Eleven year old boy gets tasered, but it seems he may have deserved it.

Yes, another controversial incident involving the use of a taser in Canada.

This one is out of the ordinary though, it was an eleven year old boy who was suspected of a crime.

source (ctv.ca)

PRINCE GEORGE, B.C. — The RCMP public complaints commission says it is closely monitoring the case of an 11-year-old British Columbia boy shocked with an RCMP Taser during his arrest last week.

I know what you are all thinking, what the heck are the police doing using a taser on an 11 year old child. Just stick with me and you will see that this is not an ordinary scenario.

A spokesman for the commission said Monday that the office has not received an official complaint about the case, but said the age of the boy merits special attention. "The commission has requested further information surrounding the handling of this incident," Jamie Robertson said. "The commission has previously expressed caution on the use of Tasers against at-risk populations."

So far it looks like you might want to find the cop who did this tase his a$$. But like I said it gets weirder.

RCMP said officers were responding to a 911 call around 5:30 p.m. last Thursday. They found a 37-year-old man had been stabbed, and began a search for an 11-year-old suspect who they located at a neighbouring property.

This is still all under investigation so it is no more than speculation, but it appears an 11 year old boy stabbed a 37 year old man. No one knows yet if it was in self defense or if it is just a kid with a lot of problems.

"Efforts were made to get the individual out of the house, and when he emerged from the home a conducted energy weapon was deployed by a member," Supt. Brenda Butterworth-Carr said in a statement issued last Friday.

I rarely condone use of violence on children, but this may be an exception. I know some police would have just shot the poor kid. Maybe being tased saved his life.

The RCMP have not commented further on why the officer used the Taser on the boy, who is in government care and was living in a group home. The children's watchdog in British Columbia said Monday she was also leaning toward investigating the decision to use the shock weapon, after media reports revealed the stabbing took place at a group home. Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond said she would consider the emotional and physical injuries the boy suffered when he was stunned by police. "This is a very invisible child," Turpel-Lafond said. "This child doesn't necessarily have a voice. There isn't a parent speaking for this child."

I am not a police officer, but if I were responding to a report of a stabbing at a group home I would expect that perhaps there might be some at risk youth there, who I would approach carefully. I am wondering if the person who called this in mentioned that it is a group home, or if the dispatcher even notified the responding officers about this. I know Prince George is not a large town so any officer should know where the group homes are at, since there are not that many and I would imagine that the police are made aware of these locations for the safety of the children.

A group home can have certain restrictions including when children can eat or use the phone and she's concerned about the effects of such policies on a young child, she said. Turpel-Lafond said she's not pleased that a child as young as 11 was placed in a group home to begin with, and that a therapeutic foster home may well have been a better arrangement for him. "In this particular instance, there's a high degree of responsibility in terms of public accountability because the caregiver, which is the Ministry of Children and Families' group home, has called in the police. So it's a very high degree of concern I have in terms of the sequence of events here."

I am not defending the actions of this child who possibly stabbed this man. But I am willing to bet that this child was provoked, or he is just not mentally fit. I wonder what techniques the officer used before deciding to tase teh child. I also wonder if the child charged towards the officer.

This one certainly leaves me scratching my head. I feel bad for this kid because somewhere down the road something happened, he is in a group home and felt obligated to stab a grown man. I have no way of knowing what really happened, but I am sure there would have been other ways to disarm this kid. As I previously said, he is lucky he didn't get shot. But I would imagine in this day and age that police training would have contingency plans for situations like this.

I know these types of threads always bring mixed reactions from both sides of opinion. I am open for any thoughts and opinions on how you all think this was handled. I am stuck on the fence. I usually have my mind made up when I post my own threads, but there are just too many factors in play here to place any blame at this point so far, in my opinion.

You know what I dont care who or what you are, if you pose a threat to an innocent person you have to be stopped period.

Kid or not, if a kid tried to harm a member of my family I would tase him/her in the face in a second! no questions asked! I would happily see a kid tased over my family member being murdered any day...

I would also like to ask if there are any police officers reading this, and if you would be able to explain common protocol for a situation like this. I am curious as to what the normal expected reaction would be, and whether or not you are supposed to use your own discretion according to the situation.

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