Quote:
Originally Posted by PepsiFree
I agree that it's unacceptable, and I think most would agree with that. But we've had this conversation before, and it's been pointed out that failure will happen. So given that failure will happen and it will be unacceptable, the more important question is how you would make clear that it's unacceptable.
You could remove the risk almost entirely, by disarming most officers of lethal weapons, taking wellness checks off the list of duties the police are primarily responsible for and making it the responsibility of another department, etc. You could minimize the risk by increasing the education requirements of the job (formal education, training, etc) or by making the punishments for crossing whatever line you see out so severe that it would reduce any careless action that contributes to the risk.
But just saying "it should be unacceptable" isn't enough to go on. I agree with that, but you have to have a plan to reflect it. What does "unacceptable" look like to you?
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Looking at it from a risk management basis you add layers of protection and mitigation until it results in an acceptable level of injuries. The acceptable level is determined by the benefit of the action and the control of the stakeholder in accepting risk. So you will accept a higher risk for something like space flight then you would for an automobile.
So I think you need to handle it like any well functioning OHS system where you track Near-Misses and Non-conformance and evaluate them with a similar intensity to fatalities. If this occurs already this type of analysis should be made public. I would categorize this past event as a near miss and look at what actions could have prevented or delayed the Tazer from being drawn. By managing near misses you prevent incidents.
So I fully agree there needs to be a plan to address use of force AND that plan needs to be made public. Too often in the reports around use of force the question answered is was the officer justified in the use of force instead of could the use of force been avoided. I think in the hockey player situation the answer to both questions is yes.