For the last 150 years the standard on how to keep people alive in police custody has been the same. Have a cop with nil medical training look them over (doesn’t always work), ask them if they’ve taken any drugs (almost never works), then put them in a cell and then look at them every 15 minutes to make sure they’re still alive. Really that’s about it.
If the person is drunk or high that often means leaving them in a cell with no blanket and the lights on so that guard can clearly see if they’re breathing, which makes for a pretty miserable night for the prisoner, and it doesn’t always work. People die in cells. In Canada it happens every year.
It’s 2025, we can do better. Ultra-wide band radar is a non-contact non-invasive technology that can monitor gross movement, respiration rate, and heart rate from a distance through clothing. Surrey Police, Winnipeg Police and others are already using the technology from Toronto based Xandar Kardian Inc. to monitor detainee health and save lives. When Winnipeg started their pilot the system activated on a prisoner within 2 days of being installed, allowing the police to get them out of cells and to the hospital.
Surrey and Winnipeg are both surrounded by RCMP detachments, the next time someone dies in cells in one of those RCMP detachments the family is going to ask if their loved one would have lived if they had been in a cell the next town over. Our Federal Police should set the standard, instead they’re being left behind.
Like a lot of problems in custody deaths disproportionately effect Canada’s Indigenous population. Police aren’t in a position to solve all of the social issues that underline that problem, but they can do better to keep the people their custody alive. PolicyTalk Canada Inc. is calling on government at every level to provide the funding and direction needed to ensure that all police agencies in Canada adopt this technology.
No one should die alone in a cell.