Buckdog

The ongoing whitewash of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for the killing of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski continues with the erasing of all relevant surveillance tapes at the Vancouver International Airport.

VANCOUVER — An investigator says the accidental erasing of hours of surveillance images of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, who died after being tasered by the RCMP, won’t affect a police probe of the incident. But Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day is concerned enough to have asked the Canada Border Services Agency to immediately review the way they handle such materials. [...] Walter Kosteckyj, the lawyer for Dziekanski’s mother, said the loss of all the footage may rob investigators of images that would have provided a context for the events.
The Chronicle Herald

So isn't that convienient? Ah well ... the RCMP will be off the hook shortly ... just a little more public relations needed to finish up the 'whitewash'!

-Commons Committee Probe Of Taser Use and Dziekanski Death BEHIND CLOSED DOORS!?

-Authorities Dragging Their Feet In Robert Dziekanski Inquiry

-Four Mounties Involved In Dziekanski Death Still On The Job While Probe Stalls

-Why Has No One Been Charged In The Death Of Robert Dziekanski?

A scathing attack by the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP for killing Robert Dziekanski was released today. The key findings in the 200-page report are:

* While they were in the lawful execution of their duties as police officers, the four officers failed to adopt a measured, co-ordinated and appropriate response to Dziekanski's reported behaviour.
* The senior on-scene RCMP member failed to take charge of the RCMP's response.
* No meaningful attempt was made to de-escalate the situation.
* No warning, visual or otherwise, was given to Dziekanski prior to him being hit by the conducted energy weapon (CEW).
* Use of the CEW against Dziekanski was premature and inappropriate.
* The CEW was used multiple times on Dziekanski without any significant effort made to determine the need for further use.
* The RCMP members present should have more actively provided first-aid and monitored Dziekanki's condition.
* The four RCMP members inappropriately met alone after the death of Dziekanski prior to giving their statements.
* The versions of events given to investigators by the four RCMP officers involved in Dziekanski's death are not deemed credible.
* The senior on-scene RCMP member should not have been present at the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT) briefing held at the Richmond Detachment on Oct. 14, 2007.
* No bias or partiality toward the involved RCMP members was present in the IHIT investigation of the death of Dziekanski, but the video shot by a member of the public should have been shown to the members before taking statements from them.
* The RCMP should have released certain information to the media which would have served to clarify information pertaining to the death of Dziekanski and corrected erroneous information previously provided without compromising the IHIT investigation.

No charges were ever laid in Dziekanski's death. A coroner concluded he died as a result of the stress from both the Taser stuns and the struggle with police as they pinned him to the ground and handcuffed him.

CBC.ca

NOTE:
We are also waiting for the results of The Braidwood public inquiry which was set up by the B.C. government and wrapped up in October. Justice Braidwood is expected to report early in the new year.

ALSO:
My blog is nominated for Best Blog Series on the death of Robert Dziekanski in the 2009 Canadian Blog Awards. You can vote HERE!

Since Justice officials in British Columbia decided not to charge the four RCMP officers who killed Robert Dziekanski in the Vancouver airport before the official inquiry even began, it appears that authorities in Poland are considering their own charges.

"VANCOUVER–The lawyer for one of the RCMP officers scheduled to appear before the Taser inquiry into the death of Robert Dziekanski revealed this morning that the Polish government is considering questioning police for legal proceedings.

David Butcher, representing Const. Bill Bentley, filed a motion asking for restrictions on the official transcripts from the inquiry.

Butcher did not go into details on whether the officers have received notice but hinted that there are proceedings under way. [...] It's unclear whether the Polish government is seeking to charge the officers involved in the incident."
The Star

Testimony given by one of the RCMP officers at the Dziekanski hearing was challenged yesterday by the lawyer representing Mr. Dziekanski's mother. The officer stated under oath that Mr. Dziekanski was tasered because he had a stapler in his hand and the officer felt that his safety was threatened. Replay of the tape showed that Mr. Dziekanski did not have the stapler in his hand when the first electric jolt hit him, but picked it up as he reacted to the surge that hit him. Most media outlets have adopted the RCMP 'line' that the victim had a stapler in his hand at the time of the first jolt being administered. The film of the incident does not verify the RCMP version.

The RCMP officer also stated that he thought Mr. Dziekanski received 2 jolts from the taser while the tape shows that 5 were administered.


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Last spring, I predicted that we would read the headline above - 'NO CHARGES' in the death of Robert Dziekanski at the hands of the overzealous, cold hearted and highly incompetent Royal Canadian Mounted Police. No public inquiry has yet been held ... however, the four RCMP officers have officially been let off the hook.

