice agencies. If you think about it, there are a number of criminal justice agencies that might be inclined to adopt Tasers. The Correctional Service of Canada is the most obvious one, but Canada Border Services Agency, correctional personnel provincially…. There are a number of other agencies that I think have eyed Tasers favourably. All of that appears now to have stopped in Canada, especially on the part of CSC, which was actually poised to deploy them.

Just a quick footnote on the situation in Australia. There are eight contiguous jurisdictions. They follow a policing model which is, in my view, quite rational. There's a single police service for each jurisdiction. You don't have multiple police services operating within a state. We would do well to adopt a similar system here, but that's another matter, of which I've spoken at length.

The Taser policies vary across these jurisdictions. In some places access to Tasers is limited to particular units within a police service, or it's limited to individuals who are at a particular rank, so it's not being carried by general duty police officers. Some jurisdictions are experimenting with issuing Tasers to general duty police officers, but at this point they're trying to keep it fairly limited, other than in New South Wales where general duty police officers are carrying them.

The case I'm referring to here, if you have any interest in it, is the Roberto Curti case. The coroner's report was released just last week. It's all on line in all its glory. The coroner — the Glebe coroner in New South Wales — was very critical of the police, very critical of the deployment of Tasers and very critical of the state of knowledge or lack of knowledge of Tasers that led to this particular death. It's a blistering criticism.

Just in October the New South Wales Ombudsman released a report which is actually quite good reading if you're interested in what's going on in this other jurisdiction. It's not just New South Wales. They're covering other Australian jurisdictions, and I think there are very strong parallels to what's happening in Canada.

They're extremely interested in us, extremely interested in what's going on in B.C. because we've embraced Braidwood much longer than they have. So I'm duty-bound to report back, to some extent. We most certainly will be sharing the results of the expert panel deliberations when we get to that point. They're eagerly awaiting the outcome.

M. Coell (Chair): Well, thank you very much, Dr. Gordon. We greatly appreciated your comments and insights. I know we'll have some questions.

L. Krog: Thank you, Dr. Gordon. I didn't want to interrupt the process. But when you talked about excited
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delirium, could you just tell us a little bit more about what you really think of the concept?

R. Gordon: Well, I'm quite a critic of overmedicalizing things. Most certainly, there is a set of behaviours that, quite clearly, emergency room physicians have seen and that serving police officers see with respect to particular individuals who get frustrated, angry, excited and emotionally overwhelmed by the circumstances that they're in. Whether we should actually be calling it anything, affixing a quasi-medical label to it is something else all together, because what tends to happen with these labels is that they end up being explanations. They end up being justifications for behaviour and for errors. A really classic example of that is the whole concept of the psychopath, which is used as a garbage-can diagnosis by the media.

I find all of that very, very problematic. I was particularly stunned by the way in which the concept of excited delirium appeared very quickly in RCMP literature. When you track it back, you find that it's actually a term that was being used by Taser International. I followed that and tried to find it in the diagnostic and statistics manual of the American Psychiatric Association, the great book of labels, and it wasn't there.

Then it became clear that there's this group of individuals who see this syndrome — problematic individuals who present themselves at emergency rooms who they have difficulty controlling for one reason or another. There may or may not be drugs and alcohol implicated in the person's behaviour. But when I see something being used unreflectively to explain and it's not clear what it is — it either explains the death or explains the application of the Taser — bells go off in my head. Red flags go up. I don't know if that helps you, but it's something that obviously has to be looked at very carefully.

L. Krog: I guess the same would apply if I used the term "sad" as opposed to suffering some level of depression.

R. Gordon: Yes, there are. There are a lot of question marks. Obviously, not everybody does. There are some who think it's a valid concept. Again, this is stuff that this expert panel has to work out and hopefully will arrive at a balanced conclusion.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): I'm glad that Leonard brought up the issue of excited delirium, because we've been hearing from various witnesses that seem to fall on one side or the other. Most recently we had Dr. Butt here today, who was talking about a state where…. Even if you don't use that term, there seems to be a number of use-of-force deaths — not necessarily Taser but use-of-force deaths generally — that do seem to be in some ways almost unexplainable — when people are in a situation that could be delirium or whatever it is, a heightened physical and mental state, where they're dying under use of force, they're dying with Tasers, or they're dying with constraints of various kinds.

