The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) has announced that no charges will be laid against a Calgary Police Service officer who used lethal force after multiple less-lethal attempts failed to subdue an armed suspect.
The incident involved a suspect armed with a sledgehammer. According to ASIRT’s findings, the officer first deployed a conducted energy weapon (TASER) four times and used pepper spray twice in an attempt to gain control of the situation. The suspect repeatedly removed the TASER probes, rendering the device ineffective. After these efforts failed and the suspect continued to pose an active threat, the officer fired a single shot.
ASIRT concluded that the use of lethal force occurred only after repeated and unsuccessful attempts to resolve the encounter using less-lethal tools, and that the officer’s actions were consistent with their assessment of an evolving high-risk situation.
The case reflects ongoing operational challenges associated with conducted energy weapons (CEWs), particularly in encounters involving determined or actively resistant individuals. While TASERs are widely used as less-lethal tools, their effectiveness can vary depending on deployment conditions, subject behavior, and environmental factors.
There has also been wider debate about TASER use and safety in police encounters. A Reuters investigation in the United States looked at cases between 2001 and 2019 and found 1,081 deaths where TASERs were present in some form during police incidents. In a review of autopsy reports in a subset of those cases, TASER use was listed as a cause or contributing factor in 153 deaths.
Reuters also reported that in another dataset of 779 cases with cause-of-death information, officials linked TASER involvement as a contributing factor in about 21% of them.
However, experts note that these figures do not prove TASERs directly caused those deaths, since many cases involve multiple factors and pre-existing medical conditions.
In the United States, there is also no single federal database that tracks every death following TASER use, which makes it difficult to draw firm national conclusions.
Similar concerns have been reported elsewhere. In Italy, media reports between July 2024 and October 2025 described several deaths following the use of TASER devices by police. These cases have also raised questions about how often conducted energy weapons are involved in fatal encounters, though clear medical conclusions vary case by case.
The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) is an independent civilian agency in Alberta, Canada that investigates serious incidents involving police. This includes cases where someone is seriously injured or killed, or where there are allegations of serious misconduct by on-duty police officers. ASIRT’s role is to provide an objective review of what happened and determine whether criminal charges should be recommended, helping ensure police actions are independently scrutinized outside of the involved police service.
