It was almost a year ago that CBC first began building a database that drove many of our Taser stories.

It was the Thursday before the 2008 Easter long weekend. As we settled in to enjoy a weekend of rest and family, we caught wind of something that journalists dread: the release of key information at the end of the day before a holiday weekend.

In this case, it was the RCMP's Taser-use forms for which CBC/Radio Canada and The Canadian Press had been negotiating.

It took 15 months and an official complaint before the RCMP would release thousands of pages recording more than 4,000 Taser incidents.

The RCMP was also releasing the reports to other news organizations for whom Tasers had also become an important story.

In order to be first with what we suspected would be a significant rise in stun-gun use, we spent the frigid Easter weekend counting the Taser-use forms by hand. As a result, we were able to give Canadians their first detailed information about how RCMP officers were using the Taser.

We couldn’t tell the whole story because the RCMP had censored key details and we noted that information the RCMP had previously released to The Canadian Press in November 2007 was missing from this latest batch of forms. Our stories sparked outrage, prompting the RCMP to eventually release a bit more information that allowed us to tell more stories about people receiving multiple stuns and needing medical care.

We've decided to give Canadians access to a searchable version of the database we've been using, warts and all.

Using the Access to Information Law, the CBC/Radio-Canada and The Canadian Press, obtained the forms RCMP officers must fill out when they draw a stun gun. In all, there were more than 5,000 records of Taser deployment between the years 2002 and 2008. The forms were heavily redacted.

In order to make sense of the information, we entered the material from the forms into a database. A painstaking process, indeed.

We also included instances in which officers drew the Taser, but didn't fire. Note that there may be errors, omissions and duplications, due to discrepancies in the source data.

You'll also notice that many of the narrative fields are incomplete. That's because the RCMP used certain exemptions under the law to withhold information the force determined could help identify the individual who was shocked. Still, the narrative fields convey a sense of what happened.

Since we began airing and publishing our stories, the RCMP has created its own database, which it says collects more precise information. The force is also training officers to be more accurate when recording details about their Taser use. Still, it's unclear how much information from this internal database will ever be made public, except through reports from the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP. In his latest report, commission chairman Paul Kennedy says that the accuracy of some of the data may still be suspect.

By putting a searchable version of our database online, we hope that people can discover a few more details about the use of a device that has been the subject of increased public scrutiny and political debate after the death of a Polish immigrant, Robert Dziekanski, who died shortly after being stunned five times with a Taser at Vancouver International Airport in October 2007.