This is outrageous!! The cops are really getting out of hand!! They are COPS, not politicians. They’re supposed to be protecting us, standing up for justice but now they make a mistake and cover for each other. They’ve completely lost their integrity! The RCMP chief commissioner William Elliott, who is politically appointed by the current federal government, should be fired! Accountability, remember what they campaigned during election? Totally disgusted.

Newly disclosed RCMP email drops bombshell on Taser inquiry

CBC – The unexpected disclosure of a key email between senior RCMP officers has raised questions about officers’ testimony at the Braidwood inquiry into the death of Robert Dziekanski, resulting in a delay of the probe in Vancouver until September.

The email between two senior RCMP supervisors suggests that the four Mounties who responded to a call at the airport discussed a plan to use a Taser against the Polish immigrant before they arrived.

The four officers had already stated under oath at the inquiry that they had not discussed using the stun gun before arriving at the airport.

The commission was scheduled to begin hearing closing arguments on Friday morning, but after learning of the email, commissioner Thomas Braidwood announced the inquiry will resume on Sept. 22, so the commission lawyers have time to review the email and conduct an investigation.

“I am obviously appalled,” a clearly upset Braidwood said.

The existence of the email was revealed by commission counsel Art Vertlieb as the inquiry resumed Friday. He said he only received the email from federal lawyers on Tuesday.

Vertlieb read from the Nov. 5, 2007, email, titled “Media strategy — release of the YVR video,’” from the RCMP Chief Supt. Dick Bent to assistant commissioner Al McIntyre.

“Finally, spoke to Wayne and he indicated that the members did not articulate that they saw the symptoms of excited delirium, but instead had discussed the response en route and decided that if he did not comply that they would go to CEW.”

The “Wayne” mentioned in the email is Supt. Wayne Rideout, then-head of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team investigating Dziekanski’s death, according to Vertlieb. CEW refers to a conducted energy weapon, the RCMP name for a Taser-type weapon.

Vertlieb said the late disclosure throws into question whether the commissioner has received everything he needs from the RCMP, and argued that the closing submissions should be delayed so the RCMP officers involved can be called to testify about the email and a full review of the disclosure process can be completed.

Vertlieb acknowledged the comments on the email were clearly hearsay, but that they must be investigated because they came from senior RCMP officers, and “on its face, the email appears to tell a significantly different story.”

Lawyers, representing the four RCMP officers who were at the airport, responded that the email was essentially wrong and hearsay, and reiterated the officers statement that they had not discussed using the Taser prior to arriving.

“It never happened,” Ravi Hira, the lawyer for Const. Kwesi Millington, later told CBC News.

“What possible reason would there be to have such a plan,” said Hira, “the evidence doesn’t support this fanciful tangent that we are going down at the public expense.”

But Braidwood ruled the inquiry will resume on Sept. 22, when it’s likely Rideout, Bent and McIntyre and other RCMP officers would be required to testify about the email.

The email was apparently overlooked by federal government lawyers in the thousands of pages of documents received from the RCMP on CD-ROMs during the inquiry.

A clearly upset Vertlieb berated the federal lawyers for the mistake, saying: “This is what late disclosure does — it disrupts the conduct of the proceedings.”

Helen Roberts, a lawyer for the federal government, gave a tearful apology, saying it was simply an accidental oversight.

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Public Warning – Possible Child Kidnapping

News Release
Tuesday, June 9th , 2009

Richmond: Richmond RCMP have received information into the possibility of a child kidnapping that may occur in the next several weeks. The information at this point is extremely minimal but the priority is to advise the public so you may take the necessary precautions. It is believed the potential victim is Asian and attends one of the Richmond Elementary Schools.

Although information is limited police are also taking precautions and have a variety of resources acting on this information. Serious Crime Unit, Youth Section, General Duty and Bike Section will be pro actively investigating this.

We are urging parents to be extra vigilant. Communicate with your children and educate them on safety tips such as walking in groups and well lit, high traffic areas. If walking to school they should be walking with an adult and not another child.

Cpl. Jennifer Pound says, “If approached, kids need to know that it is okay to misbehave. Talk to your kids and ensure them that it is important for them to draw attention to themselves. It is okay to yell and scream and do whatever they can do to get the attention of passer-bys.”