VANCOUVER, TORONTO -- Four Mounties who used a taser to subdue Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski moments before he died of undisclosed injuries at Vancouver International Airport last year will not face criminal charges for their conduct, B.C.'s criminal justice branch will announce today.
Globe & Mail

No Canadian citizen is safe when our national police force can kill you for no reason .... and walk away without consequences. Add this to the fact that our Parliament has been locked by our authoritarian government and Prime Minister ... and you have to start wondering whatever happened to the Great Nation of Canada?

POSTSCRIPT: Oh, by the way, the RCMP have now also admitted that they lied about the number of times Dziekanski was tasered. It was not twice as they had insisited, they now admit that he was tasered FIVE times! Oh well ... ho hum ... welcome to Canada!


The complete litany of posts on the killing of Robert Dziekanski on this blogsite ....

On Oct. 14, 2007, Robert Dziekanski died at Vancouver International Airport after the RCMP used their Taser guns to subdue him, knelt on his neck, and then refused to remove his handcuffs when requested to by medical personnel.

Why has no one been charged in the death of Robert Dziekanski?


-Dziekanski Was Dead By The Time Medical Help Arrived: RCMP Would Still Not Remove Cuffs!

-RCMP Death Squad Could Face Criminal Charges

-"I want to get out, help me find the way...Police! Police! Can't you help me?"

"We're still working at it and waiting for authorization to go to Poland and Germany to speak to potential witnesses and get a sense of Mr. Dziekanski's life in the hours before he arrived in Vancouver. We're still waiting for government approval for those funds."
Cpl. Dale Carr
RCMP

The four RCMP officers who were involved in the death of Robert Dziekanski continue on the job while the probe investigating his death has stalled over a technicality that is probably intended to delay the proceedings.

So .. because the RCMP are waiting for federal funds to go to Poland to investigate the killing of Robert Dziekanski, all progress on the probe to investigate his death have stalled. You have to wonder how critical the visit to Poland is to determine why the RCMP were involved in killing Mr. Dziekanski? How convienient for the four RCMP officers who tasered him and knelt on his neck prior to his death. How very convienient indeed .... !

The Star

UPDATE: At the time of the incident, the Government of British Columbia promised an enquiry separate from the RCMP investigation ... now it looks as if the B.C. government is trying to let their earlier commitment just die ....

It is being speculated that no charges will be laid against any of the RCMP officers who brutally killed Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski in the Vancouver Airport.

Considering that RCMP homicide investigators investigated fellow RCMP officers, are you surprised?!

Members of the RCMP tased and knelt on the neck of Dziekanski within 25 seconds of contacting him in an airport waiting area. He died.

The RCMP who killed Dziekanski refused to remove handcuffs from him when ambulance attendants requested that they do so. The handcuffs were only removed after it was determined that he was already dead.

This is not your grandfather's old Royal Canadian Mounted Police. This is a perverted mutation of what was once Canada's proud national police force.

-CBC
-National Post

Eight Canadians have died while being tasered by police since Robert Dziekanski died at the hands of the RCMP in 2007. No inquiry into the death of Robert Dziekanski has yet occurred. Officials are trying to find a way to whitewash the death of Mr. Dziekanski and the RCMP has not cooperated in proceeding with an inquiry.

Now, on the heels of tests commissioned by CBC, Amnesty International is calling for a moratorium on police use of tasers in Canada:

"Human rights group Amnesty International is renewing its call for a moratorium on Taser use after recent tests commissioned by CBC News and Radio-Canada found some of the stun guns deliver a higher level of electricity than the manufacturer promises.

The tests, conducted by the U.S.-based lab National Technical Systems, used 41 X26 model Tasers from seven police departments in that country. Each weapon was fired six times.

Of the 41 Tasers tested, four delivered significantly more current than Taser International says is possible. In those cases, the current was up to 50 per cent stronger than specified on the devices."
CBC

If there is ANY inquiry that deserves public scrutiny, it is the death of Robert Dziekanski at the hands of the RCMP and the use of tasers in general by Canadian police foces. However, Members of Parliament will hold closed-door meetings Thursday with RCMP, border and airport officials on the use of electronic stun guns in Canada.

The House of Commons Committee on Public Safety and National Security is holding two days of meetings at Vancouver International Airport, where Robert Dziekanski died after RCMP stunned him with a Taser and knelt on his neck last October.

The public safety committee is studying the growing use of Tasers in Canada, where more than 6,800 officers are armed with the stun guns, and investigating the events surrounding Dziekanski's death. A committee report of these secret meetings will be provided to the House of Commons at some future time.

Committee member and Liberal public safety critic Ujjal Dosanjh told CBC News he was surprised to learn the briefings would not be open to the public.