Is it your understanding that there are circumstances where it seems almost unexplainable, other than to say there is something heightened that's happening in this person's situation that is causing death in what would otherwise seem to be a fairly healthy individual — apart from drug use, of course?

R. Gordon: Well, it's the "apart" that's the problem. You're not always able to separate out drug and alcohol use from the behaviour and the incapacity to communicate or to hear what's being said.

I think any serving police officer would be able to very quickly recount a whole range of circumstances where they've met difficult people who, for one reason or another, were not responding to their suggestions or their directions. Those people might be in a very excited state for one reason or another, and I use that term guardedly.

But there are clearly categories of individuals. My point simply is that I think it's dangerous to apply single labels to try to account for this when you don't even know why it is that you're applying the label. Are you explaining the behaviour or explaining the death? Are you explaining the application? What is it that this is intended to convey?

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): No, it makes sense. It does make sense, and I agree there's a danger there — absolutely.

You talked a little bit…. I know this is probably not really in the mandate of the work that you're doing, that the panel is doing. But you did talk about the issue of testing. Do you have any comments on the state of the testing now and the certification? I mean, we found out recently that there's no kind of standards testing for firearms or for Tasers, an intermediate weapon. Have you got any comment on the state of the regulation of these types of weapons?

R. Gordon: Well, I think there is clear evidence that it has been inadequate. My concern is with conducted energy weapons as opposed to other tools. One of the questions that I've raised and that, hopefully, we might be able to answer in the panel is: what is the procedure
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for approving the acquisition of certain tools, whether they be armoured vehicles or the very latest baton, but in particular tools that might end up killing somebody?

How was it that Tasers came into Canada? Was it, for example, a decision made by a group of senior police officers who thought this was — to put it bluntly — a neat thing to have that might be useful? They didn't give much thought to it, saw it being used extensively in the United States and decided that it was a good thing and that they should have one as well. I don't know. That's a question. There might be — and hopefully there is — a much more careful process involved in actually selecting and then purchasing these instruments.

But whatever happened here with Tasers has happened in other places. It's not just a Canadian failing, if you like. It's clearly something that has affected people in other places.

G. Hogg: Thank you. You've raised a number of process issues that you've talked about. It seems the issue of the phrase "excited delirium" has popped up at each one of our hearings, and there have been a number of different definitions and applications of it. I think we're getting closer to believing it's about the observable symptomatology rather than the phraseology that makes a difference. There's excited opposition to the phrase by psychiatrists and by emergency room doctors.

G. Hogg: Yeah, well, delirium exists within the DSM but not the adjective that's being applied to it. Hopefully, your panel will have a chance to look at that.

The other issue that was just referenced through Kathy is the whole notion of the Tasers. They're not CSA-approved. We've been reminded a number of times that toasters are, but Tasers are not. It's, I think, an interesting juxtaposition in terms of how we calibrate them. We're pretty good about calibrating what happens with photo radar and with radar, but we're not very good at processing this. Certainly, that's an area of other challenge that I think we need to look at.

I have some concerns about expert panels — and we've used that phrase — and what happens with expertise as we focus more and more in. I'm a little bit interested in the process by which your expert panel will work — whether or not there will be the engagement of these models, co-creation models of policy development that are looking at those who are the end users who get engaged in the process.

Is this something that you'll be actually looking at and talking to people — to police officers, to people who have been recipients of the blessed Taser — or is this something where the experts are going to be using a process outside of that type of modelling?

