Ticket or Taser? Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010 Transit riders warned

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Ticket or Taser? Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010 Transit riders warned

Babies that recovered from being tasered by tasering moms and pops now have something else to worry about: getting tasered while on Vancouver Transit. Vancouver's version of "trick or treat" is called "ticket or Taser". Visitors of the 2010 Winter Olympices, be warned and either rent a car, or grab a cab.

VANCOUVER — The country's only armed transit police have been tasering passengers who try to avoid paying fares.

According to documents provided in response to a Freedom of Information request, police patrolling public transit in the Metro Vancouver area have used tasers 10 times in the past 18 months, including five occasions when victims had been accosted for riding free.

Good old Freedom of Information request can come up with some nasty things these days. Read on.

In one incident, a non-paying passenger was tasered after he held onto a railing on the SkyTrain platform and refused to let go.

Holding onto a railing? You can't have that. Go ahead, taser, taser, TASER!!! Why can't these suckers buy a ticket, or travel by car like everyone else does? TASER those losers, with or without ticket, TASER TASER TASER!

“After several warnings to the subject to stop resisting arrest and the subject failing to comply with the officers' commands, the taser was deployed and the subject was taken into control,” said the report provided by TransLink, the region's transit authority.

Comply or be Tasered.

An internal review of the incident concluded that the action taken by transit police officers complied with the force's policy and was within guidelines “set out in the National Use of Force Model,” the report said.

Okay, Taser AND comply then.

On another occasion, a passenger was tasered when he fled from police who found him without a payment receipt during a “fare blitz.” This time, however, the passenger got away because, as recounted in the report, “the Taser was ineffective due to the subject's clothing and [he] escaped the custody of the officers.”