In an unusual move, Paul Kennedy, the Chair of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP (CPC) has today (March 15th) initiated a complaint into the events related to the shooting death of Kevin St. Arnaud on December 19, 2004 near Vanderhoof, B.C.

The CPC media advisory states that “Mr. Kennedy indicates that he is satisfied that there are reasonable grounds to investigate the circumstances and events surrounding the shooting death of Kevin St. Arnaud, specifically that: Members of the RCMP improperly entered into a situation with Mr. St. Arnaud that resulted in his death [and] a member of the RCMP improperly discharged his firearm in the incident.”

The incident had earlier been investigated by the RCMP itself, which forwarded a Report to Crown Counsel. As discussed below, Crown Counsel declined to charge the RCMP officer who fired three bullets into Mr. St. Arnaud’s chest.

…….

(Note: In a news release dated December 20, 2004, the RCMP stated that they would “ensure that a fully open, public and transparent investigation is conducted” into the homicide of Kevin St. Arnaud. Since the RCMP seems to have paid only lip service to the commitment it made to the public over a year ago, we consider it important to post the following.)

Kevin St. Arnaud

According to a letter we’ve received from Geoffrey Gaul, Director, Legal Services, “the Criminal Justice Branch of the Ministry of Attorney General has decided against laying any charges against Cst. Ryan Sheremetta, the officer involved in the December 2004 shooting death of Kevin St. Arnaud.” According to Mr. Gaul, “we are convinced that the Crown could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Cst. Sheremetta is guilty of any offence in relation to the events of 19 December, 2004.”

On December 19, 2004, Cst. Sheremetta of the Vanderhoof RCMP was pursuing Mr. St. Arnaud on foot across a soccer field because Mr. St. Arnaud was suspected to have recently committed a break and enter in a local shopping mall. According to Mr. Gaul’s letter, Mr. St. Arnaud “came to a stop and put his arms in the air” when “Cst. Sheremetta was approximately fifteen to twenty feet from Mr. St. Arnaud.” When Mr. St. Arnaud “advanced” toward the officer, Cst. Sheremetta fired three bullets into Mr. St. Arnaud, killing him. According to Mr. Gaul’s letter, “no weapons were found on Mr. St. Arnaud.” There is no suggestion in the letter that Mr. St. Arnaud had anything in his possession that could be mistaken for a weapon: no TV remote, no portable CD player…just some plastic pill containers. The letter does not explain how plastic pill containers can instil a fear of imminent death or grievous bodily harm in a trained police officer.

A few things should be apparent to even the most casual observer. First, if the shooter in this case had not been wearing a police uniform, he would have been charged immediately with murder or manslaughter. It would not have taken Crown Counsel fourteen months to reach a decision on whether or not to lay charges. Second, if his shooter’s explanation was that he fired on an unarmed man in an open field in self-defence, the Crown would have charged him and required him to try to establish that defence to the satisfaction of a judge (or judge and jury) in a court of law.

However, in this case the assailant was wearing an RCMP uniform, which changes everything. In accordance with standard practice in this province (unlike say, Ontario, where the police are not allowed to investigate themselves) Cst. Sheremetta’s RCMP colleagues investigated the homicide and delivered their final investigative report to the offices of Crown Counsel, the same prosecutors the RCMP work with on a daily basis on their criminal cases. To make matters even more unjust for Mr. St. Arnaud’s loved ones, although a coroner’s inquest is mandatory whenever someone dies at the hands of police, the Chief Coroner (former RCMP Chief Superintendent Terry Smith) has an unwritten, informal policy that no inquest can be held and no documents can be disclosed to the victim’s family until all criminal investigations have been completed. The family has still received no documents, not even the autopsy report, and no inquest date has been set.

These arrangements between the RCMP, the Crown and the Chief Coroner ensure that any police officer in the Province of British Columbia who kills a citizen will be shielded from prosecution by the criminal justice system and ensures that the victim’s family members and loved ones will be kept completely in the dark for months, perhaps years, while layers of whitewash are applied by the authorities.