R. Gordon: I think what you need to do is to ask those questions of the next speaker.

G. Hogg: I was going to juxtapose what they said with you so I could cause some controversy.

R. Gordon: Nice try. My understanding is that our task is simply to report back and that someone else will take the findings and apply them in a broader context — that there is a broader review of the use of these weapons. We're just a cog in the wheel.

G. Hogg: Looking, basically, at the evidence as it exists and trying to collate that evidence and providing a basis upon which we can look at the policies that may evolve from that evidence.

G. Hogg: So that we can have evidence-based policy as opposed to policy-based evidence.

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): So the findings of the panel are going to be…. There'll be a report. That'll be a public report — correct?

K. Corrigan (Deputy Chair): Unfortunately, we need to have our work done prior to October of 2013. We may just say: "See the panel report."

R. Gordon: With respect, I think that's probably a smart move because it's…. I don't know of any other review that's taken place or is going to take place that will be as thorough as this.

M. Coell (Chair): Well, thank you very much. Noting the time, I'll ask Susan to get the Council of Canadian Academies on line. Dr. Gordon, you're welcome to stay, if you'd like.
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M. Coell (Chair): I'll call the committee back to order and welcome the Council of Canadian Academies.

Thank you very much for being here. We were just meeting with Robert Gordon, and he has agreed to stay and join us as well. I greatly appreciate you folks taking the time to give us your advice and suggestions.

I'll just introduce the all-party committee to you. I have John Slater, MLA; Gordon Hogg, MLA. I'm Murray Coell, Chair and MLA; Kathy Corrigan, MLA and Deputy Chair; and Leonard Krog, MLA, as well. We're quite a way along in our task, which was to inquire into the use of conducted energy weapons and to audit selected police complaints.

Again, thank you for taking the time to join us, and I'll turn it over to you to brief us.

E. Dowdeswell: Well, thank you very much. My name is Liz Dowdeswell, and I'm the president and CEO of the Council of Canadian Academies.

I'm just delighted to have this opportunity to share with you some information about the work that we're currently undertaking. Although I hasten to add that because the work is ongoing, I can tell you very little about, of course, the findings or the discussion that's actually going on. But I can tell you a little about the question and about the way in which we do our work. That may be helpful to you.

The council is a relatively new organization in the Canadian landscape. Our mission is to provide the best available scientific knowledge and evidence that will underpin and inform debate and decision-making. Governments and others come to us because we provide independent, authoritative and evidence-based assessments on the knowledge that underlies particular issues of public interest.

I should say that our job is to assess and synthesize the evidence. It's not to do primary research. That's very important to understand. We are very much evidence-based, and we do that through a very rigorous and disciplined process.

We're a non-profit corporation. We have a board of governors, a scientific advisory committee and a very small secretariat that supports expert panels. Originally, we were founded by the Royal Society, the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

Our funding agreement with the federal government obliges us to undertake up to five assessments a year, and those come to us through an internally competitive process. Government departments actually have to compete for the questions that they send to us.

But we can also undertake questions for others, such as a provincial government, for example, or a consortium of universities, and that's based on a cost-recovery basis. I say that because this particular question came to us through that route. Even though it's through a federal government department, it came to us in a different way.

Our assessments are, as I say, reports that provide insight and evidence. What we bring to the table is, first of all, an independence and a transparency because all of our work is made public. It's through the rigorous and disciplined process….

Well, let me turn, then, to slide 4. I just want to indicate on this slide the nature of the work that we actually do and, from your perspective, what we don't do.

It's important to understand that we are not policy prescriptive. In other words, the panel presents findings and conclusions that come from its review of the evidence, but we don't make specific policy and recommendations. That's really up to us.

M. Coell (Chair): We've asked for some technical assistance, so they'll be along shortly, if it happens again.

The point I was making was that we don't make recommendations. We're not policy prescriptive, and we're also not advocacy. At the council we don't advocate for anything other than making sure….

