On Thursday, March 25, 2004, Julie Berg and her 80 year old mother Ellen filed a Petition and Affidavit in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, seeking an Order compelling a coroner’s inquest in the case of Jeff Berg, who died after being assaulted by a Vancouver police officer in October of 2000. The Berg family have named the Attorney General, the Solicitor General and the Chief Coroner as Respondents and also seek disclosure of all investigative files related to the case.

The Vancouver Police Department conducted a homicide investigation and an internal investigation, even though one of their own officers had inflicted the fatal blows, and no charges were laid. Inexplicably, no inquest has been set, though one is mandatory whenever a person dies while in police detention or custody.

See a copy of the Petition filed in Action No. L040778: Petition

Warm, dry and sober: Solicitor General Rich Coleman and Vancouver Police Union President Tom Stamatakis enjoy a recent function with the Lieutenant Governor

On Wednesday, March 18, 2004, The Province newspaper reported that British Columbia Solicitor General Rich Coleman had refused a formal request from the province’s Police Complaint Commissioner to hold a public inquiry into the death of Frank Joseph Paul.

Mr. Paul, an intoxicated 47 year old Mi’kmaq, died on December 6, 1998 after a Vancouver police officer and a provincial corrections officer dragged his rain-soaked and motionless body out of the Vancouver Jail and dumped him in a nearby alley. Since it was December, he froze to death.

The Police Complaint Commissioner, Dirk Ryneveld, Q.C., supported his request with volumes of new records and his plea was endorsed by the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, editorials in the Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Courier and scores of community groups and associations. All this apparently fell on deaf ears. Mr. Coleman, a former police officer himself, was unmoved.

At a public rally outside the Vancouver Police headquarters on March 19, 2004, Chief Stewart Phillip deplored Coleman’s decision as ‘racist’.

After reflection, I have to agree. What other reason could there possibly be for this outrageous decision? After all, in Mr. Coleman’s world, wasn’t Frank Paul just another drunken Indian? If Mr. Paul had been a white businessman from Shaughnessy, there would have been a different approach. (Of course, if he had been a white businessman, he probably wouldn’t hve been subjected to such abuse in the first place).

After over five years and three months, the Vancouver Police Department says that the conduct of its “crowd control unit” in a 1998 incident has been vindicated by a six thousand page, $800,000 report. The report itself has not been released yet.

In the incident, captured on videotape, about fifty police officers in riot gear emerged from the Hyatt Hotel and began clubbing people who had congregated outside to demonstrate against a visit by then Prime Minister Jean Chretien. Several demonstrators were injured and taken to hospital for treatment.

The report comes after a year-long internal investigation by the VPD, a public hearing launched by the Police Complaint Commission and aborted after several years of litigation launched by the police lawyers and a four year civil suit filed against the City. While it is never easy to estimate the costs of these undertakings, my estimate of the cost to British Columbia’s and Vancouver’s taxpayers follows:

Year-long VPD investigation: $300,000

Public hearing and related litigation: $1,500,000

Four year civil action: $500,000

Year-long external investigation: $800,000

Studies have shown that most people who complain about alleged police misconduct just want an acknowledgment of responsibility and an apology for injuries, especially where those injuries are not disabling. This case was probably no different. As a result of the City’s stubborness, taxpayers may have shelled out at least $3.1 million for an incident that lasted about 45 seconds.

Spalding Gray’s body was found in the East River March 8th, two months after he disappeared from his Manhattan apartment. The brilliant actor and performance artist had been increasingly troubled in recent years, after being badly injured in a car accident in Ireland. His work and spirit will survive.

According to reports on Vancouver radio station CKNW, Vancouver Police Union President Tom Stamatakis “tore a strip off organizations like the Pivot Legal Society and Vancouver lawyers Cameron Ward and Phil Rankin for persecuting the police…Stamatakis said there seems to be a political agenda that goes beyond police conduct. He also blamed the media for ‘sensationalizing the stories.”

I confess. Mr. Stamatakis is right. I have an agenda. I want better policing in my city and I want a police force that the residents of Vancouver can trust and respect.

Mr. Stamatakis’ ire is misplaced. He should try to get his own house in order. I didn’t beat Michael Jacobsen in a jail cell and lie about it for years, I didn’t trash a house on Commercial Drive and try to cover it up, I didn’t beat people with batons outside the Hyatt Hotel, I didn’t beat Jeff Berg to death in an alley, I didn’t drag Frank Paul out of the jail and leave him to die, I didn’t assault people at the Guns ‘n Roses concert and I didn’t take three people to the woods of Stanley Park and beat them up. I speak out about these incidents because I consider that I have a duty to do so.

One can legitimately question whether the Vancouver Police Union serves the best interests of the residents of Vancouver. While Vancouver is not New York, the report of the 1994 Mollen Commission into police misconduct in that city may be instructive.

At page 66, the Commission wrote: “Unfortunately, based on our own observations and on information received from prosecutors, corruption investigators, and high-ranking police officials, police unions sometimes fuel the insularity that charachterizes police culture.”

And, at page 67: “In the course of corruption investigations and Departmental administrative proceedings, police unions suffer from a conflict of interest between protecting the interests of the individual officer and promoting the larger interests of their members. Consequently, according to Department managers and prosecutors, police unions help perpetuate the characteristics of police culture that protect corrupt officers.”

Methinks this union leader doth protest too much.