UPDATE: On Thursday, October 25, 2007, Mr. Ward will be speaking at “Aboriginal Deaths in Custody”, a public forum to be held at the Aboriginal Friendship Centre from 9:30 to 4:00. Other speakers include author Warren Goulding, pathologist Dr. John Butt, Kyle Tait’s mother Noel Tait and journalist Leonard Cler-Cunningham.

The forum precedes the Frank Paul Inquiry, which is scheduled to commence November 13, 2007. The Commissioner has issued a ruling on standing, that can be linked here: upload

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At a BCCLA forum on police in-custody deaths in Vancouver yesterday, speaker after speaker recounted their experiences with a justice sytem that is hopelessly skewed in favour of the police, at least as far as police-involved homicides are concerned. Linda Bush, Sylvia Fee and Delores Young, each of whom lhad a loved one shot to death by police, expressed frustration at the secretive and biased investigative process that followed the separate incidents and inevitably cleared the police of any responsibility.

For my part, I said that the time for a measured, polite response to the problem is over: real reform is needed. I called for an end to the system whereby police investigate themselves in these cases, and for meaningful changes to the BC Coroners’ Service.

When police investigate their brethren, their investigations are so flawed as to amount to corrupt whitewashes, especially here in Vancouver. Every VPD investigation of a death at the hands of a VPD member follows the same script…all the officers involved leave the scene, consult their union rep and joint lawyer and, weeks later, after other investigative results are in, their lawyer delivers typed statements on their behalf. The members involved, whether witnesses or perpetrators, are never interviewed right away and often are not interviewed at all. The opportunities for collision and tainting are rife. Police investigators would never conduct a criminal investigation of civilians this way. There is no wonder that no police officer in BC, in my memory, has ever been prosecuted for a death resulting from the intentional application of force.

Although it is mandatory for a coroner’s inquest to be held in the case of every death in custody, the BC Coroner’s Service is either incompetent or biased, or both, in the way it handles these cases. Though it has the power to conduct independent investigations, it merely collects the police investigative results. Why, I asked, do we have a former senior RCMP officer heading up an agency that has the responsibility for investigating deaths caused by actions of the police? At the very least, there is a perception of bias.

Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin, former head of the Ontario SIU (Special Investigations Unit) said that it is only a matter of time before BC leaves the “dark ages” and moves to a civilian investigative system. “Police should never, under any circumstances, be investigating themselves where there’s a serious injury or death-full stop”, he said.

BC Solicitor General John Les, who was invited to the forum but declined to attend, reportedly called Marin’s comments “juvenile” and “inappropriate”.

By the way, on January 15, 2004, a five person coroner’s jury conducting an inquest into the death of a man who was shot six times by two VPD officers called on the BC Solicitor General to “Implement a special investigations unit similar to the SIU in Ontario, independent of the police, to investigate circumstances involving police which result in serious injury, assault or death.”

The Solicitor General has not done anything to implement those recommendations, perhaps because he considers them to be juvenile and inappropriate. Click below to see the jury’s recommendations in the case of Tom Stevenson:

upload

On September 24, 2007, Cameron Ward will be participating in a forum on deaths in police custody presented by the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. Entitled “Current Experiences, Future Reform”, the event features relatives of Ian Bush, Kevin St. Arnaud and Gerald Chenery, three men killed recently by BC police officers, as well as various legal experts.

For further information on this forum, which starts at 8:30 a.m. at the UBC Robson Square Theatre, please go to:

http://www.bccla.org/custody.htm

Readers of this blog may recall that earlier this year I won my civil case against the Province of British Columbia and City of Vancouver arising from my arrest back in August of 2002 on a ridiculous unfounded suspicion that I might throw a cream pie at Prime Minister Chretien. Following a six day trial, Justice Tysoe of the Supreme Court of British Columbia declared that my constitutional rights had been infringed when I was strip-searched, imprisoned in a one metre by two metre cell for a day and had my car taken off the street and impounded so that police might search it for the nonexistent pastry. I was awarded modest damages of $10,100 plus court costs, which have been settled at $32,000.

The province and city could have avoided all these costs, plus the costs incurred by their four lawyers at trial, by simply delivering me a written apology.

I had hoped that the trial judgment would be the end of the matter, but the province’s lawyers filed an appeal. They accept that my rights were violated by the strip search, but plan to argue that the judge was wrong to award me $5,000 damages for that humiliating event. I responded to the appeal by seeking a decision that I was wrongfully arrested by the police and an increase in the damages I was awarded. Not to be outdone, the City’s lawyers have filed a cross appeal seeking repayment of the $100 I was awarded for the wrongful seizure of my car.