E. Dowdeswell: Slide 5 illustrates some of the im-
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pacts that we've had because we are demand-driven, but it also illustrates the breadth of the work that we undertake. In fact, just today I've been meeting with a panel on therapeutics for children, with an assessment we're doing on shale gas and a report that we're releasing on women in university research. That gives you some idea of the breadth.

The ones that are identified on your screen. The report The State of Science and Technology in Canada was originally the basis on which the government developed its S and T strategy and its priorities for government research funding for the last five years. The second one is one that has had all kinds of impact in terms of conversations that it has stimulated, and that's one on: why is it that the Canadian private sector is investing so little on innovation?

Then the final one, as an example, is one that was done on groundwater. Much to our surprise, that was even used by the B.C. Auditor General as a tool in conducting some of these audits. So there's quite a breadth to what we do.

The second reason that governments come to us is because we are able to harness some of the best and brightest in the world to volunteer their services to these panels. We involve international people, and we involve a broad, multidisciplinary panel. Slide 6 shows you what they do and how they do it. As I say, there's a very rigorous process, usually over the course of 12 to 18 months, that leads to a final report.

In this case, if I can turn to slide 7, Defence Research and Development Canada has developed a conducted energy weapons strategic initiative. There were three priority areas involved in that initiative. We are really not involved in items 1 and 3 on the screen, but on the second one, they asked the council and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences to undertake a joint assessment of the medical and physiological impacts of CEWs. We are exploring that second priority in greater detail. As you'll see on slide 8, we're doing so in partnership with the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences because of the expertise they can bring to bear.

The actual question that we've been asked is on page 9. There are essentially three questions: what is the current state of scientific knowledge about the medical and physiological impacts, what gaps exist in the knowledge, and what research is required to close those gaps? We find with other work that we do that not only is it important to identify what the state of the science is, but it's also extremely important to understand what we don't know. Both of those will be covered by these questions.

The assessment, as you'll see on slide 10, examines the potential short-, medium- and long-term medical and physiological effects of exposure, including, but not limited to, fatalities. It will examine differential risks and medical and physiological impacts that are associated across varying human populations — so looking at the demographic spectrum, age and gender breakdowns, physical health profiles and mental health and substance use profiles as well.

We will look at the gaps in the current literature — including, but not limited to, specific medical and physiological conditions and groups and subpopulations — and then identify research activities and mechanisms that may actually help to close the research gaps.

The assessment will not examine the use of force by law enforcement agencies, the use-of-force continuum and the labelling of CEWs within this continuum. It will not examine police and military training, operational policies, procedures and protocols. It will not examine the effectiveness of less-than-lethal weapons as compared to other means of restraint, and it will also be out of scope to look at injuries to law enforcement or to bystanders. As you might imagine, a topic this broad needs to be scoped in, in some way. What they really need from us is an assessment of the state of the evidence.

When we set up the panel…. You'll see in slide 12 that it's composed of 14 members. They have a range of medical, scientific and engineering specialties. We usually find that by seeking a great variety of disciplines on our panels, we end up with a much richer report and one that is actually more accessible to a broad range of the public because it's not experts in a narrow field talking to themselves.

We needed a range of clinical expertise in relevant medical fields — expertise related to ethics, population health, mental health and vulnerable populations. So you'll see that we have people from pathology and cardiology, pharmacology, biomedical engineering, criminology and ethics.

The next few slides indicate who is actually on the panel. We're very privileged to have the hon. Justice Stephen Goudge, who's a sitting judge with the Court of Appeal for Ontario, as the chair. I say we're very pleased to have him because one of the important elements of this work is to really be able to understand the weight of evidence. And of course he does that work in his daily job.

Then you'll see…. I won't go over all of the rest of them, but we've tried to give you an idea of the breadth and who they actually are. You of course know Robert Gordon, because he just presented, and I understand that Christine Hall, who's also an active member of our panel, presented to your committee earlier on. All of their full bios are available on our website if you're interested.

