She don't mind cocaine.

But apparently the RCMP does. The recent killing of a Polish immigrant at the Vancouver airport by four RCMP officers who tasered him at least three and possibly four times (which, let's face it, would have dropped an elephant) has brought police use of the taser into the spotlight.

CBC.ca posted a feature which reviewed all taser-related deaths in Canada since they were approved for police use in 1999. Turns out there have been 17. Reading through each one I found that the majority of the victims were found to have cocaine in their systems, often to the level of overdose (although this was not the case in the most recent incident).

There are two conclusions that I can see from this. (1) Being on cocaine makes your more likely to go into shock (no pun intended) if you are tasered when the police come; it certainly makes it more likely that someone will call the police to report you. (2) This is a tie in to the common police habit of beating up on people who are intoxicated, knowing that their complaints won't stand up in court. Don't believe me? Ever been at a party the cops broke up? Just sayin'.

As a little background, I should say that I take a dim view of police in general. The police in my home town consist of two basic types. The first are retired RCMP officers who get paid by the town in addition to collecting a federal pension, and for some reason seem damn cranky about it. The second are people who came out of high school roundabout the same time I did, and these folks tend to be the kids that were always raising hell and always in trouble, but now bigger and in possession of a badge and a gun. What do you think happens?

Nor do I say that all cops are bad, hell, some are downright heroic. I'm just saying that there are more than enough bad ones to make life difficult and dangerous for the rest of us.