In a decision released today, Mr. Justice Tysoe of the Supreme Court of British Columbia has declared that Mr. Ward’s constitutional Charter rights were violated when he was imprisoned and strip-searched and when his car was seized on August 1, 2004. The judge awarded damages totalling $10,100 against the defendants, the City of Vancouver and the Province of British Columbia.

The incident occurred on Vancouver’s east side, near an event attended by former Prime Minister Chretien. The police apparently believed that Mr. Ward, a Vancouver lawyer with an unblemished record, might somehow have been plotting to throw a cream pie at the Prime Minister. That of course was false, and despite conducting a lengthy further investigation, the Vancouver police have never been able to produce a shred of evidence to support such a ridiculous assertion.

Mr. Ward’s offers to accept an explanation and an apology from the authorities were rejected, as was his attempt to resolve the civil court case summarily. It is unknown how much taxpayer money the Defendants spent in the four and one half years that culminated in a six day trial. The Province of British Columbia was represented by three lawyers at trial, suggesting that it must have been an expensive exercise indeed.

Read the decision: 2007 BCSC 3 Ward v. City of Vancouver

This case highlights the inadequacies of the British Columbia police complaint process. After failing to obtain an apology, Mr. Ward lodged a formal complaint in 2002 with the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner. The OPCC assigned the investigation to the Abbotsford Police Department, a nearby police force, which found all the complaints about Vancouver Police conduct to be unsubstantiated. So, an impartial judge finds three complaints made out and finds that the police acted unlawfully, while police investigators had somehow reached an opposite conclusion! What’s wrong with this picture?

CTV news report

RCMP Commissioner Zaccardelli has resigned, a day after his embarrassing testimony before a parliamentary committee about the Arar affair. The RCMP has some fundamental problems, and what it really needs is a good housecleaning and stronger accountability. Time will tell whether the appointment of a new Commissioner is anything more than a band-aid solution.

Much has been said and written about the case of Ian Bush, the unarmed 22 year old who was killed by an RCMP officer in Houston, B.C. last October, so I’m reluctant to add more. However, no one can doubt that the RCMP officer received benefits that no ordinary citizen in the same position would have. Imagine anyone else intentionally shooting an unarmed person in the back of the head and not even being arrested, let alone charged! Anyone but a police officer asserting that he shot an unarmed man in self defence would be told, “tell it to the judge at your trial”.

The decision not to subject the RCMP officer to the justice system is no surprise, just as it’s no surprise that the police say that the video camera in the RCMP office where the shooting occurred wasn’t working, just as it’s no surprise that it took the RCMP many months to investigate such a straightforward matter, just as it will be no surprise to learn eventually that the RCMP officer wasn’t interviewed by RCMP investigators at the scene but rather had an opportunity to prepare a typewritten statement at his leisure with the help of his lawyer.

A coroner’s inquest, which is a fact-finding, not a fault-finding exercise, could have and should have been held months ago. However, the Chief Coroner, former RCMP Deputy Superintendent Terry Smith, has an unwritten policy that inquests are deferred until after criminal investigations have been completed. This is in keeping with the BC Coroners Service’s deferential attitude to the police, an attitude that extends to allowing the police to investigate their own, to take as long as they want doing it and to ensure that the officer under investigation gets every opportunity to create a plausible-sounding excuse.

The families of victims just want a justice system that treats everybody equally, that operates without fear or favour. Surely they are entitled to that.

Here are two simple suggestions:

1) Establish an independent agency to investigate cases of police-involved death or serious injury (like Ontario’s SIU, and as a BC coroner’s jury recommended in 2004);

2) Hold coroner’s inquests into police-involved deaths right away (like other jurisdictions-this week, a Wisconsin jury conducted an inquest into the death of Nicholas Cyrus, 29, who died after being Tasered by police on July 9, 2006)

The BC system needs reform, and it needs it now, before this province becomes a laughingstock.

According to recent reports, the practice of routine strip-searching continues at the Vancouver Jail. For example, a couple recently arrested by Vancouver police as a result of unpaid parking tickets were taken to the jail and subjected to strip searches.

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. Despite a series of Provincial Court judgments condemning the practice, it continues.

With the death of a Rhode Island man the other day, 212 North Americans have now died after being Tasered by law enforcement officials, according to the Colorado chapter of the ACLU. Six people have died this month, 42 so far this year, after receiving the “less than lethal” weapon’s 50,000 volt jolt.

Despite 14 such deaths in Canada, no independent safety testing has been done in this country.

The Taser-related death of Robert Bagnell in June 0f 2004 will be the subject of a coroner’s inquest scheduled to begin September 5, 2006 in Burnaby, BC.