This state of affairs is anachronistic, unjust, cruel and utterly disgraceful and will ultimately bring the administration of justice in BC into disrepute. It certainly does nothing to enhance piublic confidence in the criminal justice system. It is high time that there be a completely independent investigative process to handle serious police incidents like the shooting death of Kevin St. Arnaud.

As a wiser person than me once said, “justice must not only be done, it must manifestly be seen to be done.”

The company overseeing British Columbia’s largest P3 transportation project, the $1.9 billion Canada Line (formerly RAV), has once again missed a target date for public disclosure of critical information related to the project’s finances.

Canada Line Rapid Transit Inc., a subsidiary of TransLink, originally promised that the Final Project Report (Procurement Phase), together with the Concession Agreement and Auditor General’s report on the deal, would be disclosed to the public by the end of 2005. On January 3, 2006, it announced that the new target date for the release of these documents would be the end of January. When January 31st came and went, the new deadline was the end of February. On February 15, 2006, Chair Larry Bell and CEO Jane Bird assured the public that the reports, including a copy of the Concession Agreement, would be available “soon”.

As of today, March 1, 2006, these critical documents are still being withheld from the public, which is on the hook for a huge chunk of the project’s multi-billion dollar price tag.

What’s going on here? Why are taxpayers being kept in the dark? Can the public have any confidence that the 17km transit line will be delivered on time and on budget when management has missed three successive target dates for delivering documents?

The spokesman for the Canada Line is Alan Dever: 604-484-7287.

(Note: In a news release dated December 20, 2004, the RCMP stated that they would “ensure that a fully open, public and transparent investigation is conducted” into the homicide of Kevin St. Arnaud. Since the RCMP seems to have forgotten the commitment it made over a year ago, we consider it important to post the following.)

According to a letter we’ve just received from Geoffrey Gaul, Director, Legal Services, “the Criminal Justice Branch of the Ministry of Attorney General has decided against laying any charges against Cst. Ryan Sheremetta, the officer involved in the December 2004 shooting death of Kevin St. Arnaud.” According to Mr. Gaul, “we are convinced that the Crown could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Cst. Sheremetta is guilty of any offence in relation to the events of 19 December, 2004.”

On December 19, 2004, Cst. Sheremetta of the Vanderhoof RCMP was pursuing Mr. St. Arnaud on foot across a soccer field because Mr. St. Arnaud was suspected to have recently committed a break and enter in a local shopping mall. According to Mr. Gaul’s letter, Mr. St. Arnaud “came to a stop and put his arms in the air” when “Cst. Sheremetta was approximately fifteen to twenty feet from Mr. St. Arnaud.” When Mr. St. Arnaud “advanced” toward the officer, Cst. Sheremetta fired three bullets into Mr. St. Arnaud, killing him. According to Mr. Gaul’s letter, “no weapons were found on Mr. St. Arnaud.” There is no suggestion in the letter that Mr. St. Arnaud had anything in his possession that could be mistaken for a weapon: no TV remote, no portable CD player…just some plastic pill containers. The letter does not explain how pill containers can cause an officer to fear for his life.

A few things should be apparent to even the most casual observer. First, if the shooter in this case had not been wearing a police uniform, he would have been charged immediately with murder or manslaughter. It would not have taken Crown Counsel fourteen months to reach a decision on whether or not to lay charges. Second, if his shooter’s explanation was that he fired on an unarmed man in an open field in self-defence, the Crown would have required him to try to establish that to the satisfaction of a judge (or judge and jury) in a court of law.

