Three times?????

It makes you wonder. Perhaps it's time to stop the political correctness and bring back realistic recruiting standards for the RCMP. You never heard about incidents like this years ago. A couple of burly mounties would have had Mr. Lasser on his ass so fast it would have made his head spin.

Now days it seems the mounties are afraid to use physical force and rely on things like tasers to do what was done handraulicly years ago.

Now days it seems the mounties are afraid to use physical force and rely on things like tasers to do what was done handraulicly years ago.

Now days it seems the mounties are afraid to use physical force and rely on things like tasers to do what was done handraulicly years ago.

Now days it seems the mounties are afraid to use physical force and rely on things like tasers to do what was done handraulicly years ago.

I can't answer about three times; I was not there.

It will be our preconceived bias that automatically sees this a another measure of police being out of control or whether it is seen as something that had to be done on the spot without a lot of contemplation about it.

Or somewhere in between.

I understand the desire to extrapolate from this to criminals but let's not cloud the issue yet...he was 80 and sick.

But he was 80 and sick and holding a deadly weapon and refusing to comply with a lawful order to release it.

It can be given that baton use in this case would physically injure the man. He would have sustained deep bruising at least, putting him in danger of blood clots, or broken bones which might never heal properly. No matter what his condition, he would be injured.


The taser on the other hand, once it is turned off, leaves no lasting effects at all except in the few whose prior but unknowable condition puts them at high risk for heart failure. Age alone carries no such risk.

The report is due soon about taser use. I suspect that the % of people adversely affected by being tasered so that they die will be much smaller than people currently guess.

This all being said, I repeat what I wrote in my first post: the taser was designed to handle a deadly threat and assault without having to go automatically to a deadly response, a shooting.

Using it to compel people who are not offering any threat (let alone a deadly threat), to become compliant, is wrong and against policy in most (all?) provinces.

Let's save our indignation for these breaches. I know that reading "80 yr old attacked in hospital by cops with tasers" has a great anti-cop ring to it but the presence of the knife in the hands of a delusional man with the ability to kill with one move anyone who came near him, changes everything.

Given these facts, this was a deadly threat and was handled without causing or likelihood of causing of death. Kudos.