The Braidwood Chronicles: the Pritchard factor

Does anyone else think it odd that the man who shot the video seen around the world, Paul Pritchard, was not called to testify at the Braidwood Inquiry?

His video, showing the last moments of Robert Dziekanski as he was set upon by four RCMP officers and killed, was exhaustively reviewed. And yet an important statement that he made shortly afterwards never surfaced at the Inquiry, although it was reported in the press at the time.

It becomes even more salient after the revelation, two days ago, that a key piece of evidence was overlooked by the Department of Justice, an internal RCMP email:

Finally spoke to Wayne and he indicated that the members did not articulate that they saw the symptoms of excited delirium, but had instead discussed the response en route and decided that (if) he did not comply that they would go to CEW [conducted energy weapon].

The "Wayne" here was Superintendent Wayne Rideout, who, as testimony before the Inquiry revealed, had covered up inaccuracies in the RCMP version of events at the Vancouver airport.

Pritchard, interviewed immediately after the Dziekanski killing, stated: "I heard 'Can I or should I Taser him?' before they even got to Mr. Dziekanski. Right away they Tasered him." A slightly different version of his comment was also reported: "As they ran in, I heard one of the officers say, 'Can I Taser him, should I Taser?' before they actually even got to Mr. Dziekanski."

This would be of a piece with the email revelation. The use of the Taser was clearly uppermost in the officers' minds before they had ever laid eyes on Dziekanski. They seem to have been, to put it bluntly, eager to try it out.

Will Pritchard be called to testify when the Inquiry resumes on September 22?

In the meantime, the Vancouver Sun has just got its hands on a 55-page internal RCMP report written in May, 2008, dealing with communications. Here is an interesting excerpt:

The members attending the scene told investigators that they began with verbal contact to calm Dziekanski and then decided to use the (Taser) when they saw Dziekanski turn toward them, arms swinging low and holding a stapler.

But on Paul Pritchard's video, two members arriving at YVR and walking toward Dziekanski are clearly heard asking if they have the (Taser) ready. They speak to Dziekanski for 25 seconds and for a few seconds he appears to calm down before he turns toward them with renewed aggression.

Obviously the decision to speak to him while preparing for a worse outcome appeared to the public as being too quick to discount verbal techniques and consider more aggressive ones. . . . But for a police officer, the idea of attending a scene with one strategy in mind while preparing for a worse outcome is common sense.

Never mind the self-serving nature of the commentary. Did you notice the phrase, "arms swinging low?" Yet two of the officers testified, in the kind of unison that can only be the result of practice, that Dziekanski has approached them in a threatening manner with the stapler raised. The RCMP brass had to have known that they were providing misinformation to the Inquiry, but no effort was made to correct the record.

Another day, another fatal inconsistency. We aren't simply dealing with four rogue officers here, it seems, but with what can only be described as institutional malfeasance.

UPDATE: Reader Alison reminds me that the words are clearly audible in the Pritchard video, excerpted by the CBC here @2:30 and @6:15. "May I Taser him?" "Yes." But this has not been remarked upon so far at the Braidwood Inquiry, other than one glancing reference (p.32). Thus modified, my point still stands: the officers had Tasering on their minds before they had even confronted Dziekanski. The email and the exchange at the airport reinforce each other.

The Braidwood Chronicles: mudslingers meet their match

The illustration here is of Canadian protesters rallying for Robert Dziekanski in November, 2007. At the same time, Polish citizens, learning of his death at the hands of four RCMP officers, were equally outraged, and some let the Canadian Embassy in Warsaw know it. One sent an email suggesting that the Vancouver authorities, in preparation for the 2010 Olympics, might want to stock up on "body bags and interpreters." Canadian diplomats and their families were urged to lie low for a while.

Some of those citizens, friends and neighbours of Dziekanski, are presently testifying before the Braidwood Inquiry by videolink. Readers will remember that the RCMP sent officers to Poland on a mission last April to dig up any dirt they could find on their victim, causing considerable offence in his home town.

Lawyers for two of the officers involved tried it again today, but they ran into one Iwona Kowaska, who simply wasn't having any. She had lived in the same apartment building as Dziekanski in his home town of Gliwice, and had known him socially for more than twenty years. She testified that he had never seen him drunk, contrary to RCMP and Crown innuendo about his alleged alcoholism. He was a normal, friendly man, eager to join his mother for a new life in Canada, but anxious about his upcoming trip: he hadn't slept for two days before he left.

The RCMP lawyers, who did not divulge to her whom they were representing, questioned her closely about his habits, disposition and medical record. In response to their suggestions that he was an alcoholic who was prone to violence she reacted with anger. She accused them of trying to blacken his name, and stated flatly that she would answer no more questions from them if they persisted. And when the lawyer for Constable Kwesi Millington attempted to bring up an alleged 23-year-old robbery conviction in Poland, he was called to order by the chairman, Thomas Braidwood.

Incidentally, there's a lengthy and very good run-down of the proceedings here, in Q & A format, by CBC reporter Curt Petrovich. (He can be asked more questions here, and, if you have the stomach for it, there is a daily live broadcast of the Braidwood Inquiry here.) This is what Petrovich has to say about the allegation that Dziekanski had a criminal conviction:

Q| If Mr. Dziekanski had no criminal record, how did he do a five year term in a Polish prison for robbery?

Peter O'Neil, CanWest Europe Correspondent, CanWest News Service
Published: Wednesday, November 14, 2007
GLIWICE, Poland - Robert Dziekanski dreamed of coming to B.C. to escape a troubled life in this gritty industrial city, including a tumultuous common-law relationship and a five-year jail term for robbery when he was a teenager, say two of his closest friends.

Is Peter O'Neil credible?