If I could turn to slide 17. The main audience for this report is the sponsor. It is intended to contribute to the initiative that they have underway, and that's being implemented by the Canadian Police Research Centre and is managed through the Centre for Security Science of DRDC in partnership with the director general for policing policy at Public Safety Canada. In other words, the
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entire range of those that are interested in aspects of this issue are all engaged at the level of the sponsorship.

But we clearly understand that there will be additional audiences or interested readers, from planners and decision-makers to researchers to clinicians and law enforcement. The report will be designed to contribute to Canadian policy development and decision-making but will also have implications for international jurisdictions.

The assessment process consists of four phases, I guess, that may be of interest to you. Now, the first phase took place from May to August of this year. That was the appointment of the panel of volunteer experts, meeting with the sponsor to review the questions, agreeing to the scope of the questions, and then beginning planning for the assessment itself — what kind of methodology we were going to use and how we were going to analyze.

The second phase, which is underway right now, from September to May of next year, is the phase in which the panel will be meeting regularly, where we collect, assess and analyze the evidence, draft the report, select the reviewers and complete the peer review process.

I'll make two comments here. Number one is that you should know that the sponsor is not involved in the process at all. It is totally independent. They come to the first meeting of the panel to explain what they really meant by the question, what's behind the question, what their expectation is — what do they want out of the report? — and they make sure that we have any evidence that we can gather from them. But the chair and the panel are not in touch with them again, and they won't be till the end of the process.

The second thing to say is that in addition to the experts that are on the panel itself, we have a rigorous peer review process. The work will be actually reviewed by virtually as many peer reviewers as panel members. The panel members don't have to agree with the peer reviewers, but they have to take every comment into account. In fact, our board of governors appoints a peer review monitor to attest to the diligence of the process and that due process has been followed.

On page 20 you'll see phase 3, where we're into the process between June and September of copy-editing, translation and printing of the report, and then the release in phase 4. Usually, the sponsor is informed about the report but cannot change the report.

A report is discussed with them. The chair of the panel will present the findings to the sponsor after it's in the printing process. So they will not be able to modify the results of the panel. That's of course in the panel's interest but also in their interest — that they are not seen to have at all influenced the independence of the report.

Page 21 is the last comment that I want to make before trying to answer any questions you may have. It's simply to say that we do put general updates on our website after each panel meeting — just a very general comment. Our rules of confidentiality mean that the panel's work is not discussed outside of the panel while the deliberations are underway, but we do ensure that people know the panel is continuing on.

That's a very brief overview of who we are, what the question is and what our process is. I'd certainly be happy to try and answer any questions that you might have.

M. Coell (Chair): That's great. Thank you very much. That's very helpful. I think the only thing probably most of my colleagues are thinking is that it's too bad that your report doesn't come out till a year after we're presenting ours in the Legislature. And we will be making mention of the date your report comes out so that future politicians on this committee will have the benefit of that. Good luck with that. That's very good.

My question is quite short. I'm wondering how the decisions are made about who will be the experts on the panels.

E. Dowdeswell: We do a lot of due diligence prior to the panel being set up. We seek advice from our own scientific advisory committee. We collect names from a variety of places, but it's nothing magical. We start with the compositional guidelines to assess what kinds of skills we really need around the table.

We do look at things like ensuring there's some international membership, if possible. But essentially, it's just hard work and digging — who has been writing on this field, who knows something about it, who's considered to be an expert? — and that's nothing more or less than good staff work.

L. Krog: I'm just wondering if you can give the committee an idea of how many people will be actually working on this and what the budget is for this particular project.

E. Dowdeswell: We have a small team that has about four people at most. Occasionally with some of our panels, we may seek external advice on a contract basis if there's a piece of evidence that we're missing. But they're very small teams, internally. The price range varies for each of the panels, but for a full assessment it might run up to $500,000.

G. Hogg: Our task is slightly different, if not dramatically different, from yours, and certainly we would benefit. We'd like to believe that we use evidence-based policy development as we move forward. I'm assuming that the academic independence of your process will dictate that
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there can be no interface between the policy development which we're required to come forward with — our recommendations — prior to your report.