-CBC News

"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

Apparently, the all-party House of Commons Public Safety Committee is about to recommend that Canada’s police forces continue to use Tasers but that their use must be restricted to those episodes where the only other course of action would be with lethal force from a firearm.

It seems to me that is exactly what the Taser was intended for when it found its way into the hands of Canadian Police forces in the first place. However, somewhere along the way, Tasers became the weapon of choice that police used to enforce compliance. News stories abound of inappropriate use of Tasers on people who tried to skip paying the fare on Vancouver public transit, a senior citizen who was double parked, an octogenarian in a hospital bed as well as the most notable Robert Dziekanski case.

I have to wonder what it is in the human condition that allows someone with a uniform to think that they are so superior to another individual that they can zap them with high voltage discharges simply because they will not comply to supposed ‘authority’?

Law makers can legislate proper use criteria for Tasers, but it is the human component that needs to be addressed here. Far too often, it is obvious that the training of our police is the problem. The tactics used by the RCMP officers who killed Robert Dziekanski were probably ‘textbook’. However, the heavy handed use of these tactics simply did not match the circumstances of their use and Dziekanski was killed by police with near execution precision.

The Commons Public Safety Committee needs to look beyond the Taser itself as a tool, and ensure that they address the circumstances that see this tool constantly being misused by police forces. Canadians should not have to live in an environment where they have mere seconds to either comply or die. There is a disturbing authoritarian mind set that has settled on those who use the Taser for compliance. Those police officers who can’t distinguish the difference between situations where lethal force is required and those where compliance is requested should not be in uniform. They are potential killers. We have ample examples of this in the news.

Ottawa Sun

GLIWICE, Poland -- One of the people interviewed by RCMP investigators who went to Poland in April to talk to people close to Robert Dziekanski described the experience as an "ordeal." [...]

Ivona Kosowska said the questions the team was asking about Dziekanski struck her as odd. "What kind of person was he, was he a drinker, drug user? Was he aggressive?" said Kosowska through a translator. "Most questions were to expose him as not a nice human being -- not to find out what kind of person he really was."
Canada.com

The mother of the man killed by the RCMP in the Vancouver Airport last year is threatening legal action against the force in light of yet another postponement of an inquiry into his death.

The official inquiry has been delayed a number of times over the last 10 months. A further postponement has now been called moving the date from November to January.

A spokesperson of the official Commission of Inquiry has also reported that the commission has been unable to get access to RCMP files.

Enough is enough. The RCMP killed Robert Dziekanski in a brutal manner. Someone MUST be charged criminally with his death and with the false information and cover-up perpetrated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police after the incident!

Globe & Mail


More Buckdog on Dziekanski killing ......

A Coroner's inquiry still has not occurred months after the death of Robert Dziekanski at the hands of the RCMP in the Vancouver Airport. Authorities seem to have adopted a strategy based on a hope that the whole mess will just fade away if official foot dragging can be extended indefinitely. Meanwhile, no one has been charged, and all 4 Mounties involved in the killing are still on the job.


-CBC News

-Dziekanski probe won't include internal police investigations

-More Buckdog .....

You would think that at some point, Canadians would get sick of being lied to by our national police force.

"Documents obtained by CBC News cast doubt on the RCMP's sincerity in vows to get to the bottom of the Taser-related death of Robert Dziekanski, according to a civil rights group and the lawyer for Dziekanski's family. [...] Dziekanski died after being zapped with a stun gun at the Vancouver International Airport on Oct. 14, 2007, by RCMP officers who were called to help deal with the Polish immigrant, who apparently became agitated from spending 10 hours at the airport. From that day, RCMP e-mail exchanges obtained by access to information requests suggest the force moved quickly to create a strategy.

The strategy involved all answers being vetted in Ottawa, including ones described by RCMP Commissioner William Elliott as "tough or dirty questions" from the media. [...]
In another e-mail from Bass, dated Nov. 24, he describes bumping into B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell at the airport, saying the premier also expressed support for the officers and the continued use of Tasers. Campbell said Wednesday that he offered support out of compassion for the officers, not as a signal he was siding with them."

CBC News


More Buckdog on Dziekanski killing ......

"OTTAWA - A YouTube video parodying the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski has drawn censure from the RCMP ..."

"A spokesman for the B.C. RCMP said he found the video offensive. But Staff Sgt. John Ward said he was hardly surprised it emerged on the Internet, given the culture online.

