“I want to get out, help me find the way…Police! Police! Can’t you help me?“
The RCMP, an international embarrassment.
A Polish immigrant tasered to death by Canadian police appears to have been asking for their help in a non-violent fashion, when he was tasered.
mth wrote:
It didn’t strike me that throwing a chair at a glass wall and brandishing a stapler while ranting incomprehensibly (I suppose it might have been comprensible in Polish but this isn’t Poland) when the RCs approach is asking for help in a non-violent fashion.
Typically when trying to find the exit I look for the signs which seems to work for the thousands of people that don’t speak English that pass through YVR.
It’s too bad that they guy is dead and the cops may have been a little taser happy, but right or wrong you just don’t act aggressively towards the cops.
Here’s an instructional video about dealing with the police.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gCCjFbFXn8
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 6:29 am | Permalink
Ian in NS wrote:
You’ve linked to source that can’t by any stretch be called authoritative - the blogger has clearly made up his mind that the RCMP are liars & murderers, and has accused those who present a different POV in his comments section of being trolls. The last words reported in the New Zealand article were translated by a Polish blogger who watched the Youtube video - a different translation appears on the BlueLine site, where another Polish speaker claims the guy was saying, “Get back!” and “Fuck off!” Who you want to believe says a lot about your preconceived notions.
I refuse to condemn those officers based on a grainy, jumpy video shot from another room with the suspect’s back turned to us. We can’t know what really happened in that room from that footage.
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 8:30 am | Permalink
nick wrote:
Better yet go to Poland. Scream at the border guards there (all carry guns) in a foreign language. Then when you dont get the response you want start throwing furniture around the room. If you only get tasered you will have gotten off lightly.
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 9:41 am | Permalink
Raphael Alexander wrote:
Nick, then how did Mr.Dziekanski survive for 40 years in Poland and 10 hours in Canada?
Your logic is astounding.
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 11:59 am | Permalink
Nick wrote:
Wow Ralph your intelligence knows no bounds. Using your logic my family and I have managed living in this country for close to 200 years without one person being killed by a gov’t official of any type. Although my grandfather was killed by the germans tyring to liberate Poland back in 1945. Of course confusing the issue with facts might be hard for a professional hand wringer like yourself to grasp.
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 12:05 pm | Permalink
Aaron Unruh wrote:
“If you only get tasered you will have gotten off lightly.”
I too think that summary execution is an appropriate sentence for throwing a stool.
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 12:53 pm | Permalink
Nick wrote:
Ha ha ha well put Aaron. I am glad you are not overeacting by making ludicrous statements. Next time your house gets broken into I assume you wont call the police for fear of a “summary execution”. No wonder our country is in such fine shape. With Milquetoast people like you running around screaming summary execution when the police use legal means, (albeit a bit prematurely).
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 1:17 pm | Permalink
Anonymous wrote:
Has thepolitic become the Aaron Unruh show? The last 19/20 posts have been from Aaron Unruh. Has he finally managed to scare everyone else away, or does this guy really have no life outside of cyberspace?
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 1:24 pm | Permalink
Aaron Unruh wrote:
Thanks Nick. Next time my house gets broken into, I’ll have to decide whether or not to a) deal with the threat myself or b) call 911 and wait half an hour for a police officer to arrive. It’s a choice that non-milquetoast people like you have never considered, apparently.
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 1:26 pm | Permalink
Aaron Unruh wrote:
“Has thepolitic become the Aaron Unruh show? The last 19/20 posts have been from Aaron Unruh. Has he finally managed to scare everyone else away, or does this guy really have no life outside of cyberspace?”
You know, artist formerly known as Better Than Ezra, you really do need to figure out what an IP address is.
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 1:32 pm | Permalink
Anonymous wrote:
Nice to see you came to your senses and removed my name.
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 1:38 pm | Permalink
Aaron Unruh wrote:
Post something that isn’t an insult and you’ll get all the respect you can handle.
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 1:39 pm | Permalink
Aaron Unruh wrote:
“Nice to see you came to your senses and removed my name.”
Okay, fascinating. So what do you think of tasers, BtE?
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 1:40 pm | Permalink
Anonymous wrote:
Indeed… if you weren’t a hypocrite on this point, I would take that as a fair rebuke. Sadly, both of our history proves otherwise.
