The Braidwood Commission reports on TASER use in Canada: an evidence‐based policy review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review the Braidwood Commission's two reports on the use of TASER conducted energy weapons in Canada and the death of Robert Dziekanski to determine whether the Commission's conclusions and subsequent recommendations constitute sound evidence‐based public policy. Design/methodology/approach This study analyzes Commissioner Braidwood's eight findings from the first report regarding the medical implications of the use of TASER devices by comparing those findings to the body of scientific, medical, and technical literature on the physiological effects of TASER technology. Additionally, this study reviews the potential ramifications of the Commissioner's recommendations regarding the use of TASER devices in both reports. Findings Evidence from the existing literature does not support the Commission's findings regarding the medical risks of the use of TASER technology. Recommendations to restrict the use of TASER devices are unlikely to reduce arrest‐related deaths, but they are likely to result in increased injuries to officers and suspects. Other recommendations, including training standards, testing requirements, reporting requirements, medical assistance, and research and review, are consistent with other reviews on the use of TASER technology and are necessary and appropriate to restore public confidence in police use‐of‐force. Originality/value The Braidwood Commission recommendations have had an immediate impact on the policies of several police agencies in Canada, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but this study is the first critically to review whether those recommendations constitute formulation of sound evidence‐based public policy.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.055 | 0.218 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.022 | 0.029 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".