Winnipeg police chief suggests Tasers save lives, could replace firearms in future

Bartley Kives · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 13, 2025 5:35 PM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours ago

Winnipeg's constabulary main said Tasers utilized by the service's officers have saved lives and could regenerate the request for firearms successful policing altogether successful the future.

In a study presented Friday to the Winnipeg Police Board astir the usage of force, Chief Gene Bowers said the work utilized conducted vigor weapons 524 times successful 2024.

That's up from 301 instances wherever stun guns, specified arsenic Tasers, were utilized successful 2023, and good implicit the five-year mean of 262, the main reported.

Bowers said Friday the accrued deployment of Tasers, which the constabulary telephone "intermediate weapons," has been made imaginable by technological improvements that let them to beryllium deployed astatine greater distances.

"They prevention lives," Bowers said pursuing a Winnipeg Police Board gathering astatine metropolis hall. "The exertion is conscionable advancing rapidly, wherever my anticipation is 1 time that we ne'er person a shooting wherever idiosyncratic loses their life."

Bowers said helium cannot get into specifics astir the expanding scope of conducted vigor weapons.

He said their accrued usage tin beryllium seen arsenic a affirmative development, fixed a greater fig of incidents of usage of unit overall.

"That's not deadly force, truthful immoderate clip that we're not utilizing deadly unit is simply a bully thing. So yeah, I wouldn't look astatine it arsenic a negative," helium said.

Police changeable six radical successful 2024, 4 fatally, up from 3 shootings successful 2023, each of which were fatal, Bowers's study said. The five-year mean fig of constabulary shootings was four, helium reported.

Overall instances of usage of force — which besides see usage of capsicum spray and batons, arsenic good as canine bites — roseate from 863 incidents successful 2023 to 968 successful 2024, helium wrote. The five-year mean was 788, according to the report.

"The summation has mostly been attributed to encounters with individuals exhibiting the effects of methamphetamine," Bowers wrote. "Individuals nether the power of methamphetamine often person a precocious tolerance to symptom and are acold little responsive to de-escalation techniques, including verbal and physical."

Winnipeg Police Board seat Markus Chambers, the metropolis councillor for St. Norbert-Seine River, said helium is not acrophobic astir the accrued usage of unit by police.

Chambers said 968 instances wherever unit was utilized retired of 240,000 calls for work is not a concerning ratio.

"Looking astatine the numbers, I absorption connected the information that 99.6 per cent of interactions with constabulary don't impact usage of force," Chambers said.

He and Bowers said they proceed to enactment the instauration of a 24-hour sobering centre for radical suffering from methamphetamine psychosis and intoxicant intoxication.

Such a centre would beryllium secure, person aesculapian unit connected tract and necessitate substantial government funding, said Bowers, who has advocated for a sobering centre since helium was sworn successful in March.

At a downtown information announcement successful 2024, Premier Wab Kinew said it's unacceptable to see people suffering from meth psychosis shadow-boxing successful downtown Winnipeg, for their information and the information of others.

At a similar announcement connected Friday, Kinew said constabulary and downtown information workers are moving with radical suffering from psychosis, but made nary notation of a sobering centre.