A| All I can tell you is that there is nothing in the RCMP's dossier to the effect that Robert Dziekanski spent any time in custody for any crime as you describe. Considering investigators went to Poland I would be surprised if a detail like a criminal record escaped their scrutiny in this matter. As I've said before Canadian immigration officials also verified Mr. Dziekanski's admissibility. While I am told anecdotally that he was involved in some event as a juvenile I have to wonder what difference that would make anyway. If what you read is true it happened 20 years before his death. The officers who approached him had zero information about who Mr. Dziekanski was let alone any background. And it wasn't until after some 30 hours of rather uneventful dealings with Mr Dziekanski that anyone reported a problem. [emphasis added]

But in spite of all the fetid water that has passed under the bridge by now, the cops, through their lawyers, are still trying to brazen it out, ever more desperately. As Petrovich says, even if there had been a conviction, the connection between it and his death at the hands of RCMP officers more than two decades later must, at least for any reasonable person, appear to be a tenuous one indeed.

As tenuous, in fact, as the connection between the officers' testimony at the Braidwood Inquiry and the Pritchard video.

The Braidwood Chronicles: RCMP end-run?

The unmitigated torrent of RCMP sleaze continues.

Those who have been following the twists and turns of the Braidwood Inquiry into the killing of Robert Dziekanski by RCMP officers don't, as they say, need a weatherman to know which way the wind has been blowing. The officers have made a spectacle of themselves, lying in perfect unison, wriggling and dancing on the stand. There were further attempts made to smear the reputation of their victim, with one mouthpiece attempting to bring decades-old records into evidence. There was a last-ditch attempt, using a questionable "expert," to tell us that we didn't see what we saw when we viewed and reviewed the Pritchard video.

There had been false statements given to the media. There had been a cover-up lasting for months. There had been evidence of rot from the very top, as Commissioner William "Bubbles" Elliott (and BC Premier Gordon Campbell), publicly contrite, sent private words of encouragement to the officers while Dziekanski's mother was still raw with grief.

It has been a sickening tale.

Think it couldn't get any worse? Oh, ye of little faith. If there's a dark corner to crawl into, the RCMP will assuredly find it. And so this morning we learn that the RCMP lawyers have gone to the British Columbia Supreme Court to head off the Braidwood Inquiry, asking it to enjoin Justice Braidwood from making any findings of misconduct against the Four Horsemen.

That would be improper, says David Butcher, the lawyer for Constable Bill Bentley. The Inquiry is provincial. The officers come under federal jurisdiction.

Is this yet another straw being grasped by that sorry gang of ill-trained cowboys, drowning in their sea of lies and excuses--or is it a lifebuoy? Only time will tell. Because we always seem to have a ready supply of the latter when police misbehaviour is dragged, squinting, into the light.

The Braidwood Chronicles: Robinson next--what lies ahead?

The last of the four officers to be heard with respect to the killing of Robert Dziekanski is Corporal Benjamin Montgomery Robinson. He will testify before the Braidwood Inquiry on March 23, when it resumes after a two-week break. In the video, he's the man with his knee on Dziekanski's neck.

Corporal Robinson, more recently, has been implicated in another death--that of a motorcyclist last October. I wrote about that here. Robinson was under the influence of alcohol when he struck 21-year-old Orion Hutchinson. According to witnesses, he left the scene of the accident, without attending to his injured victim.

At the time, I noted the following:

**********
It would appear that an alibi is already being prepared for him. Here is his collegial fellow officer Paul Eisenzimmer:

Delta Const. Paul Eisenzimmer said that, in general, anyone who leaves the scene could be charged under the Criminal Code.

"Leaving the scene means avoiding responsibility," Eisenzimmer said. "If someone left their identification there it is hard to say the person is avoiding responsibility.

"But if someone leaves their identification and then leaves the scene the issue is why leave and what have they done in the interim -- have they gone and drank some more?"

I am not alone, I suspect, in reading between the lines here.

**********

It turns out that I was exactly right. Robinson is presently facing charges of impaired driving causing death and exceeding the legal alcohol limit. (Well, not quite, it seems: police have recommended that those charges be formally laid, but no decision has yet been made by the BC Criminal Justice Branch. Have I seen this movie before?)

In any case, in the interim, Robinson had his licence suspended for three months for impaired driving. And, lo and behold, he did precisely what I predicted he might: he argued all the way to the BC Supreme Court that he drank himself over the limit after leaving the scene and going home.

Luckily, there are a few smart folks around courtrooms these days. His appeal has been summarily rejected. The original decision to suspend his license came from a motor vehicles adjudicator, who ruled:

The police evidence indicates you told the officer you left the scene, had two shots of vodka and then returned. In reviewing the evidence before me I do not find this credible.

This was upheld by BC Supreme Court Justice Mark McEwan in his review of the adjudicator's finding: as reported, he found that "the adjudicator's determination was within her jurisdiction and within the standard of reasonableness."

To be sure, this is more of a tangled tale than it looks. As I noted above, witnesses at the time reported that he had indeed walked away, and Robinson staked his case before the adjudicator on this. But for some reason the claim that he had left the scene was dismissed by the adjudicator, who said, "I find it unlikely that after witnessing you having a collision that the witnesses would then allow you to leave the scene of the collision."

In any case, the adjudicator took the blood alcohol readings seriously. And Justice McEwan concurred:

(The) officer noted her personal observations that the petitioner had a strong odour of liquor on his breath and on his person, that his face was pale, his eyes were bloodshot and his pupils were dilated, and his speech was slurred,” said the judgment by Justice Mark McEwan.

It said Robinson told the officer he had two beers at a party at 5:30 p.m. and then took two shots of vodka after the collision during a 10-minute period in which he left the scene, walked home, and returned.

The officer didn’t believe him, noting “symptoms far more set than two shots in that time period should indicate.”

Wheels within wheels. Whether he walked away from the scene or didn't, the blood alcohol evidence was damning in two respects: it was well over the legal limit, and it was not consistent with his going home and downing two shots of vodka.

Corporal Robinson's testimony at the Braidwood Inquiry should be...interesting. Stay tuned.

Dziekanski killing: criminal charges?

