Vancouver transit riders tasered for not paying fares
The country’s only armed transit police have been tasering passengers who try to avoid paying fares.
According to documents provided in response to a Freedom of Information request, police patrolling public transit in the Metro Vancouver area have used tasers 10 times in the past 18 months, including five occasions when victims had been accosted for riding free.
In one incident, a non-paying passenger was tasered after he held onto a railing on the SkyTrain platform and refused to let go.
“After several warnings to the subject to stop resisting arrest and the subject failing to comply with the officers’ commands, the taser was deployed and the subject was taken into control,” said the report provided by TransLink, the region’s transit authority.
An internal review of the incident concluded that the action taken by transit police officers complied with the force’s policy and was within guidelines “set out in the National Use of Force Model,” the report said.
On another occasion, a passenger was tasered when he fled from police who found him without a payment receipt during a “fare blitz.” This time, however, the passenger got away because, as recounted in the report, “the Taser was ineffective due to the subject’s clothing and [he] escaped the custody of the officers.”
The region’s popular, elevated SkyTrain system operates on a partial honour system, without turnstiles. However, riders caught without a ticket are subject to heavy fines, as high as $175. Officers ask passengers at random for proof of payment.
Yesterday, the head of the RCMP admitted the that police force did not do a good job making information public about taser use, and vowed that changes will be made.
“Frankly we did not handle this matter very well,” Commissioner William Elliott told the Canadian Club of Ottawa. “We should not have needed two kicks at the can. We must learn from that and do better.”
The taser controversy will be in the spotlight again today - the mother of Robert Dziekanski, the Polish immigrant who died after being tasered by the RCMP last year at Vancouver International Airport, is expected to testify before a parliamentary committee in Ottawa.
With reports from Omar El Akkad in Ottawa and The Canadian Press
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