Montreal police seeking to increase number of stun guns

One councillor concerned about ‘lazier policing’

Montreal officials are considering a request by local police to significantly increase the number of stun guns available to beat officers on the ground.

The plan is to have one such weapon for every two-person patrol team by 2020 and to also have many more officers trained and certified to use them, according to reports published Tuesday.

Interim police chief Martin Prud’homme sent a memo to officers, noting police stationed at Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport as well as in the subway system will also have the weapons in addition to front-line officers.

The city’s public safety committee was meeting Tuesday to hear plans for intermediate weapons — a policing term for tools such as conducted energy weapons, batons and spray that are not intended to cause serious injury or death.

But one longtime Montreal city councillor is urging caution before the city authorizes widespread use of the stun guns.

“All the information shows quite clearly that Tasers are not harmless weapons,” said Marvin Rotrand.

He said an increase in the number of shock weapons in the U.S. has resulted in far more frequent use by authorities. “What’s generally happened is that intermediate weapons have led to lazier policing,” he said.

Similar debates over expanded use are taking place in other cities like Toronto and Ottawa, where police have also made the request.

Montreal police subsequently added more electro-shock weapons to their arsenal following a recommendation in a 2016 coroner’s report into the death of a homeless, mentally ill man named Alain Magloire in 2014.

Magloire was fatally shot by police, with the coroner finding that officers didn’t have a stun weapon available during the incident.

The coroner suggested the number of stun weapons was insufficient for a city the size of Montreal and lagged behind the number in other Canadian cities like Calgary, Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto.

There was a call for a moratorium on stun weapons after the death of Quilem Registre in October 2007. He was shocked six times in a minute and died four days later. The coroner who investigated said it might have contributed in his death.

Rotrand, who voiced his opposition following Registre’s death, again urged careful consideration. “I don’t think that this should be buffaloed through city council,” he said.

Dan Philip of the Black Coalition of Quebec also called for police to take a different tack and focus on training to deal with mental health cases. “The emphasis should be on training, the emphasis should be on protecting lives,” he said.

“A system should be in place — not to Taser people — but to give them an opportunity, to give police an opportunity, to deal with those problems.”