The BC government shifts comfortably in its seat:

November 2007:

The e-mail written by [RCMP deputy commissioner for the Pacific region Gary] Bass on Nov. 24 indicates that [BC Premier Gordon] Campbell was "highly complimentary" of the police force despite the fact Dziekanski's death was still under investigation.

The e-mail was addressed to Elliott and Bill Sweeney, an RCMP deputy commissioner and special adviser to the commissioner.

"I just ran into our premier at the airport and we had a great 20-minute discussion on this issue generally.… He was highly complimentary of the force, disappointed over the degree of criticism and wants to support the members involved somehow," Bass wrote.

"He [Campbell] asked me to think about what he could do in this regard.… He supports the continued use of Taser and any other tools which support and protect our members.

December 2008:

B.C.’s attorney general has claimed that four RCMP members who used a taser on Robert Dziekanski can still be held accountable, even though they won’t be charged with criminal wrongdoing.

The four Richmond RCMP officers who appear in this video will not be charged in the October 17, 2007 death of Robert Dziekanski.

Wally Oppal said in a phone interview with the Straight that the officers will now be able to testify before the Braidwood Commission of Inquiry, which has a mandate to provide the public with a complete record of events surrounding Dziekanski’s death.

“I know it’s difficult to understand all of this because I know people think, ‘Geez, we saw that on the video and surely somebody must be held accountable’,” Oppal said, “but accountability can be achieved outside a criminal courtroom and in the process of the inquiry.”

April 13, 2009:

British Columbia's attorney general suggested Monday that criminal charges could be laid against the four Mounties involved in the Taser-related death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski.

Last December, Crown prosecutors decided that RCMP Cpl. Benjamin Monty Robinson, Const. Kwesi Millington, Const. Bill Bentley and Const. Gerry Rundel wouldn't face criminal charges, although the final report from the Braidwood inquiry looking into Dziekanski's death could include findings of misconduct.

But in an interview, Wally Oppal told the CBC's Terry Milewski, "Well, nothing is final, Terry, particularly where we're getting more and more evidence being elicited on a daily basis. So it may well be, at the end of the day, the people in the Criminal Justice Branch could re-examine this."

Oppal made the comments before the inquiry has concluded.

The Braidwood Chronicles: the Chairman puts his foot down

Only one witness testified today: Robert Dylski, who drove Robert Dziekanski to the airport to take his ill-fated trip to Canada. The other witness, scheduled to testify today, was called away because her father had had a stroke. The Inquiry is now effectively adjourned until April 14: there will, however, be a brief meeting at 2:30pm BC time today to consider a motion from Kwesi Millington's lawyer, Ravi Hira, to get access to more records pertaining to Dziekanski's past.

The Globe and Mail summed up this entire distasteful exercise this morning: it's hard to improve on the editorialist's words. But up to now the Chairman of the inquiry, Thomas Braidwood, has been content to let this travesty continue.

Today, he obviously had had enough.

Dylski testified that Dziekanski was nervous about leaving the land of his birth for a new life in Canada. At a gathering before he was driven to the airport, he might even have thrown up--he also clutched a radiator for maybe 20 minutes before standing up and moving away. Dziekanski, who had canceled a previous trip to Canada, telephoned his mother, and had to be persuaded to take what all of us, at least those of us with empathy, can recognize as a major turning-point in his life, a leap of faith.

Once in the car to the airport, said the witness, Dziekanski was restored to calm. At the airport he even had a soft drink. RCMP lawyers hammered away, but the witness remained composed.

Was he a smoker? Well, averred Dylski, he didn't have a lot of money, so he smoked when he could afford to. What about alcohol? Why, yes: Dylski had witnessed him drinking vodka--four times over a period of eight years. He couldn't say what Dziekanski's drinking habits were when he was out of his sight.

The lawyer for Constable William Bentley pounded away. Was Dziekanski afraid of moving to another country? Yes. Has he cancelled an earlier trip? Yes, but the witness didn't know why. (At this point, the lawyer didn't even have the grace to pronounce the dead man's name correctly.) Was Dziekanski "hysterical" before he departed?

He wasn't getting anywhere, and asked the witness if it wasn't true that he didn't actually know Dziekanski all that well. Yes. Had he ever seen Dziekanski act in the manner that the video showed him acting at the Vancouver Airport? No.

Then it was Ravi Hira's turn: he acts for Constable Kwesi Millington. He started banging away again at the alcohol issue. Then he decided to ask about alleged police visits to Dziekanski's home in Poland.

But that was too much for Thomas Braidwood. He called Hira sharply to order, and told him the question wasn't relevant. Hira insisted on reading into the record previous dialogue with the witness. In Poland, he had been questioned by a Polish prosecutor, in the presence of RCMP officials. His testimony on this subject proved to be classic hearsay.

We may learn later today of Braidwood's response to Hira's motion to access certain records pertaining to Dziekanski's past. I'll provide an update if and when it becomes available.

In the meantime, let me observe once more that it would be salutary if we could get similar access to the records and past behaviour of the four RCMP officers who killed him. As it is, only the victim has been on trial this week.

UPDATE: (April 5) Justice Braidwood denied Ravi Hira's motion, without even hearing counter-arguments.

Transcripts of the hearings from January to March 26 are now available.

The Inquiry resumes in a few days, with the following schedule:

Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Peter Dore (YVR) Greg Sambrook (YVR) Cpl. Nycki Basra (RCMP) Wednesday, April 15, 2009 Cst. Hoivik (RCMP) Sgt. Christianssen (RCMP) Officer Lemaitre (RCMP) Thursday, April 16, 2009 Officer Carr (RCMP) Adam Chapin (Canadian Border Services Agency (recall)) Craig Baltzer (Delta Police Department)

The Four Horsemen: charges pending?

An intriguing article in today's Globe and Mail suggests that the Crown's hasty decision not to prosecute the four RCMP officers implicated in the death of Robert Dziekanski may be reversed.

