Columnist Apologizes For Backing RCMP Officers Who Killed Robert Dziekanski
"I apologize for sticking up for the Mounties who Tasered Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver International Airport in October 2007. He died soon after. More than that, I am sorry for suggesting in print that Mr. Dziekanski and his mother, Zofia Cisowski, had some culpability in his death; he for acting bizarrely, she for failing to do more to locate her son before he went berserk after waiting mistakenly for hours in a Canada Customs office in the terminal. [...]
But worst of all is the way senior Mounties have done all they can to keep the bright light of public scrutiny from shining on the Dziekanski death. Their initial response to the incident was less than frank. They tried to block a comprehensive video taken at the scene from being made public. They resisted an inquiry, whitewashed their own findings and, as we learned this week, kept 18,000 documents -- some highly damaging -- from being seen by the formal inquiry and from the public.
Senior Mounties who helped perpetrate a cover-up should be sacked. Likely the four officers should be fired, too, although Canadians might want to wait for the Braidwood report before urging that. And the RCMP itself should apologize formally for its role in all this. Next the force needs to be remade from top to bottom, stressing its responsibility and rectitude. Only then will it have any chance of repairing its tarnished reputation."
Lorne Gunter
lgunter@shaw.ca
But worst of all is the way senior Mounties have done all they can to keep the bright light of public scrutiny from shining on the Dziekanski death. Their initial response to the incident was less than frank. They tried to block a comprehensive video taken at the scene from being made public. They resisted an inquiry, whitewashed their own findings and, as we learned this week, kept 18,000 documents -- some highly damaging -- from being seen by the formal inquiry and from the public.
Senior Mounties who helped perpetrate a cover-up should be sacked. Likely the four officers should be fired, too, although Canadians might want to wait for the Braidwood report before urging that. And the RCMP itself should apologize formally for its role in all this. Next the force needs to be remade from top to bottom, stressing its responsibility and rectitude. Only then will it have any chance of repairing its tarnished reputation."
Lorne Gunter
lgunter@shaw.ca
The first paragraph is the apology and the rest blames the RCMP. His last two paragraphs simply pile on the RCMP. His apology has ended at the end of the first paragraph.
Those last two paragraphs are like vindication.
Typical of small town journalism.
Hardly see Lorne Gunter on the media--unless you watch Coren.
Posted by
Anonymous |
3:40 pm, September 25, 2009
Hard to know what to say. Grunter apologizing. There go the polar ice caps!
Posted by
The Mound of Sound |
3:43 pm, September 25, 2009
Holy Bovis Batman!
Gunther has apologized! Be still my enlarged heart...
Jesus, has Hell frozen over & are pigs flying? Surely the end is nigh!
(That said: good on him. Bout time some admitted their complicity... now, if only the guilty would admit theirs!)
Posted by
Scott MacNeil |
5:38 pm, September 25, 2009
Gunter, just now has come to. Please, this must be about his law practise; I assume he's gotten an earful from his own clients.
Posted by
Anonymous |
11:30 pm, September 25, 2009
I think the TASER should be outlawed. Police are just too fast ti use them. Locally our city just coughed up $74,000 in a settlement for such TASER use. Police were harassing his friend at a demonstration. They TASED him for videotaping their behavior.
Posted by
TomCat |
3:12 pm, September 26, 2009