@ Ceronemus, #69:

"In a society where a father will beat another man to death at his son's hockey game is it a shock that we have police that behave as badly as the rest of America?

Sometimes I think that our society as a whole needs to tone it down a notch."

What you say may be more or less true, but don't remove responsibility from this cop for his actions. The way he handled this situation was way out of line, and we need to insist that it be corrected.

Besides, blaming things on "society" isn't terribly practical. How do we "fix" society? I don't think you can put together a workable plan to get there.

We can, however, come up with actionable plans to respond to this incident, and even work towards things to help prevent it from happening again. And if we react, in general, with appropriate outrage when these kinds of things happen, then "society" naturally starts to improve as a result.

"Deserted highway"

What? I couldn't hear you over the road noise from the continuously passing cars in that video.

"other people in vehicle"

His pregnant wife and crying young child? No kidding, I can tell why the cop would be on edge. If the guy's grandmother had been in the car too I wouldn't blame the cop if he blew the guy away.

Scoutmaster said:

"once he started to walk away, tasering him was a final act of self-defense"

Huh? Self-defense?

So, wait, the cop had to "defend" himself from the guy viciously...walking away?

Garrett, you were also fairly upset because of the disrespect that the release of this video did to the son and the mom. The mother, however, requested that this video be released to the general public so they could see for themselves what had happened. Is the mother also being loathsome and prurient?

Garrett:

Perhaps it's not accurate, but this one says that she wanted it released:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=2eac5201-4b17-4c02-86cb-5a4c0d5a7c98&k=30936

@Ceronomus and others:

As citizens it is our *responsibility* when there are reports of governmental abuse to investigate, educate ourselves, and take action if needed.

I don't see why doing this is considered by some to be a bad thing.

This video contains not only the tragedy itself, but contains a lot of context around the tragedy. This isn't a "hey, watch this guy get killed" video. It's a "learn more about what led up to the tragic event" video.

True, there will be some sick individuals who will view this as entertainment. The correct response to that is NOT to bury your head, avoid the problem, and assume that everything will sort itself out. Without a well-informed public it most certainly will NOT.

I watched it not for the morbid curiosity of the man dying, but I wanted to understand the circumstances that it happened. We're lucky that this 10-minute video gives us a significantly better understanding.

I blipped through the part where the guy was being tased because I really don't have interest and it's horrifying in general.

I'm not sure, either, why people wouldn't want this kind of information to be readily available. When there are reports of government abuses, wouldn't direct, first-hand information about the situation and transparency typically be the best thing, and not having to take people's word for it?

There have already been benefits of release of this video, namely much more accurate information available about the trajedy:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2007/11/14/bc-taservideo.html?ref=rss

The impressions that I walk away with:

- The security guards seemed to be calm and in control. The RCMP, when they arrived, just seemed to help escalate the situation.
- The RCMP came in like cowboys - shouting, very aggressive, jumping over barriers.
- There was absolutely zero attempt to calm the man, or done anything to avoid direct physical contact
- The man was given no valid opportunity to comply. They knew he spoke no english. He was given a matter of seconds and commands in english, after which he was tazed.

On one hand, we have the benefit of hindsight of the guy's backstory. We know that he was just a Polish immigrant who really spoke no english. We know that he'd been trying to find his way out of the airport for 10 hours by the time that the event happened. We have a reasonable confidence that he wasn't a maniac. And when the RCMP arrived, they didn't know any of this.

However, this event doesn't leave me with much confidence that the RCMP has the ability or motivation to de-escalate situations without force. And that's something that worries me about any police force.