16.11.07

The tasering of Robert Dziekanski is so heart breaking. I saw the video last night. He just looked so scared and confused. How come the security didn't find him when his mom asked for help? Was there no one in the airport who spoke polish? Why did they taser him after 24 seconds? How was he supposed to know to put his hands behind his back when he spoke no english? How come they tasered him so many times when he was already laying down?

At a news conference, Ms. Cisowski said she had dreamed of opening a small business in Kamloops with her son. "I've lost my only family," she said. "I studied English during the day and at night I saved money to get my son to Canada."

Mr. Dziekanski arrived with three bags, two of which were filled with geography books.

Geography books!? Adorable. I bet he had such high hope for life here. Kamloops is beautiful. I wish he got to to live there and open that business with his mom.

Since 2003 16 Canadians have died after being tasered by police, including 2 people in Edmonton.

3 comments:

cayliedawn said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
cayliedawn said...

today i made enemies with my entire socio-cultural anthropology class when i said that, although the incident was really shitty, i thought that we as a class needed to extend some grace to the police officers and other people involved. i said that we don't know how the police, etc. were trained or what their emotional state was before the incident or whatever. one guy angrily told me, "well, if they can't handle it, they shouldn't be police officers." that's kind of a bullshit statement, because who DOES know exactly what to do AND have the capability to do it in all situations? i think that there definitely needs to be an inquiry done into it by a third party, and a review of the use of force, but i wish that our society could be a little bit more understanding of what it means to be human and make mistakes. i'm sure i would have done something equally as terrible if i were in their shoes, even with the best intentions.

having said that, the issue was definitely tragic, and the part you wrote about the geography books made it seem even more so.

(here's my added edit:)
i also think that the people who were watching and filming majorly contributed to how things played out. it's not that i think they SHOULDN'T have been watching or recording, but i do think we need to recognize that having an audience ALWAYS affects people's behaviour. i don't think it's too far a stretch to say that maybe one or all of the police officers consciously or unconsciously wanted to appear to be a "hero" by dealing with this seemingly crazy guy quickly and "effectively."

Lizzy said...

killing the guy is definitely effective. i only heard about this today. how horrible. i agree that the blame cannot rest solely on the police officers, the hyper-vigilant attitude on "security issues" seems to be becoming less than appropriate.