Metro Vancouver Transit Police tactics are under scrutiny after videos surfaced online showing a woman being repeatedly Tasered during an arrest Thursday afternoon. “Please let me put my shirt back on,” the woman can be heard saying in a video posted on Twitter. With her shirt pulled over her head, her red bra is the only thing covering her torso as two police officers restrain her on the ground at the Granville SkyTrain station in downtown Vancouver. Authorities said the officers involved were responding to multiple reports of a woman suffering an apparent mental health crisis at the busy transit station around 4:30 p.m. In a statement, Metro Vancouver transit police told CTV News that some of the callers claimed the woman was “chasing other passengers, screaming incoherently and taking off her clothes.” “Officers attempted to defuse the situation verbally, using various de-escalation techniques to assist her, which were ineffective,” the statement continued. “Concerned for her safety and the safety of other transit users, they had to physically gain control of the woman to further assess her welfare and mitigate the potential risk to her and the public.” A witness who captured part of the incident on video disputed this version of events. Faisul Jufar said police “immediately took (the woman) to the ground” when they arrived. “I was shocked. There was no verbal conversation before I approached her to sort it out and then they used their stun gun and hit her,” Juffar said in a message to CTV News. From what he saw, Dzoufar said the woman was “obviously mentally ill, but she didn’t hurt anyone.” In another video of the arrest shared on TikTok, the woman can be heard shouting, “Please, I’m not hitting them, I’m not resisting,” as she is Tasered. So far, no video has surfaced showing the entire interaction of the officers with the woman. Metro Vancouver transit police claimed he “attempted to grab the officers’ gun” at one point, justifying officers’ use of knee strikes and a Taser. “Both methods are approved for officers in certain circumstances where a suspect is actively resisting and exhibiting aggressive behaviour,” the force said in its statement. The woman was arrested under the Mental Health Act and taken to hospital, authorities said. Since the disturbing videos were posted online, there have been growing calls for accountability for the two officers involved in the arrest. “This situation needs to be investigated further and the outcome of this investigation needs to be shared with the public,” Vancouver resident Vic Ritchie told CTV News in an email. “I’m a woman who can’t help but feel less safe on the streets knowing that police officers who are hired to ‘protect the public’ are now publicly known to beat (Taser) women, who don’t even deny arrests.”
One officer has his knee on her neck, the other repeatedly knees her in the back, while she is constantly kneaded by one or both. He begs them to stop saying he’s not a threat, and so are the crowd of people. pic.twitter.com/lFrW5HCCY6 — Kyle Hopping (@kylehopping) October 28, 2022