Is there any type of interface that could take place — whether or not, for instance, we could submit our tentative recommendations? Is there any review that you have done at that point which could inform us in terms of the directions we're going? Or is that totally an independent process and you would not in any way be able to comment on anything we had when we come forward with our recommendations?

E. Dowdeswell: Certainly, the question of timing, in a sense, is an unfortunate one, because we clearly recognize that our work is driven by the objectivity and the independence that should form the underpinnings for policy development. But there are policy recommendations that you will be making that clearly take into account a lot of other things as well.

I'm not sure that there is anything that the panel could share. But certainly, I'd be prepared to examine…. If you had a question on a very specific element of where you go to find that kind of research, that's a question we might be able to provide some assistance to you on, simply because we may already have done the kind of literature review that would lead us to something. But I suspect there is, unfortunately, very little that we could do for you.

G. Hogg: Yes, I suspected that. However, I guess if there are some specifics, we can make contact, perhaps through Robert Gordon, with respect to that. He can deal with you and make some judgments with respect to that, if that meets without jeopardizing….

E. Dowdeswell: If I may respectfully suggest, it would be better if you were to contact me directly. I wouldn't want the panel to be compromised by being contacted directly, whereas you're quite free to ask me, and I would see if anything could be done. I'd be happy to do that.

G. Hogg: Our intent would not be to compromise, but we use him as a resource to us as well. He would have to make the judgments with respect to a compromise. But certainly, as a province, we use Dr. Gordon as a resource as well. We wouldn't want to see him precluded from being able to comment on our work just because he was participating in another one as well.

E. Dowdeswell: No. He could certainly do that. He just couldn't talk to you about what the panel's work and discussions and deliberations are. But in his own right as an expert, of course he's free to contribute to your process.

G. Hogg: Just, then, going back to the comment that you made, there may be some specifics which you have done some research on which may inform us. We would count, then, on Dr. Gordon to review those, and then to go through you to ensure that there was some access to that information which may inform the direction we're taking.

E. Dowdeswell: Yes, I think particularly for information that is in the public domain.

G. Hogg: I'm not sure that's exactly what I heard you say before, so I just want to clarify that. I thought I heard you say that there may be some instances where you are doing some research which may…. We may have some questions around something that you could specifically inform us on with respect to the work of the council.

E. Dowdeswell: I think if you have specific questions and you want to know whether we have found some literature, some evidence that would be helpful to you, I'd certainly entertain making that available to you.

G. Hogg: Okay. Thank you very much. That was my specific question. So we would come through you.

M. Coell (Chair): Thank you very much. We very much appreciate you taking the time to brief us.

E. Dowdeswell: Not at all. I'm sorry we had to do it by cell phone but delighted to make the contact anyway.

M. Coell (Chair): It worked out fine. Good luck with your research, and I look forward to reading it.

M. Coell (Chair): Members of the committee, before we adjourn, just to go over…. We have one meeting next week where we start deliberations on the Auditor General's work for us. Then we have two days set aside, the 3rd and 4th of December, to do the beginning of the report writing.

I've also asked you to set aside December 10. We may or may not need that date, but if you could set aside that date, that would be great.

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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)
	* Gordon Hogg ((Surrey–White Rock BC Liberal)
	* Leonard Krog (Nanaimo NDP)
	* John Slater (Boundary-Similkameen BC Liberal)
	Joe Trasolini (Port Moody–Capilano NDP)
	* denotes member present
Clerk:	Susan Sourial

Witnesses:	Dr. John Butt
	Elizabeth Dowdeswell (President and CEO, Council of Canadian Academies)
	Dr. Robert Gordon
	Kash Heed (MLA, Vancouver-Fraserview, BC Liberal)
	Cathleen Meechan (Council of Canadian Academies)
	Andrew Taylor (Council of Canadian Academies)

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