There has already been slow but certain progress in this direction. Now Janusz Kochanowski, a senior Polish ombudsman, is calling for criminal charges to be laid. “New facts call for a reassessment of the previous decision,” as he puts it, referring to the appalling performance of the Four Horsemen at the Braidwood Inquiry.

Of perhaps even more interest, there is a hint of further slippage in the Crown position on the matter: once it was "has ruled out criminal charges," but now that's being reported as "an initial decision."

In other not necessarily unrelated news, Helen Roberts, the government lawyer who revealed the existence of an incriminating RCMP email just as the Braidwood Inquiry was supposedly winding up, has resigned from the file. This is no surprise: reputations are fragile things. But the government side now appears to be in considerable disarray.

Meanwhile the RCMP is backing away from the four officers, and the damage the latter have done to themselves is considerable. Events are unfolding, I think, with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy.

The Braidwood Chronicles: double smackdown

The Braidwood Inquiry is lurching to a conclusion, with testimony likely to finish next week and final arguments to be presented at the end of the month.

It's been a rough week for the Four Horsemen, and for Taser International, too.

First it was a police psychologist, Mike Webster, who has been training police forces for more than thirty years. To say that he didn't mince words would be somewhat of an understatement.

"Fools rush in," he said. "They [the Four Horsemen] panicked and they abandoned their basic training and they embraced their more recent and questionable Taser training provided for them by their misguided employer."

Ouch.

And there was more:

Webster said that Dziekanski was clearly upset, after his "gruelling journey" of more than 30 hours from Poland to Vancouver without meeting his mother, and that he actually was glad to see the RCMP arrive to help him, calling out "Polizia, polizia," and dropping his hands to his side in a release of tension.

But then, Webster said, RCMP gave him conflicting commands to get his passport and when he turned to his suitcase to get it, told him to move away from his luggage and put his hands on the counter.

"Following the contrary commands came the pointing of at least one black leather-clad finger," said Webster, noting Dziekanski then threw up his hands in exasperation. Then came what Webster called the "circling of the wagons," as the officers surrounded him with their hands on their duty belts in a menacing fashion.

Said Webster: "Mr. Dziekanski was their client and it was their responsibility, not his, to take control and calm him down."

He still wasn't done. Describing the RCMP as a "sick" institution, he called senior management "dinosaurs" who are still in the "dark ages" of police work.

"I am embarrassed," he said, "to be associated with organizations that Taser sick old men in hospital beds and confused immigrants arriving to the country. Frankly I find it embarrassing."

Unsurprisingly, the outspoken Webster has seen his consulting work with the RCMP dry up in the wake of his public comments. "Unfortunately the RCMP is not a healthy organization and is unable to take criticism," he said. "I've become something of a pariah."

Next it was the renowned forensic pathologist Dr. John Butt, awarded the Order of Canada in 2000 for his nearly four decades of work in the field.

Dr. Butt shredded the autopsy report of pathologist Dr. Charles Lee, who failed to mention the repeated Taserings that Robert Dziekanski had suffered, or the marks on his back caused by the Taser probes, but claimed that "chronic alcoholism" had contributed to his death. (Video here; testimony of Dr. Lee here.)

Butt disputed Lee's statement that heart damage had been present as a result of alcoholism:

"I think this is probably a cardiac-related death 'de novo,' a new event unheralded by previous symptoms," said Butt, noting that he reviewed Dziekanski's health records back to 1994 and found "no indication" of heart problems or high blood pressure.

As for the Taser:

"Given the circumstances of the death of Dziekanski, in my experience it would be uncommon for the role of a weapon (e.g. Taser) to be left without a discussion as was so in Lee's report," noted Butt's report.

Butt also urged that "caution is advisable about use of the term 'excited delirium,'" which has often been cited as a cause of death following Taser use. Butt said that "diagnosis" is "questioned by those practising psychiatry . . . (and) often is defined by persons who have neither training in nor experience with aberrant behaviour."

Concluded Butt: "I believe that increasing exertion and stress seen following the discharge of the Taser likely contributed to the death of Robert Dziekanski."

It's hard to imagine how the RCMP as an institution could absorb much more punishment than it has received over the past several weeks of the inquiry and remain standing. It seems, in fact, that the force is shifting its position in advance of Justice Braidwood's conclusions, judging from the belated apology by Deputy Commissioner William Sweeney a few days ago delivered to a Senate Committee studying RCMP reforms. This follows another official apology two weeks ago from senior media relations officer Sgt. Tim Shields.

"We are very sorry for Mr. Dziekanski's death," said Sweeney. "We are committed to learning as much as possible from the circumstances surrounding his tragic death."

"We must spend more time with our training to use de-escalation techniques in a much more effective manner than perhaps we have in the past," he said. "In my day, it was always talking. We prided ourselves on time, talk and, if necessary, tear gas before we attempted to do any sorts of interventions that would physically cause harm to others."

This sounds as though the RCMP is all but throwing in the towel, even if Sweeney hedged, cautioning that "[s]ometimes things happen so quickly that the outcome is not one we would have desired." But that's pretty flabby stuff, given what we have learned so far about the conduct of the Four Horsemen before, during and after the killing of Robert Dziekanski.

Judging from his words as a whole, we might safely conclude that their futures in the RCMP are not bright. But they are, as Webster and many others have indicated, a mere symptom of serious institutional disease. And that is likely incurable, no matter what the outcome of the inquiry.

The Braidwood Chronicles: Epic Fail!

A BC Supreme Court judge lopped yet another limb off the squirming, multi-legged monster that the Four Horsemen's defence has become.

From improper delving into their victim's early life in Poland, to attempting to smear his reputation, to stupidly making up the same lies ("he came at us brandishing a stapler and screaming") in spite of a video that must by now be one of the most-circulated pieces of evidence in history, the killers of Robert Dziekanski have dug themselves into an ever-deeper and smellier pit.

They were ultimately reduced to putting up an "expert" whose pixillated "analysis" of the video appeared to cause even the usually taciturn Justice Braidwood considerable irritation. And then, the writing on the wall flashing in gigantic neon letters, they tried an end-run--appealing to the BC Supreme Court to enjoin Braidwood from finding any misconduct on their part.

