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Saturday, October 18, 2008

Justice for Robert Dziekanski's mom?

FROM THE WEBSITE OF CAMERON WARD:

Latest Commentary - Justice for Robert Dziekanski's mom?
October 16, 2008

This from today's Vancouver Sun:

"Crown wants more evidence on fatal YVR Taser incident
Neal Hall, Vancouver Sun
Published: Thursday, October 16, 2008
The Crown is seeking further materials before deciding whether charges are warranted against RCMP officers involved in a fatal incident a year ago when a Polish man was jolted with a Taser at Vancouver International Airport. "We're awaiting further materials, including expert reports," Stan Lowe of the B.C. criminal justice branch said Wednesday. "Once we have those, we will continue to expedite the process." Lowe declined to provide an estimate of how much longer the charge assessment process may take."

......

Over a year ago, four burly armed men confronted a tired, confused and disoriented unarmed immigrant in a public place and immediately shot him with 50,000 volts of electricity from a "less than lethal" prohibited weapon. The whole incident was captured on videotape and everyone involved was immediately identified.

Why do those in our criminal justice system, supposedly one of the best in the world, need to take more than a year to decide whether the law may have been broken? Why should it take more than a year to decide whether to lay charges?

The answer is obvious.

In British Columbia, as far as I can tell, no police officer has ever faced a criminal trial in respect of a death occurring after the intentional application of force to a member of the public. To put it another way, police officers in BC enjoy immunities that the rest of us do not.

In the Dziekanski incident, any lawyer worth his or her salt will say that the videotape showed police using more force than was reasonably necessary to deal with the unfortunate Robert Dziekanski....

In my opinion, all this time is being taken, not to gather evidence to support a charge, but to gather evidence to support a decision not to lay a charge.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just a thought. If taser killed him, they would have said to get the pressure off the RCMP. The longer they wait the more is sounds like police procedure and positional asphyxiation or they just don't know. I would like to know one way or another, and the coroner already does, so please just tell us all. Andy