According to recent reports, the practice of routine strip-searching continues at the Vancouver Jail. People detained on minor offences, including bylaw infractions, are being strip searched without reasonable grounds. This abhorrent practice is against the law and is a violation of the constitutional right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

Our class action has stalled recently, due to procedural difficulties, but we expect to be back in court shortly.

It should come as no surprise to anyone with a passing familiarity with the progress of the star-crossed RAV line transportation mega-project (excuse me, it’s now called the “Canada Line”) that RAVCo directors have reneged on another commitment to the public. After the Final Agreement with InTransitBC for this P3 was signed in July, RAVCo (aka RAV Project Management Ltd.) published an Information Bulletin promising that BC’s Auditor General would release his report on the deal by “early December”. The RAVCO Board also assured the public in September that the Final Agreement itself would be disclosed “soon”, or at least by year end.

Well, year end has come, yet there’s no report from Auditor General Wayne Strelioff and the Final Agreement is still under wraps.

Taxpayers, who are on the hook for a huge chunk of the $1.9 billion pricetag, should be concerned with the secrecy, given the project’s history of political games, subterfuge and sleight of hand.

It all started when the logical and most direct route for the line, an existing rail right of way near Arbutus Street, was rejected in favour of a route along Cambie Street. This was done to appease the “creme de la creme” (and Stephen Owen supporters) in the Arbutus corridor of multimillion dollar homes who cried “NIMBY” (not in my backyard).

Then RAVCo pulled a fast one on residents and merchants along Cambie Street by deciding to have 35 blocks of the line built by excavating a massive trench using “cut and cover” construction, this after assuring everyone that a minimally intrusive subsurface tunnel boring method would be used to build the subway line.

Next, in a desperate move to get TransLink Board approval after a failed vote, RAVCo announced with much fanfare that it had managed to secure the winning bid for $1.72 billion, presumably quantified in actual dollars. No sooner had the TransLink Board finally come through with an affirmative vote than RAVCo, with considerably less fanfare, disclosed in mid 2005 that the project would actually cost $1.9 billion in 2003 dollars. With a few strokes of a pen and some creative revisionist accounting, RAVCo had jacked up the cost of the project by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Mark my words, the hits will keep on coming. By the time the first Canada Line train rolls (if it ever does), this project will make the Fast Ferry fiasco look like a paragon of government prudence and fiscal responsibility. My guess: this thing will cost at least $3 billion (in 2003 dollars) by the time it’s done. Check back with me on November 30, 2009, when (we’ve been promised by RAVCo) the project will be finished.

When the perpetrator of a homicide is found at the scene and immediately identified, how long should it take the authorities to conclude their investigation and make a decision on whether to lay charges, thereby perhaps letting a court determine guilt or innocence?

What is a reasonable period of time for the victim’s family to wait? A day? A few days? A couple of weeks? Maybe a month?

Apparently a lot longer if the assailant is wearing a police uniform.

Consider these recent examples:

On October 22, 2000, Jeff Berg, unarmed, sober, no material criminal record, is confronted by an armed police officer in a Vancouver alley. According to two civilian eyewitnesses, the officer knocks Berg to the ground and kicks him repeatedly as he is lying motionless on the pavement. Berg loses consciousness and dies as a result of a blow to the neck. The autopsy report indicates he was struck or kicked at least ten times in the head. The police officer was completely unscathed. On December 9, 2002, Crown Counsel advises the family that no charges will be laid. More than two years to make a decision…

On June 23, 2004, five police officers respond to a call for medical assistance. Two of them shock Robert Bagnell, unarmed, with 50,000 volts from their Tasers as he lies on the floor of his Vancouver rooming house washroom. His heart stops and he dies. On December 1, 2005, Crown Counsel advises the family that no charges will be laid. A year and a half to make a decision…

On December 19, 2004, an RCMP officer confronts burglary suspect Kevin St. Arnaud, unarmed, in an open field in Vanderhoof. From a reported distance of five metres, the officer fires three bullets into St. Arnaud’s chest, killing him instantly. An eyewitness reports that St. Arnaud raised both hands before the first shot was fired. On December 5, 2005, Crown Counsel advises the family that he hopes to make a decision on charges by the end of January, 2006. A year has passed, and the family is still waiting for a decision on charges…

If the shoe were on the other foot, how long would it take? In the latter case, if St. Arnaud had shot a police officer, he would have been charged in a matter of hours. If the incident had involved two civilians, a decision on charges would have been made in a few days, at the most.

It is apparently exceedingly difficult for British Columbia law enforcement authorities to investigate police-involved fatalities and make a prompt decision on whether to lay charges. I have some suggestions to make it easier,quicker and most importantly, fairer for all concerned.

First, police should not investigate police in these circumstances. Like Ontario and other jurisdictions, we should have an independent body with the authority to fully investigate fatalities. Second, the charge approval decision should always be made by a special prosecutor, a lawyer independent of Crown Counsel, to avoid any perception that Crown Counsel, who routinely work with police in all other prosecutions, display any favouritism. Finally, the Coroners Service must reform its approach to these cases. All fatalities occurring in police custody require coroner’s inquests to be held, as they should. The inquests, fact-finding in nature, must be held quickly, and the evidence disclosed forwarded to the special prosecutor to assist in the charge approval decision process.

The public and the victims’ families deserve a better system than the one we’ve got.

It seems like only yesterday, but it was twenty-five years ago. What would John Lennon make of the world today? What would he have to say about the “War on Terror”? About Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice? About Paul McCartney performing at the Super Bowl half-time show?

Sigh.

Nearly 18 months after Robert Bagnell died suddenly in his Vancouver rooming house, Regional Crown Counsel of the Criminal Justice Branch, Ministry of Attorney General have advised his family that “no charges will be approved for prosecution.”

Robert’s parents and sister are now looking forward to a mandatory coroner’s inquest, where they hope to uncover the facts related to Robert’s untimely death. The BC Coroners Service has not set a date yet. So far, the family has learned that Robert was unarmed and lying on the floor in the presence of at least five police officers when two of them shot him repeatedly with Taser weapons, apparently to subdue him so he could receive medical attention.

Robert Bagnell is one of at least 160 North Americans who have died after being shot by the Taser, a high tech police weapon that emits a 50,000 volt electrical charge designed to incapacitate and inflict excruciating pain on, but supposedly not kill, the subject. This year alone, 66 people, including four Canadians, have died after being Tasered.

Critics, including Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, say that insufficient safety testing was done on the weapons before they were deployed by police forces in the United States and Canada. Police forces in Chicago and Montgomery, Alabama have discontinued use of the weapon, citing safety and liability concerns.

Meanwhile, people keep dying. The latest was race car driver Dale Earnhardt’s first cousin, Jeffrey D. Earnhardt, 47, who died last Thursday, December 1, 2005, in Orlando, Florida after being shot twice by a police Taser.

………

Robert Bagnell, 44, died on June 23, 2004. The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) initially told his family that Robert died of a drug overdose, then a month later revealed to the media that they had Tasered him twice just before he died. Another month after that, the VPD acknowledged that he was not a threat to anyone and that he was not involved in the commission of a crime when they sent an ERT (SWAT) team into the washroom Robert was in. The police said Bagnell was shocked with 50,000 volts so they could “rescue” him from a “fire” in his building. The family is skeptical of these claims, but it has been unable to obtain autopsy reports or get a coroner’s inquest scheduled, even though one is mandatory.