Coroner Tosses Half of Suggested Recommendations from Matters Family
Prince George, B.C. – The Coroner’s jury at the inquest into the death of Greg Matters, has started its deliberations.
Matters’ family presented 6 suggested recommendations, but Coroner Chico Newell would only allow three to be presented to the jury.
Coroner Newell said a recommendation that called for in independent review of the Independent Investigations Office investigation into the Matters death was inappropriate and beyond the scope of the inquest. He also disallowed a suggested recommendation that the IIO review and reconsider its final report on the Matters death and a further suggestion of funding be made available to families of the deceased for legal costs.
The suggested recommendations from the Matters family that were put through to the jury include
- That audio visual devices be used to record all Emergency response team deployment activity conducted by peace officers in the Province of B.C.
- That the Minister of National Defence see that programs are developed to monitor the physical, emotional and financial health and well being of all veterans following their discharge from the Canadian Armed Forces
- That the Minister of National Defence ensure that adequate resources are made available to all veterans to ensure their physical, emotional and financial needs are met. and Support for those leaving the Armed Forces, and for their families, could well be among the recommendations coming from a Coroner’s Jury at the inquest into the death of Greg Matters.
The jury must also detail time and location of Matters’ death, as well as classifying the death as either natural, accidental, suicide, homicide, or undetermined.
Comments
Shouldn’t it be up to the jury to “toss” any recommendations?
Judge made the right decision here as it would open up a pandoras box of Civil suits for damages etc.
WWI 60,000 KIA
WW II 40,000 KIA
Krea 517 KIA in a three year operation. Never did hear of a suicide in the above Wars.
Afganastan 128 KIA in a nine year operation.
Whats wrong with that picture?
Cheers
And never herd of PTSD untill Afganistan.
Cheers
No PTSD, they used to call it shell- shocked.
oh, retired, YOU didn’t hear about a suicide related to korea or the two world wars? I guess none happened then. would you be surprised that suicide rates for vets have always been high, from all wars, at many times the national average. suicide wasn’t talked about in the open back then, it was considered shameful, covered up. most people have heard about shell-shock syndrome, the high rates of alcoholism, the refusal to talk about anything they had experienced during the wars. i would wager there were plenty of suicides, probably in the hundreds or thousands. but that means nothing, as does your comment that you “never did hear of a suicide in the above wars”. we hear about suicides today because the social stigma is disapating, and we have access to media in a way never before experienced in history.
i’m not sure what you’re trying to say, that vets returning home today are lesser in some way than those from 100 years ago? i expect with a comment like that you must have served in the armed forces at some point? if not, why not bring it up at the legion one evening?
and you never heard of PTSD until afghanistan? i was in my early 20s when canada entered afghanistan, and was well-aware of what PTSD was and what it looked like. the fact you hadn’t heard of it until post-911 only says that you must have had your head under a rock throughout the 90s when soldiers were returning from bosnia and the middle east.
Definitely curious which of those wars Retired fought in and/or where and when he got his degree in Psychology.
One of the coroner’s jobs in an inquest like this is to make sure that the jury has their job defined in a way that is consistent with the legal scope of the inquest. The three recommendations that were not put to the jury were outside of the inquest’s legal scope.
my uncle was in the last regiment before the end of the Korean war, they had to stay over for a few more months. when you asked him questions about the war he refused to talk about it and he never saidanything to his brothers or sisters. he was a quiet man moved to northern alberta and homesteaded some land no one hardly seen him after that maybe it was his way to distress he is gone now and we will never know
We already know it was homicide “The killing of one human being by another human being” and so will the record show.
Most will assume the dictionary definition over the legal one when it comes out, mainly “hom·i·cide /ËhämÉËsÄ«d,ËhÅmÉ-/ 1. the deliberate and unlawful killing of one person by another; murder.”
PTSD was added to the DSM in 1980. That’s just a little bit before this most recent war in Afghanistan. I suspect that as long as humans have experienced traumatic events there have been a percentage who ended up with PTSD. They just called it something else.
Read this about suicide rates in the us army from the second world war onward.
Then compare that to your under the rock or macho fantasy.
I’m with mikmak’s post.
Also read some of the reasons given of why people may have been different in World war 2 and the more recent wars, especially the US army.
1. no economic depression prior to the war.
2. well off at home these days.
3. for the career soldier, deployments over as long as a 10 year period … twice the length of world war one and world war two and far longer than Korea.
4. segregation from the group due to privacy being sought, sitting in front of own TVs and connections to home, but not real connections.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/02/17148761-why-modern-soldiers-are-more-susceptible-to-suicide?lite
You walked in your shoes retired, don’t measure today’s armed services against yours. There are differences there that play with people’ minds that many are not even aware of unless you have been there. Today there is Iraq, Afghanistan, etc … not Korea or France.
A bit of a backgrounder to that totally new phenomenon … PTSD …. posted on the net by some veterans who thought that some people still do not quite get it.
Enjoy …. there will be a skill testing exam later today…. ;-)
http://www.vva.org/archive/TheVeteran/2005_03/feature_HistoryPTSD.htm
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