Apparently there has been a request to “recommend uniform standards for Taser use in British Columbia.” Bob Rich, president of the B.C. Association of Municipal Chiefs of Police made a comment that I find pretty ridiculous. He said, “I look forward to the process of making it clear for our officers what we actually expect them to do.”

Are you kidding me? So when police officers in Canadian provinces pull someone over, do they have to pull a manual out of their glove box and look up what to do next? If the person they pull over suddenly becomes belligerent, should the officer ask the person to pause for a minute while he looks up protocol for that situation? How ridiculous is it that the call for uniformity is being made in a profession that exists because of the element of unpredictability? I agree that there should be boundaries and guidelines for police behavior and use of weapons; otherwise you could slap a badge on any John Doe and call him a police officer. Yes, restraint and ability to follow procedure is key in being an effective officer of the law, but why is there such a huge push to make it so that every officer always does the exact same thing in every situation? I

I can see the main reason for such an extreme idea - liability. One of the side effects of living in this absurdly litigious society is that we can’t just get by with common sense anymore. People want someone to be held responsible for every little thing, and it sure as heck won’t be the person whose fault it actually is. So when a police officer uses a Taser on someone, the police department needs to be able to say, “Don’t worry everyone, Officer Jones did everything by the book. Our officers are trained to follow procedure to the letter.” Well, what happens when the specific scenario doesn’t FIT with the procedure? The liability still then rests on the shoulders of the police department, because if the officer is not allowed to use a Taser, he is left with other more-likely-to-be-lethal use-of-force options. Either that or he is left with no defense, in which case I don’t have any trouble imagining he’ll run straight to the nearest lawyer’s office and file some kind of suit for dangerous working conditions. There is only one way to win; everyone just needs to get real.

Real life is not predictable. You can’t always have rules. You can’t always do things by the book. And you shouldn’t always get in trouble if you don’t. I’m not suggesting we live in a lawless society, but I do think that trying to micromanage law enforcement procedure will only create more problems in the long run when the situations arise where the protocol cannot be followed and the officers who have been inundated and indoctrinated to act in only a certain way are frozen on the spot and unable to adequately control a situation. That may sound a little over the top, but is it really that unimaginable?

But I guess when that happens we’ll just hold another Inquiry to determine how we got here in the first place. Can’t we just let police officers do their jobs with the tools and weapons that make it easier and safer?