Even the RCMP itself, which has by now apologized to Dziekanski's mother and pretty well admitted that all was not right in the Vancouver airport, officially refused to back that desperate move.

The last-ditch manoeuvre, in any case, was hammered down today:

Justice Arnie Silverman ruled Monday morning in Vancouver that the inquiry properly warned the officers that it might accuse them of using the Taser on Dziekanski when it was "not justified," of giving "misleading" testimony and of misrepresenting the facts.

The judge said the inquiry's commissioner, retired judge Thomas Braidwood, is entitled to make such findings in his final report into the October 2007 death and is not prevented by any lack of jurisdiction.

Closing submissions on Friday--if the charmers don't head off to the Supreme Court of Canada. But once again, with this lot nothing would surprise me.

UPDATE: Tawdry. Yes, that just about covers it.

FURTHER UPDATE: QOTW goes to Chris Selley: "[J]ust about everyone else in Canada has found misconduct; why shouldn’t Justice Braidwood?"

The Braidwood Chronicles: "tissues, water and moral support"

The Braidwood Inquiry continues this week, not quite on schedule but close enough.

Someone has evidently had a little chat with BC attorney general Wally Oppal, who had earlier opened the door to the possibility that the Four Horsemen might be charged. Today he issued a clarification:

Oppal told The Canadian Press he was merely "talking theory," and cautioned that he hasn't seen anything so far that he believes could change the decision on charges.

"All I said is that if new evidence emerges, there's always a possibility to lay charges, but I didn't specifically say in this case it would happen," said Oppal, who has made similar comments in the past.

Oppal said he's "not prepared to buy in" that there was a significant change in evidence and there were false statements made.

RCMP lawyer Jan Brongers claimed yesterday that there was a "perfectly innocent explanation" for the collective hallucination the officers apparently suffered at the airport--four accounts, later recanted, that contained identical "errors." He didn't provide that explanation, however.

A second RCMP mouthpiece, Helen Roberts, lost no time attempting to keep RCMP PR flacks Cpl. Dale Carr and Sgt. Pierre Lemaitre off the stand this week, but Justice Braidwood ruled that they will indeed appear. Sgt. Lemaitre, readers may remember, was the RCMP spokesperson who, immediately after the Dziekanski killing but before the existence of the video became known, announced that only three officers were involved, that a Taser had been used only twice, and that the Vancouver Airport was crowded at the time. I look forward to his examination.

Meanwhile, today we heard from RCMP Cpl. Nycki Basra, who, as a volunteer for the Employee Assistance Program, organized the debriefing session for the Four Horsemen that took place shortly after Dziekanski's death. Previously Constable William Bentley testified that the four of them talked about the killing at that meeting, although Constable Kwesi Millington couldn't remember the subject coming up at the meeting or, for that matter, at any other time, although the four of them worked together for several weeks afterwards.

Trained to listen, Cpl. Basra told the Inquiry that she couldn't remember a thing. "My focus is really on their emotions, their speed of speech and physiological symptoms. Having said that, I don't recall the exact specifics of what was said," she claimed.

Her job, she said, was "to monitor the officers' emotions, provide tissues, water and moral support."

Dziekanski's mother, Zofia Cisowski, was not there to hear any of this. She was at the Vancouver Airport today, laying flowers to mark what would have been her son's 42nd birthday.

The Braidwood Chronicles: the RCMP's Hail Mary pass

At almost the last moment of the Braidwood Inquiry, the RCMP has managed to dredge up a "forensic video analyst" from the US, Grant Fredericks, who claims that by counting pixels in the video frame-by-frame he can assert that Dziekanski was advancing towards the officers with a stapler in his hand when he was Tasered for the first time.

As the CBC's Terry Malewski reports, Justice Braidwood showed considerable impatience--in fact, to this observer, mounting irritation--with the testimony of this surprise witness, and Malewski himself, who has been covering the inquiry from the beginning, indicates considerable scepticism himself.

Here's the Dziekanski death video. Go to @3:50 and judge for yourselves. Do you believe this desperate last-minute pixel-counting--or your own lying eyes?

UPDATE: Under cross-examination by the lawyer for Poland, Don Rosenbloom,* Fredericks found himself unable to specify with any certainty whether Dziekanski was moving forward or downward. As I post this, a short break has been called. Probably just as well for Fredericks, who is showing signs of strain.

UPPERDATE: The Taser connection. [H/t commenter Frank Frink]

_________
*Name corrected, with thanks to commenter P. Kealy.

The Braidwood Chronicles: Taser International is shocked...

...by the Braidwood Commission's first report, on the use of "conducted energy weapons."

So shocked that it's going to court to have sections of Braidwood's report "quashed."

Does anyone else think this is simply bizarre, as I do? The Braidwood Commission was struck in part to look into the uses and abuses of the weapon in question. It is a commission of inquiry, not a court of law. It made findings on the basis of which it offered recommendations, not instructions.

So a court is now being asked to second-guess the first Braidwood Report. What does that actually mean, practically speaking? Effectively, Braidwood issued an opinion. Taser doesn't like it, for obvious reasons. But to ask that a judge "quash" it, or parts of it? All that would mean, if the company were successful in its quest, is--another opinion.

Why not simply try to make their case in the public sphere? Point to the scientific literature, wish away all the deaths, demand that the Taser be used on jaywalkers, whatever. Lobby governments to ignore Braidwood's recommendations. By all means, let's keep the public discussions going, if they so desire. But no court of law will be able to "quash" any aspect of the debate. To think otherwise is to suggest that creationists could have the theory of evolution thrown out by a judge, for example.

A court of law might well declare Tasers safe, or rule that the earth is flat. Who cares?

Humanity vs Corporatism (Update)

Another round in the battle between do-gooders and evil-doers?

Taser International's lawyers are challenging the findings of the Braidwood Commission in the BC Supreme Court.