"Any right-thinking person who would look at the video would be offended by that. A gentlemen lost his life and it is in extremely poor taste," said Ward. "

Oh really! .... And the RCMP is doing what about Mr. Dziekanski's death ....? We know that the RCMP officially lied in the aftermath of the killing and only the video of Mr. Dziekanski's death demonstrated RCMP misinformation.

-So here is the parody video that has the RCMP upset ....

-Versus the video of the RCMP killing Mr. Dziekanski which has Canada and the world upset ....

"What has that got to do with the investigation of the police and their conduct?"
Don Rosenbloom

The lawyer who is representing the Polish government at a public inquiry into Dziekanski's death, said yesterday that Poland is "troubled" by a motion made by one of the RCMP officer's lawyers for copies of Dziekanski's criminal records and any complaints against him reported to police.

-RCMP Investigators Went To Poland To Find 'Dirt' On Robert Dziekanski - July 22, 2008

-RCMP Commissioner Denies That Dziekanski Investigation Is A Whitewash -July 17, 2008

... the RCMP have issued a full apology for the death of Robert Dziekanski who died 24 seconds after they came in contact with him.

The tasering of Robert Dziekanski

"I want to get out, help me find the way...Police! Police! Can't you help me?"
Robert Dziekanski
(in the seconds before he was
killed by members of the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police)

The final words of Robert Dziekanski were spoken in Polish and have now been translated from the video of his death in RCMP custody. He was asking the officers for help.
New Zealand Herald

Mounties looking like Keystone Cops
By Don Martin
Calgary Herald
February 28, 2009

"Police officers have three primary serve-and-protect obligations--investigate threats to civilian safety immediately, use their weapons responsibly and tell the truth faithfully under oath.

While the vast majority do their dangerous duty professionally, elements of the RCMP struck out on all three fronts this week to create the unfortunate optics of Dudley Do-Right joining the Keystone Cops.

In a strange series of random events, RCMP failed to perform due diligence in investigating reports of two SOS-signalling skiers lost for 10 days in the Rockies, police representatives staged a bizarre defence of Taser safety while refusing to produce the studies to bolster their case and several RCMP officers were clearly nose-stretching, if not engaging in a conspiracy of fabrication, while testifying at the Robert Dziekanski fatality inquiry.

The force's public relations hell dawned Tuesday when a parade of police association representatives arrived in Ottawa to "demystify" the Taser for national media, arguing it's a weapon that deserves a spot on every police belt.

The timing was awful. Three hours away, the Dziekanski inquiry was watching slow-motion footage of the Polish immigrant's multiple Taser-zapping and sudden death.

Yet the officers in Ottawa were adamant. Pay no attention to the video of that man twitching behind the glass, they basically argued. The Taser is an essential enforcement tool and totally safe--and they've got 150 studies to support that. Ontario Provincial Police commissioner Julian Fantino spun the purpose of their publicity campaign this way: "We decided it was time to set the record straight to give you and the public accurate information as best as we can and to demystify and bring some honesty and integrity into reporting."

But with respect, one reporter wondered, what studies have the RCMP used to prove the Taser poses all the takedown risk of a knuckle-wrapping? "Do your own homework," Chief Fantino fumed. "We've looked at them, consulted and validated them."

(This denied request for information is apparently part of RCMP culture. The federal information commissioner this week gave the force failing grades in meeting its information access obligations, listing it as one of the worst federal offenders for denying requests.) The only greater mystification than those alleged studies was the date they picked for their campaign kickoff.

To be hailing the Taser miracle at the precise moment an RCMP officer was squirming under Dziekanski inquiry fire in Vancouver was a publicity juxtaposition only a fiendish enemy of the technology could've arranged. Police testimony started changing on the fly as amateur video put the fib to facts which clearly seemed to have been negotiated in secret by responding officers seeking cover from their actions.

Add this discomfort to the RCMP's admitted failure to order a search for a missing couple in the B. C. backcountry last week, which resulted in a woman's tragic death, and you have a humiliating one-week triple whammy of lousy news for an RCMP that supposedly cleaned up its act after changing commissioners in 2006.

The lousy optics didn't have to gush forth this way.

There are a number of studies clearing the Taser of killer capabilities, which police representatives should've produced on demand, and police do support national rules governing Taser use to reduce risks to police or public safety.

And while the infamous Taser video suggests the inquiry will eventually find Dziekanski was the victim of aggressive police deploying Tasers excessively, contrite admissions of this ugly reality would've salvaged police reputations better than their apparent falsehoods of desperation.

RCMP might also want to update mountain rescue manuals to insist multiple SOS signals in snow-covered backcountry are reasonable signs of somebody in distress and thus search-worthy. After all, the force should be with us, not putting Canadians at risk of injury or neglect."

dmartin@canwest.com
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald


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