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.

The British Columbia Supreme Court has rejected a bid to extend an injunction that led to the arrest of 16 Tahltan Elders in northwestern BC in September. Lawyers for two Ontario-based mining companies, Fortune Coal Ltd. and Fortune Minerals Ltd. had asked the court to ban interference with their use of the Ealue Lake Road near Iskut, B.C. for another year, purportedly to enable the companies to continue exploration activities in the area, which includes the “Sacred Headwaters”.

However, Mr. Justice Robert Bauman found there was insufficient evidence before the court to justify such an order, and awarded costs of the failed application to the Tahltan defendants.

Defence lawyer Cameron Ward characterized the application as a transparent attempt by the companies to use the civil litigation process to impose criminal sanctions of arrest and punishment on persons engaged in peaceful political protest, pointing out that many members of the Tahltan Nation feel that there has been inadequate consultation with repect to the industrial activities planned in their traditional territory.

The civil injunction and attendant power to punish for contempt of court have long been potent weapons designed to quell protest activities in BC. In 1994, some 850 people were arrested in Clayoquot Sound and convicted of contempt of court after disobeying an injunction order in a civil proceeding brought by MacMillan Bloedel Limited. Most of those spent several weeks in jail. MacMillan Bloedel’s court action was later dismissed for want of prosecution. More recently, environmental activist Betty Krawczyk spent nearly a year in prison after she sat down on a public logging road in violation of a court order obtained by Hayes Forest Services Ltd. in a similar civil proceeding. Like MacMillan Bloedel before it, Hayes took no further steps in the civil proceeding after securing the arrest and imprisonment those disrupting its industrial activity.

I returned to Vancouver from a brief (and well-deserved) holiday out of the country to learn that provincial Liberal and NDP MLAs had colluded on a snap vote to award themselves substantial salary and pension increases, only to reverse themselves a few days later after sustained public outrage.

The reasons for the public reaction have been well-documented, and I need not repeat them here. However, this sorry episode is yet another example of how politics has become a dishonourable profession. As I learned some twenty years ago when I was active in a major political party, the field of politics is dominated by persons motivated by naked self-interest and personal ambition. This ugly behaviour can be found at at every level, with the federal Liberals’ Adscam mess being the most egregious recent example.

Any Canadian seeking to make a public contribution, to actually attempt to make a difference in the lives of his or her fellow citizens, would be well advised to stay far away from the cesspools of Ottawa and Victoria.

Chief Coroner Terry Smith has finally scheduled a coroner’s inquest into the death of Sherry Charlie, more than three years after the unfortunate little girl died. He said the delay was because investigative processes by other agencies had to be completed first. Nonsense! A coroner’s inquest is a fact-finding, not a fault-finding, investigation. It should take place quickly in any case of unexplained sudden death, while witnesses’ memories are still fresh. The facts uncovered at an inquest can then be used by other investigators in their work, for example, to determine whether criminal charges are warranted.

In 1997, when Larry Campbell was the Province’s Chief Coroner, 34 coroner’s inquests were held, with an average elapsed time between the date of death and the inquest date of 6.4 months. It is hard to get current statistics, since the BC Coroners Service has not published an Annual Report since 2001, but I have learned that only 13 inquests were held last year.

Despite a 62% reduction in the coroner’s inquest workload, it now seems to take years before inquests are scheduled in many cases. For example, the coroner’s inquest into the death of Jeff Berg commenced in June, 2004, nearly four years after his death at the hands of Vancouver police on October 24, 2000.

The delays in the BC Coroners Service processes are unconscionable to the families of the deceased and the public, and Smith and Solicitor General John Les should be pressed for a better explanation for them than those offered so far.