What, or who, killed Robert Dziekanski?

I finally watched the video of Robert Dziekanski's last moments.

I saw a man acting erratically. I saw security guards show up and tell him to stop. I saw him stop. I saw the police show up. I heard the security guards tell the police more than once that the man couldn't understand English. I heard the police give him some kind of order in English. I saw him back away from the police. I heard the police talking to each other. I heard a Taser go off, twice. I heard and saw a man in a great deal of pain. I saw three police officers jump on top of him, one with an apparent boot to the throat. Moments later, I watched Robert Dziekanski go still. I couldn't hear him anymore.

I saw Robert Dziekanski's death, just like everyone else did. But it's clear to me after watching that footage that Tasers don't kill people. Police kill people.

Robert Dziekanski died as a result of actions taken by the police. The Taser in this story is the tool, not the villain. The attention paid to the role of the Taser in Dziekanski's unfortunate and untimely death misses the crucial point that Dziekanski's death was at the hands of police. Dziekanski was an innocent (albeit upset) civilian. Instead of helping him, the police took him down through the use of force. That's what we see in that video and that's what happened in this story.

As I watched the video of Robert Dziekanski's death I couldn't help but recall watching a piece of footage from 16 years ago. In 1991 newspapers and TV sets overflowed with images caught on a grainy, amateur video camera, of a man pulled over by the police, Tasered, jumped and then beaten within inches of his life. That man was Rodney King [1].

The more I think about it, the more the similarities between King and Dziekanski unnerve me. King was in Los Angeles in the 1990s, a paranoid space where security officials were terrified that every black man was a violent criminal. Dziekanski, in an airport in 2007, was in a paranoid space where security officials are terrified that every foreigner is a terrorist. King had a record (for DUI) and the LAPD later said that the officers involved thought King was high on PCP.

Dziekanski was confused, yelling and had just smashed a computer. There was more than one commentary in the early days after his death suggesting that his mental health was to blame. Both were Tasered by police as a means of subduing them. Neither appeared to really be in need of subduing prior to the Taser shot. Both writhed on the ground as their bodies felt the reverberations of hundreds of volts of electricity charging through them. In this state of pain and recuperation, both were jumped by police. In both videos, neither man appears to be doing anything that could even come close to active resistance. Active resistance, in police practice, automatically warrants more extreme police intervention. Both incidents were recorded by bystanders. In each case, if it weren't for those recordings, the public would never have really known what happened to either one of them.

In both cases, the public was told to disbelieve what their own eyes told them as they watched the footage. What is seen in either tape, according to the official word, is not a brute abuse of police powers to critical and deadly ends.

In Dziekanski's case, newspaper accounts and government and RCMP comments alike train our eyes on the Taser, and encourage us to take up only the all too simple question: Taser, good or bad? There is no question of police conduct.

The same thing happened with Rodney King. Even as the jury in the cops' trial repeatedly watched footage of the savage attack on King they were told so many times that what they were seeing was not an attack but rather an arrest, a lawful, necessary arrest by officers of the peace intent on keeping order and ensuring public safety. The jury heard it so many times they believed it, or at least they believed it enough to let the cops walk.

What's different is that large sectors of the American public steadfastly refused to see anything on those tapes but a savage beating of a black man by four police officers as six others looked on. In the wake of viewing King's beating, American citizens voiced such resounding demands for justice on King's behalf that the state of California actually went so far as to prosecute the officers involved in the assault on King. In contrast, Canadians (save those blessed few who have bravely voiced their objections) by and large, allow the Taser debate to distract us from the role of the police in Dziekanski's death. And while the people of California lost the court challenge against those officers (and lost a whole lot more in the race riots that ensued), the Canadian public has already lost it all by refusing to understand Dziekanski's death in the context of police brutality as well as total intolerance for foreigners. Heck, we're completely forfeiting the game.

It took a year for the people of LA to galvanize around the King issue and one incredibly bad judgment to set the powder keg alight. What is redeeming about the King saga (if redeeming is the right word) is that the people remained vigilant that the emperor was indeed wearing no clothes, no matter how many times they were told and how many people in authority insisted otherwise.

In the Dziekanski case the emperor is still permitted to parade about starkly naked, all the while praising his elegant robes. Let's all demand to know, âeoewho killed Robert Dziekanski?âe One thing's for sure. It wasn't the Taser.

Comments