Taser International says its bottom line is hurting and its reputation has been slurred in the wake of a provincial public inquiry report that concluded the weapon can cause death. ...

David Neave, a lawyer for the U.S. manufacturer, told Judge Robert Sewell on Monday that Taser is concerned about Braidwood’s conclusion that the weapon can cause death. “It’s a slur on Taser that its device can kill,” Neave said. “That’s a slur that ought to be removed.”

Sewell noted the commission had concluded the “harm this product could cause carries with it a low risk of death.” However, Neave said there is no medical or scientific evidence to support that the weapon has caused any deaths.

Sewell challenged Neave further and said use of the weapon, if carried out by anyone other than police officers, could be considered assault causing bodily harm. “This product is designed to cause harm,” the judge said.

Neave rejected that. “It’s designed to incapacitate,” he said. “Certainly there is a pain component associated.”

I believe that the terms that I've emphasized, if employed by anyone other than a lawyer working for Taser International, could be considered weasel words.

Taser International claims that Braidwood's conclusions "had caused concern with customers around the world and it was hurting potential sales". The price of stock shares seems to be affected also, as a result of the commissioner's plain language observations that were widely disseminated in news items.

I blogged about Braidwood last year. I mentioned, and linked to a letter sent to Sofia Cisowski from Dr Mike Webster, RCMP staff psychologist. There are points that he used that need repeating, in light of what happened in Toronto during the g-20.

As in all democratic societies, the police in Canada are given the authority to use force to ensure that the laws of the country are upheld and public safety and security are maintained. This, of course, carries the expectation that police persons and their organizations will be accountable to the public for any use of force . However, even though the community provides the police with the ability to employ legitimate force, several questions arise:

i. What is a reasonable use of force?
ii. Why and under what circumstances is one type of force chosen over another?; and, iii. What standards are in place to ensure that there is consistency in addressing use of force situations?

The police, in Canada, have attempted to address these questions by developing use of force models. No matter whether it is the RCMP's Incident Management Intervention Model (IMIM) or the more widely used National Use of Force Framework (NUFF), these are attempts to integrate force options (e.g. presence, communication…etc.) with a generic decision making model (e.g. assess-plan-act). There are some key principles underlying these models:

i. The primary responsibility of a police person is to preserve and protect life;
ii. The primary objective of any use of force is to ensure public safety;
iii. The safety of the police person is essential to public safety; and,
iv. The use of force model does not replace the law.

In May 2009 blogpost, I refered to a tipping point,

"the level at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable", as defined by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, refining the expression as a sociological term: "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point."

Dr Dawg also used that expression in this post.

There are reports, many documented by lawyers who attempted to communicate with their clients (activists pre-emptively apprehended and detained in cells during the g-20) that young people from the province of Québec were specifically targeted by police organizations.

That information must be presented in the course of the civilian-led public review into the behaviour of the riot police in order to identify the source of directives that dictated their actions - even though the head of the Toronto Police union has rightfully stated that it won't be a a full-fledged public inquiry that would be legally binding, as ordered by the province.


Photo source.

Update: As more information about the abusive policing methods on display at the g-20 emerge, some media are suggesting that "the RCMP were largely at the helm" of the security operations. This makes the information supplied by Dr David Webster relevant to these circumstances also.

The Braidwood Chronicles: end-game

The Braidwood Inquiry has heard its last witness. Closing arguments begin on October 5.

A few items worthy of note: first, it now appears that the supervisor of Cpl. Benjamin Robinson, head cowboy of the Four Horsemen, was less than pleased with the quality of Robinson's notes of the Vancouver Airport events. "They weren't up to my standard," said Staff Sergeant Doug Wright. Were they up to his? asked Don Rosenbloom, representing the government of Poland before the Inquiry. "I'm not sure," Wright responded.

As noted before, but this sort of thing can get lost in the voluminous details, the four officers were permitted by Staff Sergeant Wright to work together for several weeks after the Dziekanski killing. It wasn't considered necessary to separate them, he said, although there was a protocol in place prohibiting the men from discussing the case amongst themselves. We can assume, therefore, that they just talked about the weather and the Vancouver Canucks during all that time, and I'm the King of England.

One troublesome detail that continues to nag at me, and which bears directly on the question of whether the use of the Taser was pre-arranged, was a portion of the audio of the infamous Pritchard video. I noted here, with help from Alison at Creekside, that there was excited talk of Tasering Dziekanski before the officers had even passed through the doors to the area where he was.Why was this fairly crucial evidence not brought out in testimony?

Finally, it seems that all of this has lain rather heavily on the shoulders of various BC police forces, including the RCMP, to the point that--at long last, Hallelujah--they themselves are calling for an independent, civilian-led investigative agency to look into complaints of police misconduct. Maybe it'll happen, now that the police themselves recognize the folly--or at least the bad optics--of relying on in-house investigations that almost invariably clear their own folks.

In any case, their desperate call makes we civil libertarian types, who have been demanding this sort of thing for years, feel a little less isolated. Who knew that we'd someday be making common cause with some of the very organizations we've been watch-dogging?

The Braidwood Chonicles: the cops speak

The four RCMP officers who caused the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, but were exonerated of all wrongdoing by the B.C. Crown Attorney's office, have begun their testimony before the Braidwood Inquiry.

RCMP Constable Gerry Rundel was first up. And his testimony provides a glimpse into the attitudes of some police officers towards their jobs, Taser use and the public they are supposedly sworn to protect.

When the four officers descended upon the Vancouver Airport, they had no game plan, Const. Rundel stated. He himself was informed that Dziekanski spoke no English, but didn't think to share this information with the other officers. In any case, as reported in the Globe and Mail, Rundel didn't believe Dziekanski's lack of English was a barrier to communications.

Rundell's thinking during the incident itself was exposed to the light by the media today, and those reports make disquieting reading.

Rundel stated that it all began when Dziekanski reached for his luggage. The officer in charge, Cpl. Benjamin Robinson*, barked "No!" and gestured for Dziekanski to stop--which he did. Dziekanski then turned, lifted his hands in the air and started to walk away.

