Police plan for more stun guns decried at meeting
Public security committee session shows polarizing nature of issue
Will giving a stun gun to every pair of police officers on the beat make the public safer or put citizens at greater risk?
Tuesday’s session of Montreal’s public security committee — now held in public under Mayor Valérie Plante’s administration — revealed how polarized Montrealers are over that question.
The Montreal police department wants to equip all patrol cars with one of the electroshock weapons by 2020.
Interim police chief Martin Prud’homme announced the plan to members of the force in a letter on Monday. He also said the SPVM wants to provide stun guns to airport police, métro police, the ECLIPSE squad formed to crack down on street gangs and the urban brigade in charge of security at outdoor events.
On Tuesday, a half-dozen highranking SPVM officers and representatives of the provincial police academy touted the use of intermediate weapons — theoretically non-lethal weapons used by police to deal with difficult situations from demonstrations to confrontations with mentally unstable people — to the committee.
In 85 per cent of cases in which Montreal police officers deploy a stun gun, they don’t have to use it because simply showing that they have it is enough to defuse the situation, said Cmdr. Jean-Nicolas Nault.
“If you use a gun, it’s almost certain that there will be serious injuries or death, while with a Taser, injuries or death are the exception, not the rule,” André Durocher, a police inspector responsible for communications, said to reporters after the session.
Having one available in all squad cars can save precious minutes in a crisis, he noted.
The SPVM maintains that the decision to almost triple the number of stun guns in the force from 64 today to 179 in two years follows up on a recommendation by coroner Luc Malouin on the death of Alain Magloire, a man in psychological distress who was shot to death by police outside the Berri bus terminal in 2014.
Malouin said police should have immediately called for a stun gun and medical help when it became clear that Magloire had behavioural problems. An officer carrying one arrived at the scene less than a minute after Magloire was shot.
But during the public question period, numerous critics warned that equipping police with more stun guns could cause a rise in injuries and even deaths.
The Black Coalition of Quebec warned that making them more widely available to police could increase cases of police brutality. It cited statistics showing that 1,100 people have been killed by stun guns in the United States and that in 442 of those cases survivors sought redress from police or cities.
The coalition warned that stun guns have often been used against people with mental illness and visible minorities.
Alex Norris, chairperson of the public security committee, said that even if Prud’homme has announced the purchase of stun guns to members of the force, it is not a done deal.
“Any purchase of weapons or material of this nature must be approved by the executive committee, city council and the agglomeration council. So we’re a long way away from that. What has been expressed is an intention on the part of the police chief so far,” he said.