Factums and related documents have been filed in the Court of Appeal, and it is expected that the appeal will be argued in the spring of 2008.

So, just how much is all this costing taxpayers? Chief Justice Brenner has estimated that the average cost of a five day civil trial is $100,000 to each litigant involved. On that basis, the province and city may have forked out some $240,000 plus the $42,100 in damages and costs, for some $282,100 for the trial alone. When one adds the cost of the appeals, including purchasing all the transcripts, taxpayers will likely have spent over $300,000 for their governments’ stubborn refusal to say “we’re sorry”. An unpalatable prospect indeed.

I take no pleasure whatsoever in reporting this, which I do simply to illustrate why civil litigation is out of reach of the average citizen. Few people can rely on the courts for vindication, even when their constitutional rights are egregiously violated, because the cost is prohibitive. Governments with deep pockets can and will expend vast sums of money rather than admit any wrongdoing.

Hopefully, somehow, some day, those responsible for making the decision to litigate rather than apologize will get their just desserts.

Postscript: Here’s the most disturbing thing about this odyssey…When the police confronted me on the street that day, I was calm and collected. I raised my voice in protest only after I was handcuffed and after the police refused to tell me why they had handcuffed me. At trial the three police officers said I was handcuffed because I was loud and causing a disturbance. Although this was not the case, the judge accepted their contrived version of events and said that I was “mistaken” in my testimony. I certainly wasn’t mistaken, and this demonstrates that the average citizen won’t win a credibility contest with police officers. The ramifications of this in the criminal justice system are obvious. I take some solace in the fact that I wasn’t convicted of some serious offence and jailed on the basis of police testimony.

Betty Krawczyk will turn 79 on Saturday, August 4, 2007. Those concerned that she might mark the occasion by sitting down in front of a piece of heavy equipment can rest assured that there will be no such affront to the rule of law; the diminutive white-haired great-grandmother remains incarcerated at the Alouette Correctional Centre for Women in Maple Ridge, BC, where she is serving the 10 month prison sentence imposed last March. She was found in contempt of court by Justice Brenda Brown for having violated an Order made in a lawsuit commenced by the companies upgrading the Sea to Sky Highway. The Order restrained everyone from a number of activities, including travelling on the highway except in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations. To date no one has been cited for contempt of court for speeding. The companies have taken no steps in furtherance of their lawsuit, which was clearly just a tactic to obtain a court order that would entitle the police to arrest misguided demonstrators like Betty.

Betty’s family and friends look forward to her eventual release from prison and to a delayed celebration of her birthday then.

There are no Canadian safety standards for Tasers, a “less-lethal” weapon that is designed to fire 50,000 volts of electricty into a person’s body, inflicting excruciating pain and overwhelming the central nervous system, a coroner’s jury heard yesterday.

Allan Nakatsu, a project team leader with global product testing firm ETL Intertek Semko, testified that, unlike toasters, hair dryers, electric toothbrushes, or even cattle prods and electric fences, no electrical standards or testing protocols exist for the weapons, which were quietly introduced into Canada in 2000.

Mr. Nakatsu also testified that one of the two Tasers Intertek tested generated energy output of 30.42 joules/pulse, eighty-five times greater than the manufacturer’s specification of .36 joules/pulse. Earlier, the jury heard that police investigators took the two Tasers used on Robert Bagnell to the lab to be tested.

The manufacturer, Arizona company Taser International Inc., maintains that the Taser is safe. Company spokesman Steve Tuttle has reportedly said that the energy output of .36 joules/pulse is too low to cause cardiac damage.

Amnesty International has just released a much-anticipated report on Canadian Taser use, recommending that the use of the weapons be discontinued.

Robert Bagnell, 44, died on June 23, 2004 after at least 13 Vancouver police officers responded to a 911 call for an ambulance. Bagnell was in a state of mental distress in his bathroom. Police ERT (SWAT) members Tasered him twice while extricating him from the bathroom, according to testimony at the inquest.

Update: The five person jury presiding at the coroner’s inquest classified the death as an accident and was “unable to agree on any recommendations”, the coroner’s court heard yesterday.

Meanwhile, an unidentified San Jose man died yesterday after being Tasered by police, bring the reported Taser-related death toll to 268. Ten people have died so far in May, 2007 after being Tasered by police. 209 people died after being Tasered in the period between Robert Bagnell’s death on June 23, 2004 and the conclusion of the inquest into his death on May 25, 2007.