Police Rapped for Using Taser on Girl in Bedroom
A Dartmouth teen who was wrestled onto her bed and shocked twice by police last February was found not guilty Tuesday of assaulting officers and resisting arrest.
“The spectacle of a 17-year-old girl being Tasered in her bedroom is a very disturbing and disconcerting one,” Judge Anne Derrick said in Halifax youth court. “I find the police acted outside the scope of their authority in arresting (the girl) and that she was entitled to resist and committed no offence in doing so, and I acquit her of the charges before the court.”
The girl testified during the first day of the trial in November that being Tasered felt like having a “burning, open cut.”
Now 18 and the mother of a three-week-old daughter, she told reporters Tuesday that she was confident all along that she would be cleared of the charges, which included two counts of assaulting police and one of resisting arrest.
She said she will file a complaint with Halifax Regional Police over the conduct of the three officers involved and will likely file a lawsuit as well.
“I wanted to wait until today, to make sure that I was going to win the case first,” said the teen, whose name is banned from publication under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
“I just don’t understand why I was Tasered because I’m not a criminal.”
The Feb. 19, 2007, incident, at a public housing project in Dartmouth, occurred at about 8:30 p.m. after the girl got into an argument on the phone with her younger sister, who had taken her purse.
The girl’s mother called police to say she wanted her daughter removed from the premises because she had threatened to damage property.
Three constables - Phillip MacKenzie, Tara Doiron and Brendan Harvey - responded to the call and went upstairs to the girl’s bedroom, where they found her quietly looking out the window.
Police admitted at trial that no damage had been done to the home and that no one had been hurt so they felt they had no authority to arrest the girl at that point.
When Const. MacKenzie tried to talk the girl into leaving the house for the night, she grew angry and began swearing at the officers.
At that point, the officers perhaps should have retreated into the hallway to confer with the girl’s mother, Judge Derrick said.
“By not leaving the bedroom that evening, the police set up the circumstances for an intense confrontation.”
The girl described Const. MacKenzie’s approach as “authoritarian and confrontational.”
“Whether or not he intended to intimidate her with his power and authority, that’s how she perceived the situation, which is not surprising,” Judge Derrick said.
“She was an upset and agitated 17-year-old girl with three uniformed police officers in her bedroom. She was being told her mother wanted her out of the house. So an overly aggressive response to this situation could have been predicted.”
Const. MacKenzie decided to arrest the girl, and she fought back. She was wrestled to the bed, sat on, Tasered by Const. Harvey and handcuffed.
Constables MacKenzie and Doiron were kicked in the face during the arrest.
Paramedics treated the girl at the scene.
The Crown argued Tuesday that the officers had grounds to arrest the girl once she “crossed the line” with her behaviour.
“The youth didn’t need to respond the way she did,” Crown attorney John Nisbet said in his closing arguments.
But Judge Derrick rejected that argument.
“(The girl) was not committing a breach of the peace when the police arrived at her home,” the judge said. “She was not committing a breach of the peace when the police officers went up to her bedroom. She wanted the police to leave. They could see that there had been no damage and no injury to anyone.
“If a breach of the peace occurred, it was because an unlawful arrest occurred.”
Const. Jeff Carr, spokesman for the regional police, read the file over after he was contacted by reporters Tuesday afternoon.
“At some point, the officers made the decision that the most effective way to take the girl into custody without risk of injury to her or them involved deployment of the Taser,” Const. Carr said.
He said department policy requires officers to complete a controlled-response report any time they use a Taser, draw a firearm or use physical force to make an arrest.
“Should we receive a complaint, as with any complaint, an investigation will be conducted,” Const. Carr said. “And I would anticipate us reviewing the judge’s decision.”
Taser use burst into headlines countrywide last fall after a Polish immigrant died Oct. 14 at the Vancouver airport after he was zapped with a stun gun during an altercation with RCMP.
