Police officers in Ontario can now carry a Taser along with their service gun.
The change, announced by the provincial government today, comes in the wake of the shooting of Sammy Yatim on a Toronto streetcar.
The government is leaving it up to individual police departments to decide if they want to broaden the use of the conducted energy weapons. There's a lot for police forces to consider before they make that decision. But officers in York Region say it makes sense to arm front-line cops with as much as possible.
Before that happens, however, officers will have to be trained on the device’s use.
Tasers have been in use in York Region since 2002, but only sergeants and some tactical officers have previously been allowed to carry the weapon.
The provincial government says its decision was made after extensive consultation with police and coroners across the province. The announcement Aug. 27 from the province comes exactly one month after Yatim was shot while being surrounded by Toronto police officers.
Yatim, 18, was shot to death on a streetcar when confronted by police. Several investigations are underway into the incident and a Toronto officer has been charged with second degree murder.
Const. John Hanrider is the use-of-force instructor with York Regional Police. York region has 222 officers currently carrying Tasers.
Hanrider says police get a one-day, 10-hour training course.
“And they follow that up once a year they have to re-qualify for four hours,” he says.
He says there is one significant difference between a pistol and a Taser.
“It feels a lot like a handgun in the way it's shaped, the fact there is a trigger to actually start it,” he says. “However, what's very different from it is that there is actually an on-off switch. So an officer would actually have to turn on this unit first before it can actually be deployed.”
Last year Taser guns were used 12 times in York Region, and 12 times in Barrie. Neither department has yet to make a decision on what to do. They'll have to consider both cost and training.
Tasers are not cheap. They cost about $1,400, plus training. With just under 1,600 officers on the force in York Region, it could take three years to train everyone.
Staff sergeant John Giangrande has used his Taser once in his career. He's never used his pistol. He says he supports the idea of arming all officers with Tasers.
“Anything we use, that we can use to incapacitate and to gain control, physical control of a subject with the least amount of injury or harm to all involved, makes it a valuable tool,” he says.
Not everybody agrees with that. Marcus Firman spoke out against the Taser plan today. His son Aaron, who had mental health problems, died in Collingwood after being Tasered by police three years ago. Firman says allowing all police officers to carry Tasers is a knee-jerk reaction. He says officers need new skills instead of new weapons.
Firman believes his son would be alive if police officers had used crisis intervention techniques instead of a stun gun to defuse the situation involving his son.
