Dziekanski Inquiry: What To Do When The Stapler Defense Fails...

.

.....Blame Your Use Of Deadly Force On Bad Posture.

Yesterday the first RCMP officer testified at the Dziekanski inquiry (I refuse to slap the 'Braidwood' moniker on the thing - it is Mr. Dziekanski that is dead):

(RCMP Constable) Rundel, who made repeated references to his training, said Dziekanski's actions justified the use of the Taser well before he picked up the stapler.

He said when Dziekanski turned away he was non-compliant and resistant, which, according to the RCMP's use-of-force guidelines at the time, allowed the use of a Taser.....

So, there you have it.

It's a kinda/sorta a backing off of the "staplers-justify-the-use-of-deadly-force" defense.

But what if there was physical evidence that there actually was no deadly weapon-of mass-office-implement-destruction?

Evidence like, say, this:

Rundel was shown a video of the incident, taken by a witness, and asked to point out when Dziekanski lifted the stapler in an aggressive manner, but he could not.

"Are Dziekanski's hands not down?" asked retired judge Thomas Braidwood, who is overseeing the inquiry.

What to do then?

Well, you move to the next stage of your rather bizarre fallback defense.

Which is, of course the justification of deadly force in the face of bad, scary, dangerous, no-good, hands-down, combative posture.

Yes.

Posture, as in 'stance':

"From my view at that point, my best recollection is that they're still in a combative stance, so I don't think you really can make that determination from this back view," replied Rundel.


Meanwhile, two major Canadian police organizations are now calling for more tasers.

So that we can give one to every single police officer in the country.

To which we can only ask (again).

Why don't they just ask for staplers?

After all, they are, apparently, more effective/scary.

Sheesh.

.