Howard Hyde, a Dartmouth man who suffered from schizophrenia, died Nov. 22, moments after a struggle with jail guards and about 30 hours after Halifax police had shocked him twice with a Taser during his arrest on charges of spousal abuse.
Mr. Hyde’s death prompted provincial Justice Minister Cecil Clarke to order a review of Taser use in Nova Scotia. The first phase of the review is expected to be done by the end of February and will include a public report on the policies and procedures surrounding the use of Tasers, including training, when use of the devices is authorized and how often they are used.
A panel of experts from law enforcement and the sciences will then be appointed to study the findings and make recommendations to the minister.
Taser reviews are also being conducted in British Columbia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador.
© 2008 The Chronicle Herald
Tasered in her own bedroom… Sounds like Canada is as skewed as the US on taser use. I believe they should be banned until a more stringent approach is used. They have caused deaths and what can be said about that. Thsy have been used in situations that don’t warrant their use. With all due respect to law enforcement personel that have had to use this weapon in real life it seems like the lazy way out in a lot of cases. Tasering a seventeen year old girl in her own bedroom sounds a little over the top. But what do I know.
its not country specific. it is human species specific. just like the stanford prison experiment, once given Authority, humans WILL NOT accept a challenge to that Authority. Cops are good people, generally, that is until they strap on a gun, uniform and other implements of control. For this reason alone tasers should be banned.
At least there are a few judges out there who are still willing to hold the police to a minimum standard of behavior.
Maybe her mother will think twice next time before calling the police on her own daughter. I hope the girl managed to knock out some teeth when she kicked those constables in the face.
This is beyond real. Whatever happened to grounding the offending daughter instead of throwing her out in the street at night? It seems to me that the other daughter who took the tasered daughter’s purse is the one at fault in the family. Hopefully, now that the young woman is a mother, she will get some parenting lessons.
Hey, i said i wouldnt comment here again because i was being moderated but i guess im changing my mind, hopefully a fuck or shit is not going to offend.
My comment is:
The rationale behind the taser is that tasers are to be used in cases where it was that or the pistol. Are we to beleive that it was that or the pistol?
Tasers are just another tool in a cop’s arsenal to inflict pain on people they want to harass. The flashlight, the baton, the threat of taking you to jail for 24 hours and then oops! not guilty, and now the taser. In an utopian parrallel world where cops dont abuse their power, arent prone to agressive authoritarian outbursts, and where the taser is used as a last possible resort before a handgun, i would agree to it. But this is Canada, not a fictional utopia.
And I thought Canada would be a great place to move so that I could get the medication I need at a reasonable price. The residency application’s already in process, but this kind of story is very disturbing. Makes it sound like I’d be moving to just another U.S.A.
Cops are good people, generally, that is until they strap on a gun, uniform and other implements of control
I’ve seen little evidence of that.
The article doesn’t directly indicate it, but would anyone like to speculate on the color of the skin of the various people involved? I’d be pretty surprised to learn that it wasn’t a bunch of white cops and a black teenager.
It’s interesting to read the Chronicle’s article on this, and furthermore, the comments insisting that if the girl hadn’t been unruly in the first place, she would never have brought the Wrath of the Taser down upon her head.
As a former teenager and current mother, I would like to offer the following thoughts for consideration:
My mother and I would routinely argue, and I would leave the house, or try to, just to be allowed time to calm down. She would often call the police and report an assault or report that I had run away and been gone for more than 24 hours to justify her report. YES, you heard me right, my mother LIED TO POLICE to manipulate and control my actions. Nevermind that she was the one who would throw things or sit on me to restrain me, or lock me in my own room. The virulent cruelties that spewed from her mouth when she was angry were always forgotten. I was once handcuffed and dragged into a psychiatric evaluation against my will (for which I filed a writ at juvenile court and was ordered released). It became this never-ending loop of my mother lying and manipulating to get me put into one program after another. I ran away in earnest, because every time I came home, I was sent somewhere else.
