Five high school kids with moxie could probably have physically subdued Robert Dziekanski – even with a ‘deadly’ stapler in his hands. Thus, the question must be asked – why couldn’t four RCMP officers, all of whom are professionally trained to deal with such situations?

I find it utterly ridiculous that this whole ‘he was wielding a stapler’ nonsense is even being seen as relevant. Seriously, what was the man going to do, fire stationary staples at them? With such a ‘deadly weapon’ in his hands the RCMP obviously had no choice by to light him up with enough electricity to kill him. Hell, someone could have been ‘stapled’! It’s as if this now famed ‘stapler’ were not a stationary stapler at all, but rather a high-powered industrial staple gun that just happened to be left at an unattended desk at an international airport.

Then there’s the ‘he was coming towards us’ defense – the deadly stapler in one hand, the other a raised fist. It’s amazing that the officers were able to think clearly enough not to pull out their side arms and just drop the ‘psychopath’ on the spot. Thankfully they had enough sense to just taser him four times.

You know, in the early 80’s I once saw three police officers get a pretty large guy into the back of a cruiser that was so high on PCP that during the ordeal one of his legs and one of his arms was broken. Being that he was so high he fought them with almost superhuman strength, completely unaware that he was injured, but that didn’t deter the officers from physically confronting him, subduing him, and getting him into the back of that car. All three of them were sporting injuries of their own after the fact as well.

Now – that was on the street. They didn’t know if he had a knife on him or anything else for that matter. If you want to talk about ‘coming toward’ them, the guy they faced down that evening certainly did – with a vengeance. But those boys handled it, and everyone that witnessed it left with a lot of respect for them – and that included the local hoods whose haunt the entire incident occurred in front of.

You know what the most amazing thing about that incident was? That after it ended one of the officers approached us, as we were young, and actually asked us if we were all right. I mean, here’s this cop that’s been hit in the face repeatedly asking us, who just stood there and watched, if we were okay.

Those were real cops.

Robert Dziekanski was in an international airport. The chance of him having a serious weapon? 0%. So he picks up a stapler, moves towards four armed and professionally trained police officers in a fit of utter exhausted exasperation and winds up dead. Forget that he didn’t speak a word of English, didn’t understand a thing they were saying, and had been in that airport for god knows how long after getting off a transcontinental flight without anyone helping him. None of that matters. Three RCMP officers demonstrated to me more than twenty five years ago that were they to have handled that situation, things would have ended quite differently and Robert Dziekanski would still be alive. So you tell me – why did four RCMP officers think it necessary to taser a man that not only could they have physically subdued, but are freaking trained to?

It must have been the stapler.

“Kosteckyj said initial 911 calls about Dziekanski throwing furniture around were exaggerated, and asked Bentley whether approaching a subject without gathering any information was good police work.

Bentley said there wasn’t enough time to properly assess what was happening.” – CBC.

Not enough time? What, was he wired with fucking C4? Did he have an Uzi in each hand trained on 50 preschoolers? Not enough time to properly assess what was happening? The man was alone in a secured area, how in the hell does that translate to “there wasn’t enough time to properly assess what was happening”? Were there dead fucking bodies on the ground? Were the walls covered in blood? Or was it that that stapler was just sitting there begging to be picked up so that it could cause significant office supply damage?

Who responded to that call – 12 year olds?

A man lost is life because four trained police officers didn’t have the guts to do their job. Without hesitation they thought only of their own safety in a situation in which their safety was not, in any way, significantly threatened as far as police work goes. They hit Dziekanski four times with a taser while not one of them thought it prudent to attempt to physically subdue him. That’s one unarmed Polish immigrant (well, armed if you take the stapler into account) and four RCMP officers. On the streets those aren’t even odds, it’s a foregone conclusion what’s going to happen in a four on one situation – unless you’re facing down Superman.

What a disgrace.