Comment Corner

I repost this to try and reach a wider audience.

I think all the bleeding hearts on this thread need to pull their collective heads out of their collective asses. The stink has clouded your judgement.

1. That the man was agitated because he was scared, lonely, waited too long or anything else is a nice ex post facto tidbit. I'm glad people here feel free to judge afterwards rather than examine the facts at the time.

2. The man was violent. He's thrashing chairs, swinging tables and clenching his fists. Who among you would be the first to confront this man without some sort of back-up plan, like a Taser? De-escalation is a fine thing, but somebody who's clearly flipped-out like that man was, is at best unpredictable.

3. Following point 2, how much damage would you bleeding hearts have allowed that man to cause before intervening? If he's smashing up the terminal and the police were standing by watching, would you refrain from criticism of their actions then? Take it a different way; if the man were instead in a parking lot bashing in car windows, of which one of the smashed windows were YOUR car and there were the police, doing nothing as he bashed in window after window and their rationale was to let him just peter out, would you be satisfied?

4. Nobody expected him to die from the taser. Nobody expects anybody to die from being tasered. It's an unfortunate and sad outcome. Keep in mind that his death was not a forgone conclusion when the police tasered him. Also, there's no cause of death yet from the coroner.

5. Police are always going to need a variety of tools to intervene with whacked out fuckers. Starting with hand-gestures and talking right on up to a gun. If you start removing intervention tools, you remove opportunities to resolve things without harm to anybody, which includes the fucking police. I don't know where this expectation that the police should routinely risk themselves harm came from, but it's got to stop.

6. There are no guarentees in life. Mere police presence can cause hostage-taking to get them to back off. Pepper spray can cause an allergic reaction closing off people's airways, choking them. Studies have shown a direct correlation between baton swinging and broken bones. The alternative is that the police are given a whistle and a back-pack full of Dr. Phil books; good luck getting folks to sign up for that job. See the tail-end of point 5.

7. Had this man not died, nobody would have given two shits about the intervention option used by the police. Crazy fucker at the airport tasered, hauled away and deported should have been the story.

8. This doesn't mean you're going to get tasered and die in this country. If the police arrive at scene, here's a simple solution to ease your fears: DON'T GIVE THEM A REASON TO TASER YOU. Swinging a chair around isn't the international sign for "Where's my mommy?" Police are human too. They want to go home safe and sound to their families at night. They get scared too. 2 RCMP officers were killed in the past month dealing with crazy violent people; do you think any of those officers wanted to be death number 3?

9. The conclusion is this: If you hate the police or tasers, this isn't the case for you to hang your hat on to get rid of either of them. Chalk it up as a terrible outcome, life isn't perfect and move on.

10. And to you retards out there that want the police to go to jail for this, grow up. You're not going to forge a better Canada by jailing police officers for unforeseeable outcomes. You're going to paralyze them with fear that intervention comes at personal risk from uninformed after-the-facters. Then, when the police don't act, you'll attack them for that too. Lastly, if you've got the whole police intervention deal down pat that you can feel free to judge, why aren't you a cop making this country better? Take an honest look at your reasons and think of the person who chose that profession despite what you had to say about it.