Police Psychologist Speaks Out Against RCMP Tasering Practices

Someone else might have resisted the temptation, especially knowing he might be blackballed as a result. But Mike Webster has never operated that way.

And so, when the respected police psychologist testified this week at the B.C. public inquiry into the use of tasers, he didn't mince words when asked about the Mounties' decision to zap an unarmed Robert Dziekanski last October, and more recently, a penknife-wielding 82-year-old man lying in a hospital bed in Kamloops.

“I'm embarrassed to be associated with organizations that taser sick old men in hospital beds and confused immigrants who are arriving in the country,” said Mr. Webster, considered one of the top police psychologists in the world.

Mr. Webster said he told Chief Supt. Bent that he didn't respond well to threats. And that they wouldn't change his mind in any event. After stewing about the incident over Christmas, Mr. Webster articulated his anger in a letter to Chief Supt. Bent, which he copied to Gary Bass, the RCMP's top man in B.C. In it, he reiterated how offended he was by Chief Supt. Bent's comments, which he considered a blatant form of intimidation.

He said he heard nothing back. But he did begin hearing from his friends inside the force. He said one relayed to him that Mr. Webster's outspokenness cost the psychologist a small fee-for-service job. One of Mr. Webster's friends was told: “Don't be hiring Mike Webster. He's in shit with us for being disloyal.” Another told him to expect a call from a top RCMP official in Ottawa who was going to fly out to talk to him.

Sure enough, the call came. Two weeks later, Mr. Webster said he was having lunch with an RCMP inspector from headquarters who scolded him for his Dziekanski comments. He suggested the psychologist was being disloyal to an organization that had been good to him over the years. He said Mr. Webster should have waited until the RCMP had concluded its investigation into the incident before giving any kind of opinion on it.

“I told him I didn't need anything more than the 25 seconds of video that we've all seen over and over again to offer my analysis,” Mr. Webster said. “I really gave him a blast. It was just more of the same. The expectation is that if you work for the Mounties you align your values with the corporate culture and if you don't that's being disloyal and is unhealthy.”