What are the policies guiding Taser use in Alberta? The answers aren't easy to find

Tasers feature suit widely used by constabulary agencies crosswise the rural area since their introduction to Canadian law enforcement in the late 1990s. Occasionally, people have died after being Tasered.

But in Alberta, understanding the policies around Taser use has been far from straightforward.

The Alberta government sets requirements and restrictions for policing in the province through legislation and standards. Police agencies like the Edmonton Police Service create their own policies and procedures within those parameters, under the civilian oversight of the Edmonton police commission.

Some of these documents are publicly available, such as the Police Act and the Provincial Policing Standards.

However, among information the province does not release are guidelines for Taser use.

A spokesperson said in a statement that the guidelines “contain sensitive operational information that is intended exclusively for law enforcement personnel,” and added that in order to “ensure officer accountability and public safety, the guidelines remain internal to law enforcement.”

Some other provinces release this type of information.

Ontario's Taser guidelines are on its website. The B.C. Government publishes its entire provincial policing standards online, as does Saskatchewan.

Public Safety Canada also has guidelines for Taser use on its website.

The 2009 document contains nine pages of rules, definitions, prohibitions and principles that are broadly similar to the publicly available standards from other jurisdictions.

It notes that courts have determined that when deciding on a reasonable degree of force in a situation, officers must consider three types of factors:

“These guidelines have been issued to assist police agencies in the development of policies and procedures that will reduce the level of risk associated with the use of force in general and [conducted energy weapons] specifically,” it says.

A statement from EPS said the service follows “strict policies and procedures for the use of Tasers, in alignment with current Canadian case law, the Alberta Association of Chiefs of Police guidelines and medical standards informed by peer-reviewed research.”

EPS does not publish its procedures and policies online, but they are available through an access to information request.

The documents had few redactions. EPS would not answer when asked to confirm that these were the only policies related to Taser use.

In terms of when Taser use is appropriate, the EPS procedures largely echo the 2009 provincial guidelines, stating that likelihood of injury to the officer, the subject or the public would be grounds for deployment.

The procedure documents state that police should use caution when shocking a person multiple times given that “repeated or continuous exposure of the [conducted energy weapon] to an individual may not achieve compliance” especially if the person is “under drug intoxication or acutely agitated.”

The requirements for providing medical care for a person who has been shocked with a Taser are limited to requesting EMS attend to the scene, preventing the removal of probes by anyone other than medical personnel, and ensuring the probes are disposed of in a biohazard receptacle.

Temitope Oriola, a criminologist at the University of Alberta who has published research on Taser use, noted there is a section of the EPS policy that says Tasers should typically not be used on people in handcuffs but added “there will be circumstances, however, where such deployments will be reasonable.”

The ambiguity "does not help the average officer on the street,” he said.

Taser use carries the risk of permanent injury or death, some of which were attributed to a controversial diagnosis called “excited delirium.”  

Excited delirium refers to a loosely defined state involving agitation, aggression and distress, often combined with superhuman strength and an imperviousness to pain. It’s typically linked to drug use or mental illness, and it's been used as an explanation for sudden, unexpected deaths during interactions with police.

These are examples of people who died after being Tasered by EPS.

Trevor Grimolfson

In 2008, Trevor Grimolfson died after being pepper-sprayed, shocked multiple times with a Taser, then restrained with handcuffs and a spit mask. He was found to have high levels of MDMA and ketamine in his system.

The cause of Grimolfson’s death was found to be “excited delirium due to multiple drug toxicity,” specifically MDMA and ketamine. The fatality inquiry report stated that “either drug, on its own, at the levels found, could cause death.”

The report added that because a few minutes passed between last use of a Taser and Grimolfson’s loss of consciousness, “the Taser use is not a relevant factor.”

Yvon Chiasson

On Feb. 24, 2021, 43-year-old Yvon Chiasson had a manic flare-up of his bipolar disorder. He’d recently switched medications because the previous one, while effective for his mental health, was affecting his fertility while he and his wife were trying to conceive.

Chiasson didn’t want to go to the hospital because he knew the lights were triggering for him. But the police, who’d arrived in response to his wife’s 911 call for mental health support, convinced him to go, and they took him into custody under the Mental Health Act.

Once at the hospital, Chiasson was placed in a secure room, and his crisis worsened.

An hour later, he was dead after being Tasered and forcibly restrained by five officers and a security guard when he did not comply. A report, which exonerated police, later noted, “it did not appear that Chiasson was capable of comprehending what was said” by that point.

The medical examiner found the immediate cause of death to be excited delirium.

Other excited delirium deaths

Other deaths involving EPS Taser use that were attributed to excited delirium include:

The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) investigates incidents of police use of force.

About excited delirium

In recent years, there has been a shift away from the term, which has variously been criticized as pseudoscientific, imprecise, or rooted in racist stereotypes by medical organizations including the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, as well as a number of provincial coroners including in Alberta.

The American Psychiatric Association notes that excited delirium is disproportionately diagnosed in Black men in police custody.

A spokesperson for the Canadian Medical Association said in an email that it did not have a position on excited delirium and referred questions to the Canadian Psychiatric Association.

“There’s this very strange contradiction built into the term,” said Phoebe Friesen, an assistant professor of biomedical ethics at McGill University.

“There’s a sense in which the individual who died had this inherent inner weakness that led to excited delirium that caused their death. But at the same time, when they’re in the state of excited delirium, which is what justifies the force being used in the first place, they’re superhuman, they’re super strong, they cannot feel pain.”

Police officers who learn about excited delirium in their training may be “primed to look out for people exhibiting this behaviour who seem to be in a state of agitation, who have possibly superhuman strength, who aren’t feeling pain … and you might apply additional force thinking that’s necessary when it may not in fact be,” said Friesen.

In an email, an EPS spokesperson said that while officers are not asked to make medical diagnoses, they are trained to “recognize symptoms of the associated collection of behaviours commonly known as excited delirium.”

In such cases, officers are to call for an EMS unit with specialized training and “the police response automatically transitions to a medical emergency, rather than a detainment,” according to the spokesperson.

While most deployments do not cause lasting physical harm, researchers say risk factors for serious injury or death are not well understood.

Neither the EPS or provincial policies mention specific restrictions for using Tasers on children, the elderly people intoxicated by drugs or alcohol, or those exhibiting signs of mental illness.

“From a civil liberties and a human rights perspective, I think there is a concern of when they're used ... Against younger people, elderly people, people with mental health, even episodic mental health conditions,” said Cam Stewart, executive director of the Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre.

According to Oriola, police have "a real reluctance to release some of this data." To him, the issue of transparency is not only the responsibility of EPS, but those bodies with the power for oversight and law-making — namely, the Edmonton Police Commission and the provincial legislature.

“The evidence does suggest that you need a strong regulatory and legislative framework in order to have police services routinely release such data,” he said.

In a statement, the commission pointed to provincial requirements for police reporting and record-keeping, noting that its members monitor statistics about control tactics and question police officials about them at public meetings.

“Based on this regular reporting, we can assure the public that control tactics are not increasing disproportionately or otherwise showing trending data that is of concern,” spokesperson John Statton wrote in an email.

Stewart said the aggregated Taser data and Taser use policies ought to be made public.

“It really helps inform policymakers decisions, which ensures accountability,” said Stewart, a former Calgary police officer.

“The public needs to have legal instruments to hold the powerful to account,” said Sean Holman, an associate professor and access to information researcher at Mount Royal University.

“If we don't, then the result is autocracy.”

Journalist

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