However, in this case the assailant was wearing an RCMP uniform, which changes everything. In accordance with standard practice in this province (unlike say, Ontario, where the police are not allowed to investigate themselves) Cst. Sheremetta’s RCMP colleagues investigated the homicide and delivered their final investigative report to the offices of Crown Counsel, the same prosecutors the RCMP work with on a daily basis on their criminal cases. To make matters even more unjust for Mr. St. Arnaud’s loved ones, although a coroner’s inquest is mandatory whenever someone dies at the hands of police, the Chief Coroner (former RCMP Chief Superintendent Terry Smith) has an unwritten, informal policy that no inquest can be held and no documents can be disclosed to the victim’s family until all criminal investigations have been completed. The family has still received no documents, not even the autopsy report.

These arrangements between the RCMP, the Crown and the Chief Coroner ensure that any police officer in the Province of British Columbia who kills a citizen will be shielded from prosecution by the criminal justice system and also ensure that the victim’s family members and loved ones will be kept completely in the dark for months, perhaps years, while layers of whitewash are applied by the authorities.

This state of affairs is anachronistic, unjust, cruel and utterly disgraceful and will ultimately bring the administration of justice in BC into disrepute. It is high time that there be a completely independent investigative process to handle serious police incidents like the shooting death of Kevin St. Arnaud. As a wiser person than me once said, “justice must not only be done, it must manifestly be seen to be done.”

The Honourable Mr. Justice Frank W. Cole has declared a mistrial in the case of a Delta man suing four Vancouver police officers for general and punitive damages for alleged assault and battery. Late Tuesday, the civil jury foreperson advised the Court that the eight person jury was evenly divided and could not reach a verdict in the case. Mr. Justice Cole declined Mr. Sanchez’s motion that he render a decision in the case himself, citing earlier comments he made to counsel in his Chambers on the merits of the case as possibly affecting the fairness of the process.

Luis Ronald Calderon Sanchez, 47, an award-winning poet and novelist with no prior criminal history, alleged that he was stopped by police while driving his wife home from work late in the evening of November 13, 1999. He and his wife testified that four VPD members assaulted him without provocation, took him to the ground, handcuffed him, threw him in a police wagon and carted him off to jail without giving him a reason for his arrest, reading him his Charter rights or advising him that he could contact a lawyer. He was released at about 2:30 a.m. the next morning after suffering another beating by guards in the jail. Three days later, he wrote a lengthy letter to the VPD Chief Constable describing what had happened to him. When he failed to receive an apology, he commenced the lawsuit.

Ronald Sanchez, a caregiver for the mentally disabled and a man who had witnessed brutality, murders and abductions by the police and the military in his native El Salvador, was never charged with any offence.

A new trial date has not yet been fixed.

Since September 28, 1999, at least 168 North Americans have died after being shot by police or law enforcement Tasers. Sixty-nine people died in 2005, including five Canadians:

(Six more have died so far in 2006 after being Tasered, all in the U.S.)