True I was no angel, but my biggest flaw was that I would not and could not fit into my mother’s preconceived notion of What Her Daughter Should Be Like.
I want people to consider that some of these situations are caused by bad parenting and disrespectful communication.
Parents can and do use Legal Authority to abuse their children, and it can sometimes be a very fine line to walk between getting help for your child and subjecting said child to the most horrific, befuddling mindgames ever invented.
I would NEVER call the police on my 12 year old son, no matter WHAT the dispute; they are simply too big a variable these days. You may get good, empathetic police or loose cannons trying to prove something.
Also, someone PLEASE do the math. If this girl has a three week old baby now, and this occurred on Feb.19, 2007, could it be that Mom was arguing with her because she just found out she was pregnant?
MARCH
APRIL
MAY
JUNE
JULY
AUGUST
SEPTEMBER
OCTOBER
NOVEMBER
DECEMBER
9 1/2 MONTHS.
What a coincidence, eh?
Can one imagine if she had been tazed and died?
I thought the same thing lyllyth, she might have been pregnant.
The low standards which make up the requirements to be a police officer in corporate government countries ensures that the said police officers are not intended, or trained, to enforce the law but to intimidate the citizenry at every opportunity in order to keep the populace subservient. What is needed to curb the omnipresent and intimidating use of force by the corporate government’s security forces is to have an open season on police officers, such that any person who is able should make a sincere attempt to shoot at least one cop. Unless the hoodlums and assassins which the corporate governments dress in uniforms and calls law officers are taught to fear when they do wrong, there will always be “suicide by cop”, tasering of the weak and the pepper spraying of infants and women.
It is interesting to note that the official story is always dependent on some information never available to the general population. The truth never suffers from honest examination. The police are paid a handsome salary and benefit package by the people of Canada to protect them from the very thing that unfolded in a family home. In the honest appraisal of all those who under no circumstances would inflict torture and pain on a 17 year old unarmed child are told by the authorities their judgment on this case is premature.
If the police entered the girls bedroom and their was no damage to the room, then the child in self reflection was addressing the issue herself and winning the moral battle.
By what law does an any citizen of Canada demand that a 17 year old girl leaves the only security in her life, the safety of the family home especially in times of duress?
It is no wonder, these two fully grown officers after they initiated a violent action against a 17 year old girl in the sanctuary of her own bedroom and then shot her with a Taser, to make her comply to their brutal and unthinking attempt at an arrest felt their life was in danger. Most thinking and courageous men or women would have stood in vigorous defense against the outrage of this incident. A shame to the policing profession and the degradation of the young member of our national family, by an organized and ever more threatening police state. By the standards of international law, and the United Nations Declaration of human rights, Tasers are torture. Violence begets violence. This is the law of nature. Officers of the law should be in the possession of the social lever of tact, and the higher characteristic of tolerance.
Taser’s have killed in the past and they will kill in the future. The Vancouver incident, is fact enough for most Canadians to make an honest appraisal of the situation. An eye witness account. Facts speak for themselves. Canadians are not stupid. Manslaughter is a criminal activity where death or damage to another is caused by reckless, criminal and unthinking behavior. Every use of this weapon is risking the death of a citizen of Canada before due process. The law in Canada is innocent until proven guilty. Murder is a serious offence, whether deliberate or accidental, but there is nothing accidental about aiming and firing a Taser. Our actions are our final decisions. Risking murder before the administration of civil law is not “by the book”
The Judge in this case should be honored for her wisdom judgment on this case and reprimanded for protecting the unlawful actions of the police officers in the proper administration of Canadian Law. The innocent must go free while the guilty are punished. Justice is to nation life what faith is to religion. Woe upon any nation when it’s most humble citizen cannot receive ready justice before its courts.
PaulKemp
Canadian Action Party
http://www.PaulKemp.info