I am quite saddened by the death of Robert Dziekanski. I am quite proud to have worked with police in one way or another my whole career and am of no doubt that this is a situation where something went horribly wrong so the step BC Premier Gordon Campbell has taken to call a public inquiry is a good one:
Attorney-General Wally Oppal said the government was forced to call a public inquiry after it became clear various authorities - including Vancouver airport, the RCMP and Canada Border Services Agency - were not providing useful answers about what went wrong. "There was a huge vacuum of information there," Mr. Oppal said. "We all viewed that horrible video, and the circumstances, and I think it's safe to say we were waiting for some kind of appropriate answer from the authorities and nothing was forthcoming at all. ... The public deserves answers." Mr. Dziekanski died within minutes of being tasered repeatedly at Vancouver International Airport a month ago, where he had spent hours wandering in a vain search for his mother, Zofia Cisowski.What really bugs me about the situation is that in 1991 I got off a plane in Warsaw where I knew no one, no one was there to meet me, passed through customs with officers had machine guns and checked my papers under 25 watt bulbs as the guy behind me tried to shove a bottle of whisky into the officers coat pocket, got a taxi (after likely paying ten times too much) through the grey dawn thinking about how interesting it was that the communists really failed to develop a reasonable weed whacker or concrete maintenance schedule, got to the central train station and stood in the middle of the morning rush hour crowd in the great Stalinist room and was left with no recourse but to shout out loud if anyone spoke English to help me translate the massive fifty foot high board filled with the letters "k" and "z" listing train departures ad arrivals at one end of the space. Of course someone stopped. Many stopped and helped and were happy to do so and happy to ask if I knew their cousin in Minnesota. Since then when I hear Polish in a public space I look to smile and I have given directions.
Apart from how it tragically ended, how is it that this person did not receive help for hours in a public space which is supposed to have very high security standards?
Comments
Sean Liddle - November 20, 2007 10:44 pm
Not to sound cold, but perhaps if the guy wasn't tossing chairs about and acting like a caveman the cops wouldn't have felt the need to subdue him the way they did. I don't care if someone is from Novosibirsk or Toledo Ohio, its not like they were caning him for 10 hours. Methinks if you show up in a foreign land, you arrange for someone to meet you OR you have a phrasebook or three with you, AND all teh proper paperwork and yo are polite to the people in authority. The Tazer was only a catalyst, it didn't kill him.
sean liddle - November 21, 2007 12:12 pm
Yep, seen it. Stand by my statement.
I am sure the vast majority of wife beaters stop beating their wives as soon as the cops show up which doesn't mean the police should smile and crack jokes with him, they should smack him around a bit and toss him in a cruiser headfirst. I am a firm believer that people for the most part are not arrested, accused of murder, convicted of rape or tazered by police during an arrest unless they have put themselves in a position whereby the authorities honestly believe it is in the best interest of society to lock em up or do such things to them. Personally, I'd rather see a few "innocent" or semi-innocent people arrested, accused or tazed or whatever it takes if it means more criminals are caught.
If they guy was here trafficking drugs would people be up in arms over what happened? No. If he was an big angry looking black man in baggy pants, backwards hat and six pounds of gold chains would they? Not likely. White guy, relatively well dressed, here to see his mother, acts like a caveman, gets tazed and his body reacts badly to it. I am sure there are people who have histaminal reactions to peppersprray, doesn't mean it should be banned either.
A tazer is a tool, like a baton or a firearm, and doesn't kill people directly.
Hans - November 21, 2007 4:22 pm
Geezuz Sean. Let's just Tazer everybody that looks like they might cause trouble. We'd save money on handcuffs.
A nail gun is a tool too. I can use it to subdue a troublemaker or I can talk to the troublemaker, ascertain the source of the trouble, ease the troublemakers state of mind, eliminate the violence from the situation and then process the troublemaker through the various layers of authority that I represent without resorting to violence myself. Either way the situation is dealt with. The first way the troublemaker ends up with a few nails in his head, though.
Alan - November 27, 2007 2:05 pm
Good Lord. There was a Polish speaking customs officer not kept on the matter throughout the ten hours before the death.