VANCOUVER - Transit police decided to skip a scheduled appearance Tuesday at a Vancouver inquiry into the use of Tasers, despite coming under fire last month for using the stun weapons against non-violent passengers.

The Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority Police Service was to make a submission to former appeal court justice Thomas Braidwood at the provincially ordered inquiry, but decided not to attend.

Inquiry counsel Art Vertlieb said it was regrettable the transit police did not attend. "The Braidwood inquiry is to get at the policies. It's not to lay blame," Vertlieb said in an interview. "They had issues in the media and it was a chance for them to be transparent, but they felt it was better to deal with the Police Complaints Commission."

Transit police had used the electroshock device 10 times over 18 months. And on four of those occasions, they used Tasers on non-aggressive, non-compliant passengers, according to documents obtained through access to information. Sgt. Willie Merenick explained Tuesday that transit police did not want to do anything to interfere with a Police Complaints Commission investigation underway.

"It's like any investigation really. You cannot really take the evidence and disrupt the investigation," Merenick said.

However, B.C. Civil Liberties Association president Rob Holmes said the transit police explanation for not attending did "not make sense.

"Mr. Braidwood is obviously engaging in a civil inquiry. Nothing criminal can come out of what he has to say," Holmes said.

B.C. Attorney General Wally Oppal ordered the Taser inquiry after Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski died at the Vancouver International Airport after being Tasered by RCMP officers.

Walter Kosteckyj, a former police officer who now is the lawyer for Dziekanski's mother, said the decision is telling.

"What does that tell you about the public trust you can have in a police force not prepared to show up at a public forum and put their views forward before the public?"

Meanwhile at the inquiry Tuesday, a police psychologist blasted Taser International, claiming Canadian police have been "brainwashed" by the manufacturer to justify "ridiculously inappropriate" use of the electronic weapon.

Mike Webster accused the company of training police in Canada that when officers encounter a person suffering from a "mythical" condition that Taser calls "excited delirium," police have few options other than jolting the person with the controversial electrical weapon.

"When you think the only tool you have is a hammer, then the whole world begins looking like a nail," Webster told the inquiry. "It may be that police and medical examiners are using the term (excited delirium) as a convenient excuse for what could be excessive use of force or inappropriate control techniques during an arrest," Webster said.

Dr. Lu Shaohua, a psychiatrist at Vancouver General Hospital, told the inquiry he has seen about 1,000 people suffering from delirium and most are confused, agitated and sometimes aggressive and paranoid.

"Most are scared and frightened," he explained, adding the physical responses are sweating, increased breathing and increased heart rate.

Delirium is difficult to diagnose in a few seconds, he said, suggesting first responders such as police probably would not be able to tell the difference, at first glance, between delirium or a person high on drugs.