Finally, an end to the sale on sentencing

A new law this week should bring to an end one of the more controversial aspects of sentencing in Canada.  For years now, judges were giving convicted criminals extra credit for the time they served in remand custody before their conviction.  In some cases where the criminal was kept in 23hr lockdown or triple bunked in a cell with other inmates during the pre-trial custody period, judges were giving them 3 for 1 credits on sentences once found guilty.  Thus, if someone was sentenced 3 years after their remand and spent a year in jail already, they could be set free by the judge.  This has lead to a whole host of problems, including overcrowded remand centres, delays in trials (due to the amount of people putting off trials for remand time) and a higher rate of remanded prisoners vs sentenced prisoners.

The change would ensure that criminals serve the sentences they obtain from the court despite their remand conditions.  Once this new law has the opportunity to work itself through the system, I think we should see a dramatic decrease in the amount of time between arrest and trial.  Prisoners will no longer decide to delay their trial to get credit for remand time, thus shortening the time between arrest and trial.  Strangely enough, this law was required to prevent prisoners from causing their own unreasonable delays in the trial process!

With policing, everything should be ‘premediated’

In closing arguments at the Braidwood Inquiry this past week, the lawyer for Poland suggested that the RCMP officers talked about using a taser before they arrived on scene to the incident. He called what they did a premediated action which resulted in excessive force.

What the lawyer fails to understand (even though he is an ex-police officer) is that it is vitally important to discuss with other officers your plans before you arrive on scene, especially for dangerous situations. If you are working with a partner, it is crucial to ensure that both officers understand what each other is thinking as they arrive on scene. For instance, “ok, if he does this, we’ll do this, etc. ok?” or “You take this side, I’ll take the other, if they exit, we’ll challenge them”. This communication protects the safety of the officers involved and often is a mental rehearsal or refresher for those attending of the safest way to approach a situation.

To say that talking about an incident before you get there is wrong creates an erroneous belief that we must be treating an incident like it is in court before police even attend (i.e. dont’ talk to other witnesses). In some serious situations, you don’t have the opportunity to have a huddle during the situation to figure out what you’re going to do next. You have to trust that the other officer is going to make the same decisions based on similar training or a pre-incident communication.

The four officers have taken lots of scrutiny during their testimony at the inquiry and it’s not my intention to add to that. However, when asked if they discussed using the taser before they arrived, they should have said “Yes. I discussed all options with my partners, including the most serious so we could be most prepared for the incident.” Of course in hindsight, we can say what should have been said, but all in all, officers should not be made to feel at fault for discussing and planning options for their courses of action before arriving on scene.

Other officer bloggers have similar thoughts…

Braidwood Recommendations

The Braidwood Inquiry is wrapping up in BC. For those that didn’t know, it is the inquiry into the taser death of a polish immigrant at the Vancouver Airport. A few months ago, the judge released some interim recommendations regarding taser use in Canada. Despite that the whole of the inquiry has been media sensationalized, there were some useful recommendations to come out of it.

http://www.braidwoodinquiry.ca/report/

One of the more useful recommendations is stricter standards on the use of tasers. In the recommendation, tasers should only be used in situations where bodily harm has been caused or is imminent. This would prevent the taser from being used in other circumstances (non cooperative people) which seems to develop the most public and media scrutiny. Police officers sometimes are their own worst enemy when it comes to decision making regarding the taser.

I do like how Braidwood acknowledges that the taser still has use in Canadian policing and that he also talks about how policing Canada’s streets is much different now than 30 years ago. Although critical of the nation’s police forces training, records keeping, rules of use and accountability regarding taser deployment, he still seems sympathetic to those who do the job and make decisions quickly to protect public safety.

I look forward to reading his final report. There do need to be changes in how the taser is used in Canadian policing. What is unfortunate is its villification by the media. I find it interesting that if someone is shot by the police and killed, it receives much less media attention than if someone dies after being tasered.
see: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/09/19/bc-fatal-police-shooting.html