TORONTO - Ontario promised tighter rules Tuesday around the use of stun guns by police, including against pregnant women and children, but left it up to individual officers to decide when Taser use is appropriate, a move critics said will do little to curtail abuses.
"There was a lack of consistency with regards to guidelines and training standards, said Minister of Community Safety Rick Bartolucci.
"So those are the two recommendations that we zeroed in on to make changes as quickly as possible."
A report commissioned by the government in 2008 recommends the continued use of Tasers in Ontario, calling them "an effective, less lethal weapon" for law enforcement. But it also said the government should amend provincial guidelines to include rules about deployment of the guns -- otherwise known as conductive energy weapons (CEW) -- as well as standardized training for all users and instructors.
When it comes to the "vulnerable population," which includes the elderly, children and pregnant women, there are new guidelines, said Bartolucci. Still, it will be left up to individual police officers to make the decision to use the gun, "because he or she is in that situation and he or she must best respond," he added.
Critics panned the changes as "grossly inadequate," saying they do little to address concerns raised amid incidents that have seen police use Tasers against youths or the mentally ill.
"A whole bunch of the Ontario and Canadian public has concerns about the utilization of Tasers, about whether or not there is any strong science that allows guidelines to be developed," said NDP justice critics Peter Kormos.
"There appears to be no real handle on when a Taser is lethal as compared to being non-lethal, and we've witnessed some tragic deaths of people who were the victims of Tasering by police officers."
Both federal and provincial governments are working on national standards for Taser use, but Ontario -- which has its own provincial police force unlike some provinces which use the RCMP -- is forging its own path.
At least 20 people in Canada are known to have died after being struck with a Taser.
Ontario's new rules say that where possible the weapons should be avoided when dealing with a person who is handcuffed, pregnant women, elderly people, young children or a visibly frail person. Officers should also aim Tasers away from sensitive areas of the body such as the head or genitals, and try not to use them on someone driving a car or bicycle.
If the Taser is used in any of these so-called vulnerable population, police should ensure they get medical treatment.
Ontario's review was launched after the 2007 death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, an incident which sparked a public inquiry in British Columbia. Dziekanski died after being hit with a RCMP Taser at the Vancouver airport. A video of the confrontation taken by a fellow passenger triggered public outrage and a re-examination of stun gun use.
In releasing his findings last July, Justice Thomas Braidwood called on the B.C. government to place severe restrictions on the use of Tasers, including that the weapons only be used when there's a threat of bodily harm.
Around that time Alberta tightened its Taser use guidelines to reflect that recommendation, and B.C. also imposed similar restrictions.
Nova Scotia also made some changes to its Taser use policies last year after an inquiry into the death of Howard Hyde, a 45-year-old musician with a history of schizophrenia. He died in jail about 30 hours after he was arrested for an alleged assault and stunned with a Taser during a struggle inside a Halifax police station.
In Ontario, the parents of a teenage girl from a remote First Nation in northwestern Ontario filed a $500,000 lawsuit against Ontario Provincial Police in February 2009 after reports that she was zapped with a Taser in a jail cell. The lawsuit claimed that the girl, then 14, was manhandled and stunned simply for peeling paint off a wall.
Bartolucci rejected calls to ban the use of Tasers on young people at the time, saying such a move would be a knee-jerk reaction that would prevent police from using the devices.
Despite such incidents Larry Molyneaux, president of the Police Association of Ontario, said any federal model will likely mirror Ontario's because the province is the "lead in relation to reporting use of force and the rest of Canada follows our lead."
The changes are meaningful because they make sure that every police officer in Ontario is held to the same standard, said Molyneaux, whose association had a seat on the committee that authored the report.
"It's my position that everybody in Canada should have standardized training in relation to CEWs and firearms," he said.
Molyneaux also defended the decision to leave it up to police officers to make the final call on whether or not to use a Taser in the cases of so-called vulnerable populations.
"You can have people that are handcuffed that can be very, very violent, so you have to look at each circumstance as its own and you have to weigh it in its own merit," Molyneaux said.
The Police Association of Ontario, like many police services, has long advocated for all uniformed police officers to be allowed to carry stun guns, arguing they're less lethal than guns and will save lives, and that's one point they will continue to lobby for.
Currently, only tactical officers and supervisors are allowed to carry Tasers in Ontario, and for now, that's not going to change.
Tasers have been in use in Ontario since 2002, and according to the report, a total of 2,171 Tasers were used within the province as of September 2008.