According to Rundel, this made Dziekanski fair game. Somehow, flipping up his hands, turning around and leaving was disobeying a direction from Cpl. Robinson: it was resistant behaviour," he said. According to Rundel, this was a "to hell with you guys" gesture, amounting to what the officer deemed "non-compliance."

"Non-compliance?" What compliance was required? Was he under arrest? In the mind of Const. Rundel, however, this alone would justify the use of a Taser. Never turn your back on the RCMP.

When Dziekanski finally turned around to face the four officers, with a stapler in his hand, he was Tasered, but as Rundel indicated, the intent to Taser, at least in his mind, was already fully formed. "Hit him again," Cpl. Robinson shouted, and Dziekanski, already in pain and shock, was duly zapped once more.

The rest is tragedy. No doubt as the inquiry progresses there will be other such insights into the mentality of the Mounties who got their man.

UPDATE: More. [via The Gazetteer]

Rundel took long pauses when asked repeatedly by Patrick McGowan, a commission lawyer, what command Dziekanski disobeyed that made officers conclude he was resistant.

McGowan noted that Dziekanski stopped moving toward his luggage when he was ordered to.

Rundel eventually replied that Dziekanski "indirectly" disobeyed the officers when he walked away because he should have known they were police and should have stood still.

Rundel was shown a video of the incident, taken by a witness, and asked to point out when Dziekanski lifted the stapler in an aggressive manner, but he could not. [Emphasis added]

______________
*Robinson is currently facing impaired driving charges in connection with the death of a motorcyclist.

The Braidwood Chronicles: the squirming continues

The culture of impunity rides again.

Two of the four RCMP officers implicated in the death of Robert Dziekanski have launched an appeal of the BC Supreme Court judgement on June 15 that upheld the right of the Braidwood Inquiry to find misconduct on the part of the officers.

They are arguing that a provincial inquiry has no jurisdiction, because the RCMP is a federal institution.

Have they no shame whatsoever? Words fail me.

The Braidwood Chronicles: the Taser report

Today Justice Thomas Braidwood's findings from the first phase of his inquiry--examining the use of Tasers by police officers in the field--were released. There's cold comfort there for Taser International.

While not calling for a moratorium on their use, which is admittedly disappointing, Justice Braidwood found that the weapons can indeed cause death, the risk of which is increased if the electric shock is delivered in the chest area, or is used multiple times. He was deeply critical of the BC government, moreover, for having "abdicated its responsibility to set provincial standards."

Braidwood stated that Tasers should only be used if there is an imminent threat of bodily harm, a higher bar than the one presently in effect for many police forces, who use the weapon in cases of "active resistance"--such as walking or running away from police. Or, as those of us who have followed its use have observed, being asleep in a car, or a 15-year-old Inuk girl handcuffed to the floor in a jail cell, or a woman with two kids on her lap, or a disabled Native man who refused to remove a ceremonial necklace*, or an 82-year-old heart patient in a hospital bed, or a fare-dodger on public transport.

As reported, among Braidwood's nineteen recommendations are these:

• Tasers should only be used for truly criminal situations, and not to enforce municipal or provincial bylaws.
• Stun guns must only be administered in cases of bodily harm, or where that risk is imminent, for the officer or for others nearby.
• Officers should get crisis intervention training to ensure they can use other avenues to de-escalate tense situations.
• A suspect should not be shocked for longer than five seconds.
• Paramedics should be called immediately in situations deemed "medically high-risk."
• Officers using Tasers should carry a heart defibrillator.

To which one can only respond, like the kids: "Well, duh."

_________________
*Globe & Mail, 30 May 2008 (link disabled).

The Braidwood Chronicles: a turning-point?

This week's Braidwood hearings need to be seen in context. All the good stuff happened offstage: RCMP Commissioner William Elliot's comments in a Toronto Star interview, and RCMP officer Tim Shield's spectacular apology to the public outside the hearing-room on Tuesday.

Briefly, a seismic shift is taking place before our eyes. The RCMP is beginning to admit that it was wrong. That doesn't happen every day.

Yesterday's testimony from Cpl. Dale Carr, the media relations officer attached to the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT), was almost anticlimactic. Yes, he had briefed Sgt. Lemaitre, as the latter testified on Tuesday. But no, he couldn't remember what information he'd relayed at the infamous IHIT briefing at the Richmond detachment office a few hours after Dziekanski's death--or who had relayed it to him. Nor, he claimed, had he paid any attention to Sgt. Lemaitre's subsequent media interviews, even though he'd been standing beside him during one of them.

One thing he did know, however: he became aware of inaccuracies in the information that had been relayed to the public, but was ordered by his boss, Supt. Wayne Rideout, in charge of IHIT at the time, not to correct the record.

Rideout had allegedly begun to believe that he and his team were embarked upon a criminal investigation, although Carr was clear that no such thing had been apparent at the Richmond briefing--indeed, Cpl. Benjamin Robinson, one of the Four Horsemen, attended and might even have addressed the meeting. Had he been a suspect, of course, neither would have occurred.

Moreover, under questioning from the lawyer for Dziekanski's mother, Walter Kosteckyj, Carr conceded that, despite this instruction, press releases on the alleged facts of the case continued to flow. On November 30, 2007, for example, the RCMP issued one claiming that Dziekanski's vital signs had been regularly monitored by the officers present (which has been strongly contested by firefighters arriving on the scene). Carr responded, to Kosteckyj's evident incredulity, that this was irrelevant to any possible criminal matter.

Meanwhile, as the Inquiry lumbered on, the RCMP Commissioner was busy sending a clear signal that the RCMP will no longer continue to maintain that Dziekanski was at fault. In fact, were I one of the Fab Four, I'd be getting that old sinking feeling about now:

"We will make submissions to the inquiry," said Elliott. "I think it's fair to say that we will say if we had to live life over again, and I'm sure that our members would say – I've never discussed this with them because I've never discussed this incident with them – if they had to live life over again, there are things that they would do differently."