1. Jan. 2: Gregory Saulsbury, 30, Pacifica, California
2. Jan. 5: Dennis Hyde, 30, Akron, Ohio
3. Jan. 8: Carl Trotter, 33, Pensacola, Florida
4. Jan. 28: Unknown man, Chickasha, Oklahoma
5. Jan. 31: Jeffrey Turner, 41, Lucas County, Ohio
6. Feb. 10: Ronald Alan Hasse, 54, Chicago, Illinois
7. Feb. 12: Robert Camba, 45, San Diego, California
8. Feb. 18: Joel Dawn Casey, 52, Houston, Texas
9. Feb. 20: Robert Heston, 40, Salinas, California
10. March 3: Shirley Andrews, 38, Cincinnati, Ohio
11. March 6: Willie Towns, 30, Derland, Florida
12. Mar. 12: Milton Woolwolk, 39, Lake City, Florida
13. Mar. 17: Mark Young, 25, Indianapolis, Indiana
14. April 3: James Wathan, Jr., 32, Delhi, California
15. April 3: Eric Hammock, 43, Fort Worth, Texas
16. April 8: Ricky Barber, 46, Carter County, Oklahoma
17. April 22: John Cox, 39, Bellport, New York
18. May 3: Keith Graf, 24, Phoenix, Arizona
19. May 5: Kevin Geldart, 34, Moncton, New Brunswick
20. May 6: Stanley Wilson, 44, Miami, Florida
21. May 6: Lawrence Berry, 33, Jefferson Parish, La.
22. May 13: Vernon Young, 31, Union Township, Ohio
23. May 17: Lieroy Pierson, 55, Rancho Cucamonga, Cal.
24. May 20: Randy Martinez, 40, Albequerque, New Mexico
25. May 23: Lee Marvin Kimmel, 38, Reading, Pennsylvania
26. May 23: Richard Alverado, 38, Tustin, California
27. May 28: Richard T. Holcomb, 18, Akron, Ohio
28. May 28: Nazario J. Solorio, 38, Escondido, California
29. June 4: Unidentified male, 33, Sacramento, California
30. June 7: Russell Walker, 47, Las Vegas, Nevada
31. June 11: Horace Owens, 48, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
32. June 13: Michael Anthony Edwards, 32, Palatka, Florida
33. June 13: Shawn Pirozzi, 30, Canton, Ohio
34. June 14: Robert Earl Williams, 62, Waco, Texas
35. June 24: Carolyn Daniels, 25, Fort Worth, Texas
36. June 29: Unidentified male, Miami, Florida
37. June 30: Gurmeet Sandhu, 41, Surrey, B.C.
38. July 1: James Foldi, 39, Beamsville, Ont.
39. July 7; Rocky Brison, 41, Birmingham, Alabama
40. July 12: Kevin Omas, 17, Euless, Texas
41. July 15: Otis G. Thrasher, 42, Butte, Montana
42. July 15: Ernesto Valdez, Phoenix. Arizona
43. July 15: Paul Sheldon Saulnier, 42, Digby, Nova Scotia
44. July 16: Carlos Casillas Fernandez, 31, Santa Rosa, CA
45. July 17: Michael Critchfield, 40, West Palm Beach,FL
46. July 23: Maury Cunningham, 29, Lancaster, S.C.
47. July 27: Terrence L. Thomas, 35, Rockville Centre, NY
48. August 1: Brian Patrick O’Neal, San Jose, California
49. August 3: Eric Mahoney, 33, Fremont, California
50. August 4: Dwayne Zachary, 44, Sacramento, California
51. August 5: Olsen Ogoddide, 38, Glendale, Arizona
52. August 26: Shawn Norman, 40, Laurelville, Ohio
53. August 27: Brian Lichtenstein, 31, Stuart, Florida
54. Sept. 18: David Anthony Cross, 44, Santa Cruz,CA
55. Sept. 22: Timothy Michael Torres, 24, Sacramento,CA
56. Sept. 24: Patrick Aaron Lee, 21, Nashville, Tenn.
57. Sept. 26: Michael Clark, 33, Austin, Texas
58. October 13: Steven Cunningham, 45, Fort Myers, Fla.
59. October 20: Jos Perez, 33, San Leandro, Cal.
60. Nov. 1: Miguel Serrano, 35, New Britain, Conn.
61. Nov. 13: Josh Brown, 23, Lafayette, La.
62. Nov. 17: Jose Angel Rios, 38, San Jose, Cal.
63. Nov. 20: Hansel Cunningham, 30, Des Plaines, Ill.
64. Nov. 26: Tracy Rene Shippy, 35, Fort Meyers, Fla.
65. Nov. 30: Kevin Dewayne Wright, 39,Kelso,Wash.
66. Dec. 1: Jeffrey Earnhardt, 47, Orlando, Florida
67. Dec. 7: Michael Tolosko, 31, Sonoma, California
68. Dec. 17: Howard Starr, 32, Florence, S.C.
69. Dec. 24: Alesandro Fiacco, Edmonton, Alberta

This list has been compiled from media reports, including statistics and reports generated by The Arizona Republic newspaper. For further information, please see www.azcentral.com/specials/taser