If you have any information regarding this matter please call Cpl. Row at 604-207-4713 or if you
wish to remain anonymous call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

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CBC – Two RCMP officers based in Watson Lake, Yukon, have been charged with sexual assault following an attack on a woman earlier this week, the police force said Wednesday.

A woman told police she was sexually assaulted by two off-duty officers early Sunday morning in the southern Yukon town of 850, an RCMP spokesman told CBC News on Wednesday.

Both officers have been suspended with pay. Police say they will not release the officers’ names until they make their first court appearance on April 6.

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This one is dedicated to our mighty protectors. Those people in uniform whose jobs are not to serve us but to protect us. They remind me about George W bush Bho used to say: he leads and he decides. But he also forgets to serve.

People in uniform need not serve unless they are bell boys at the Four Seasons Hotel. To serve does not really mean you are inferior, it simply means you want to help people. In contract law, there are always something that can be implied into the contract. But when it comes to people in government uniforms, all implied terms seem to disappear. It is not an implied term of their job that afterall they are here to help people. The good officers will often earn this remark: “thank you for going out of your way to help me”.

There is a law enforcement TV show called “To Serve and To Protect” and it should be renamed: “To protect but not to serve”. The use of force to protect you is our north american specialty. It’s fast, it’s effective and it’s no nonsense.

Here are the excerpts from the Braidwood Inquiry on the tragic laser death of Dziekanski. courtesy of CBC and CKNW news. You decide if the crying CBSA officer did her job or what her job is about when she said: “if I knew he would die I would do everything differently.”

“If not, my job is to do nothing in that situation,” I guess. And since she is not a prophet she will never know which person she decided to ignore would run into the RCMP electric squad and therefore her job remains the same as before, i.e. she will do nothing.

“Pray to God next time,” if you are an anxious relative looking for a lost traveller, you do not get Officer Tina on the phone. Here’s from CKNW:

Immigration Agent Tina Zadravec has told the Braidwood inquiry into the death of Robert Dziekanski that she tried to look for the Polish immigrant when asked by his mother’s friend. She says she didn’t page him or call to see if customs had scanned his passport.

She even saw him before he died, but made no effort to contact his mother. Zadravec says she wouldn’t do anything differently in hindsight.

“I think about it alot but I can’t, I wouldn’t do anything differently. If I knew he was going to die, I would do everything differently, but in doing my job, I did my job.”

The reality is CBSA officers do not see themselves as people finders at the airport (rightly so) and the practice of sending people to questionings for a long period of time is not uncommon at our airports. So you have this dilemma: they can keep people there for a long time but they also do not have to tell you if they are keeping or not keeping anyone. That is just law enforcement prerogative.

As an immigration lawyer who has to go to the airport sometimes to “rescue” clients, the only way you know the person is there or has arrived is when the person is able to call you from his cellphone, or when someone was travelling with that person and knew he had arrived.

But CBSA would not let you talk to your client or even see the person all in the name of privacy protection. So you have get your client to sign an authorization form first. Then you will be kept waiting usually for about 5-8 hours until it’s close to 11pm. So when a CBSA officer saw Mr Dziekanski wandering around the airport at that time of the night, they would simply think he was just one of those people who got detained and finally released. He was not deserving of further attention. Our job of protecting the public had been met. This reminds me of these subway station good Samaritans you sometimes run into when visiting a new city. They will give you direction and tell you which exit to go out. At the Vancouver international Airport where many visitors arrive, our officers are not trained to be good Samaritans.

I will echo the voice of Mr Dziekanski’s grieving mother, someone who has no power and is very much at the mercy of power to right this wrong:

“I think everyone tried to lie because they want to save themselves. I have nothing to lose. I lost what I had,” she said outside the inquiry venue in downtown Vancouver.

I will repeat the news story about Mr Dziekanski’s death as reported by CBC news:

Four RCMP officers arrived and within 25 seconds stunned him five times with a taser. A passerby caught the moments before Dziekanski’s death on videotape and the footage was seen by tens of thousands of people in Canada and overseas.

The RCMP subsequently made several public assertions about the incident that were proven false by the video recording, including the number of times the tasers were deployed and the extent to which Dziekanski resisted arrest.

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Disclaimer: Views expressed by guest bloggers are theirs and may not represent those of CIV.

By inviting guest bloggers to write here, I’d like to see us grow together with more diverse ideas and perspectives. If anyone believe the idea is cool, please don’t hesitate to submit your stuff to me. We use real names and identities here. Thank you.

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