B.C. Attorney General Wally Oppal told reporters last week the decision by Crown prosecutors in December not to lay charges against the four officers is not final, and could be revisited based on evidence coming out of the inquiry.

"In the face of that, I don't think it's appropriate for me to comment on the conduct of our members," Elliott said. But he also went out of his way to state: "I'm also not doing what many accuse me of doing, which is defending them."

Now, Bill is a slippery sort, and nothing says he hasn't made some reassuring private phone calls once again, but there's a point at which one has to cut one's losses--and that point appears to have been reached.

Shakeup at CSIS?

There was the murky role played by CSIS, Canada's secret police, in the case of Canadian exile Abousfian Abdelrazik. The then-head of CSIS, Jim Judd, indignantly demanded an inquiry of his agency, protesting its innocence--and promptly resigned.

Since, there have been revelations that CSIS had deliberately withheld evidence in two high-profile court cases.

And now the almost toothless watchdog to which CSIS is nominally accountable, the Security Intelligence Review Committee, has had enough. Referring critically to the interrogation of child soldier Omar Khadr by CSIS agents in 2003, the Chair of SIRC, Gary Filmon, said this morning: "The time may have come for CSIS to undertake a fundamental reassessment of how it carries out its work, and to shift its operational culture to keep pace with recent political and legal developments."

Filmon added: "[It is] vital for CSIS to demonstrate that it has the professionalism, experience and know-how required to make the difficult decisions that arise when conducting operations abroad--particularly if confronted with situations similar to that of Mr. Khadr."

This is as clear a statement as we are likely to get from a competent authority on our out-of-control spy agency. Just as we have seen in the case of the RCMP, thanks to the Braidwood Inquiry, CSIS too has not been held accountable to anyone until recently for its excesses. There are no built-in mechanisms to call it to heel when it rides roughshod over the basic human and civil rights of Canadians.

Now the spotlight is on, full glare. I hope the CSIS brass are fidgeting, because unless I miss my guess it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

[H/t buckets, b/c]

Globe and Mail cover-up?

As we know, the names of the four RCMP officers who killed Robert Dziekanski, and who remained on active duty afterwards, have never been made public. They were captured on film, exposing an RCMP spokesperson's lies about what had happened.

The officers Tasered an unarmed man who was backing away from them, then piled on top of him, then just stood around after the man's heart stopped. No medical help arrived for twelve minutes. When it finally did, the officers refused to take their handcuffs off the dead man.

No charges have yet been laid. The RCMP, as it turns out, has been delaying the official Braidwood inquiry into Dziekanski's killing. Condolences from officialdom to Dziekanski's mother proved to be crocodile tears. She is presently beside herself.

The Vancouver Sun's Ian Mulgrew pulls no punches:

[T]he material received from RCMP investigators was deemed incomplete, with a required report on the use of deadly force missing.

The inquiry now has been put off until Jan. 19.

"To fulfil its mandate in the most ideal way, the commission needs the cooperation of the RCMP, including access to the Dziekanski case files," explained Art Vertlieb, commission counsel. "But that's unlikely to happen until a decision is made on charges."

This is another arrogant response from the RCMP, which has behaved badly throughout this tragedy.

The force initially misled the public about what happened, tried to suppress a videotape of the incident shot by a witness and now RCMP investigators have taken more than a year to provide Crown with the material needed to decide whether any or all of the four officers involved should be charged with Dziekanski's death.

As noted, the public still does not know the identity of the officers involved. But it now appears that the Globe and Mail has been holding back on us. One of the men has now been charged with impaired driving after a motorcyclist was killed in a fatal collision this past weekend. The Globe reporter, Ian Bailey, is clear: the person charged was one of the four officers involved in the Dziekanski death. Comments on the on-line article were disabled from the get-go.

If Bailey knew this, that strongly suggests that the identities of all four must be known. In their wisdom, have Globe editors been withholding this information from the public? Whatever became of the public's right to know?

If anyone has the names, drop me a line.

UPDATE: (October 29)

The officer has finally been named (h/t commenter Dr. Frink). He is Cpl. Benjamin Monty Robinson. Chris Selley at Megapundit puts this matter very well:

Kudos to the Vancouver Sun for finally naming the RCMP officer who was involved in both the ill-fated takedown of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver Airport and, allegedly, the death of a 21-year-old motorcyclist in Delta on Saturday night. He is, by the Sun’s reckoning, Cpl. Benjamin Monty Robinson. I take no pleasure in repeating his name here. He might be innocent of all wrongdoing, and he’s entitled to all the due process he can eat. But he is not entitled to a red serge cloak of anonymity that the rest of us aren’t when we make a mess and the relevant authorities investigate us. That’s just one of many rules the RCMP made up for themselves.

And which too many of our media seem quite willing to follow.

UPPERDATE: (October 30)

Cpl. Robinson, as it turns out, was the supervisor of the other Mounties during the Dziekanski killing. According to a police psychologist, Mike Webster, Robinson is a victim too: "Not only is he worrying about the Dziekanski incident. Now he is worried about the outcome of this incident. It is the last thing he needed to have happen."

The man sounds like a real prize. After striking the motorcyclist, according to a witness, he did not bother to go check on the man he had hit. Instead he handed his licence to a bystander and walked off--with his two kids who had been in his car.

It would appear that an alibi is already being prepared for him. Here is his collegial fellow officer Paul Eisenzimmer:

Delta Const. Paul Eisenzimmer said that, in general, anyone who leaves the scene could be charged under the Criminal Code.

"Leaving the scene means avoiding responsibility," Eisenzimmer said. "If someone left their identification there it is hard to say the person is avoiding responsibility.

"But if someone leaves their identification and then leaves the scene the issue is why leave and what have they done in the interim -- have they gone and drank some more?"

I am not alone, I suspect, in reading between the lines here.

[H/t Abbink]

UPPESTDATE: (November 1) More drunken Mounties.