The electrical shock of the Taser is 100 times stronger than a person’s pain tolerance, a bioelectrical expert said yesterday in Vancouver.
A three-week public inquiry, launched after the death of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver’s airport, heard yesterday from J. Patrick Reilly, an electrical engineer at Johns Hopkins University.
The inquiry, headed by former B.C. Supreme Court judge Thomas Braidwood, will look at the use of stun guns by municipal police forces and sheriffs in B.C. and will make recommendations about their use.
Reilly testified that the charge delivered by the Taser is 100 times stronger than the pain tolerance of an average person in a laboratory setting.
The electrical charge is delivered 19 times per second, for each five-second Taser burst. Reilly said the repeated electrical charge makes the pain even worse.
Walter Kosteckyj, the lawyer for the mother of Dziekanski, a 40-year-old Polish immigrant who died after he was Tasered by RCMP at Vancouver’s airport, said the stun gun’s pain should raise concern about how the weapon is being used by police.