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 1:41 pm | Permalink
Aaron Unruh wrote:
Oh look, a whole comment thread that promises to be all about Better Than Ezra. Must be a slow day at ye olde bureaucracy office.
Count me out.
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 1:48 pm | Permalink
Anonymous wrote:
“Count me out.”
Just like all the others who have left this sinking ship.
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 3:07 pm | Permalink
Aaron Unruh wrote:
Sinking ship? Check it out:
http://truthlaidbear.com/showd.....olitic.com
Don’t know about you, but that appears to be just a slight upward trend. Not to mention numbers that 90% of Canadian blogs would salivate over.
Perhaps Greg could tell you more on the readership of this blog? Then again, why would we care what a third rate troll thinks anyway?
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 3:42 pm | Permalink
Raphael Alexander wrote:
Wow Ralph your intelligence knows no bounds. Using your logic my family and I have managed living in this country for close to 200 years without one person being killed by a gov’t official of any type.
Nick, don’t presume to impress me with that statistic. We’ve been here since 1854 and it’s no small potatoes either, but I’m fairly sure neither is relevant to the debate.
When you’re done red herring us to death, maybe we can get back to the topic.
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 3:57 pm | Permalink
Raphael Alexander wrote:
It’s not “Ralph”, by the way. Reading comprehension goes a long way.
Anyway, Aaron and I are both conservatives and we’re both strongly against the usage of lethal force to subdue an unarmed person in mental distress. So obviously this is a multipartisan issue.
And the next time you want to talk about hand-wringing, you better consider your next speeding or parking ticket could wind you up in a pine box. Unless you are less belligerent to authority than you are on the blogosphere. To avoid summary execution I think you may need to tone down your aggressive hostility about 90%.
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 4:02 pm | Permalink
charles-in-charge wrote:
Heh, “Better than Ezra?”, I think the handle was “Smarter than Ezra” but no point in splitting hairs, Better/Smarter…bwahahahaaaaa…
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 5:47 pm | Permalink
Donald wrote:
Canada’s Portable Electric Chair?
Robert Dziekanski’s death is the tip of the R.C.M.P. iceburg and beneath lies a darker truth. Their behaviour has been eroding for years with numerous documented civilian claims of murder, abuse of power, and racial indifference. They sometimes behave like military gangs and treat civilians like enemies. Who is training them? Something is terribly wrong in Canada when people are electrocuted, shot, beaten, and frozen to death without a trial. Help!
Posted on 24-Nov-07 at 7:55 pm | Permalink
Antonio wrote:
Please do not shoot, I don’t “speek” english…Hablo y escribo español, and now I’m frightened!
Posted on 17-Jun-08 at 1:19 pm | Permalink
L. Smith wrote:
I suspect the taser itself is not the root cause of his death. I’ve grown up amongst half my family becoming police officers and am acutely aware of the police protocol regarding the physical “takedown” of a suspect. I’ve been my families guineau pig on a number of occasions. The common and accepted practice of kneeling on a suspects head or neck should be getting more attention here. This action, if the suspect is not flat on their stomach, applies a massive force/pressure to the neck vertebrae and the pain is outside of any human pain threshold as the neck approaches it’s breaking point. Not one time, while being subjected to this, was I ever able to remain still as commanded as my survival instinct had taken over to try and relieve the excruciating pressure on my neck. This is why, in kneeling on the head/neck cases, you so often see officers screaming repeatedly for a suspect to become passive. You can club, tase, shoot or do whatever you like and the suspect will ALWAYS try to prevent their own death via a broken neck. The only examples you’ll find of compliance are where the suspect is fully prone on their stomach and the pain is tolerable OR the officer is not applying all their bodyweight to the neck. I tried unsuccessfully to explain to family there was no way I could possibly comply as I believed death was imminent. They laughed it off saying it worked. The fact is that it did NOT work to immobilize me. It caused further resistance than what they’d have had without this draconian protocol. I suspect robert died from a basal skull fracture (where the neck vertebrae detach at the base of the skull). A coroner would be quick to find this…unless it was not in his interest to do so.(good ole boys syndrome) Can you imagine the magnitude of public outrage if it’s determined he ACTUALLY died of a broken neck via excessive force? I wish this issue would receive more attention such that the coroner would believe it impossible to keep concealed but the taser issue is acting as a straw man to take attention away from it.
Posted on 17-Jun-08 at 4:17 pm | Permalink