Robert Dziekanski, a Polish immigrant to Canada who came to live with his mother on Oct 14th of this year was killed while police tried to detain him after arriving at Vancouver's international airport. While being kept up for more than 10 hours in the airport, Mr. Dziekanski was seen as having an angry reaction for an unknown reason and after many hours he took to physically attacking a small table and a laptop computer before police responded with two taser shots at the individual, putting him onto the ground and then subsequently leading to his death for unknown causes yet to be investigated. Despite Robert Dziekanski's behaviour for such an extended period of time, no efforts were made to communicate with him in his own language nor was it seen by many as appropriate to use such excessive force in detaining him as he was not assulting anyone at the time nor abusing any offices in the process. The incident was recorded by a teenager on his cellphone at the time and was widely published in the media on November 14th.
Canadian officials emplored the public to consider other evidence besides the video regarding the case of Robert Dziekanski. In reality however, a witness account which was filmed goes well beyond DNA or other evidence in investigations of any crime of any type. The reality of the situation made clearer my the young man's recording made new headlines yesterday on the BBC, across Canada and worldwide as a clear conflict in handling persons who are not considered to be a great threat, where no efforts were made to speaking to him in his own language in an international airport after more than 10 hours of a possible conflict, and which was a necessity in diffusing such a situation as an alternative to the use of tasers. In addition, it is well known by many in the policing and legal community in North America that tasers are a questionable tool, as it is overused in many cases due to its ability to maintain a proper distance from suspects, but also that more that 200 deaths have been attributed to the use of the devices without a proper inquiry into the dangers of tasers.
Lingisutic barriers and newcomers in societies such as Britian and Canada face many challenges integrating into society. One barrier however when considering law enforcement in the cases of the Brasilian victim de Menezes seen as a terrorist during the London bombings, or Canada's Polish immigrant losing his life due to a lack of communication and responsility of law enforcement to take the initiave to communicate with people in communities which are very diverse. Logically, patience is required with linguistic situations to avoid death which are uncalled for, accidentally or otherwise. As seen in last week's posting, the London Police were considered responsible for the death in their case, raising the standard of care towards immigrants or residence in communities without a uniform language spoken among all residents. In the Canadian case, some simple words in Polish may have made a world of difference to the lives of the Dziekanski family.
