Braidwood's Report on Dziekanski Calls for End to Police Investigating Police

Friday, June 18, 2010 10:53 AM

Prince George, B.C.- Justice Thomas Braidwood has released his long awaited final report on the death of Robert Dziekanski. His final report uses very strong language in describing the conduct of the four RCMP officers who were involved with Robert Dziekanski Vancouver International in October of 2007. His final recommendations call for numerous changes including an end to police investigating police.

The Polish Immigrant died after being tazered five times by the RCMP. The Mounties said they had tazered him because he came at them in a threatening manner with a stapler.

Justice Braidwood says the four officers responded to the call to attend to the Airport as if they we responding to a bar room brawl and failed to change their approach when they saw they were dealing with a distraught traveller.

While Justice Braidwood did not find any evidence of collusion on the part of the four officers to come up with a consistant story, however, he says it is clear the four did talk to each other as all four officers claims that they wrestled Mr. Dziekanski to the ground which the Pritchard video shows did not happen. “The initial claims by all four officers that they wrestled Mr. Dziekanski to the ground were untrue. In my view they were deliberate misrepresentations, made for the purpose of justifying their actions. Further, I have concluded that Mr. Dziekanski did not step toward one or more of the officers while clenching the stapler. Attempts by Cst. Rundel and Cst. Bentley, during their testimony, to clarify their statements to IHIT investigators and in their police notes were patently unbelievable after-the-fact rationalizations.”

Justice Braidwood fell short of saying the officers are, in his opinion, guilty of misconduct “I felt I was blunt enough that others reading this could come to their own conclusions”.

As for the medical cause of death, Justice Braidwood says Robert Dziekanski likely went into cardiac arrest from two factors. First, an out flowing of adrenaline that increases blood flow a result of accumulated stress over immigration and the flight, and secondly, the five deployments of the tazer.

Justice Braidwood cannot lay criminal fault in the death of the Polish immigrant, but he can make a finding of misconduct of the four RCMP officers who were involved in Mr. Dziekanski’s final moments. It would be up to the RCMP to decide if the officers should be disciplined.

In a little over an hour from now B.C. Attorney General Mike de Jong will be holding a news conference to talk about Justice Braidwood’s final report. There are some, including Dziekanski’s mother, Zofia Cisowski, who are hopeful he will announce a that a special prosecutor has been appointed to examine possible charges against the officers involved.

Justice Braidwood’s recommendations are as follows:

Canada Border Services Agency

1. I recommend that the Attorney General urge the federal Minister of Public

Safety:

• To require that Border Services officers at Vancouver International Airport’s Primary Inspection Line explain to each arriving international passenger, in a manner the passenger understands, whether the passenger is required to proceed to Secondary Customs and/or Secondary Immigration and, if so, how to get there.

• To implement a single integrated database system for international passengers arriving at the Vancouver International Airport that:

o creates a file for each passenger on arrival at the Primary Inspection Line;

o records the time when the passenger clears the Primary Inspection Line;

o records whether the passenger is expected to proceed to Secondary Customs and/or Secondary Immigration;

o records the time by which the passenger is required to reach each Secondary location;

o records the time when the passenger actually reaches, and subsequently clears, each Secondary location and the Point; and

o issues an alert to all Border Services officers if a passenger does not reach the next Secondary location within a predetermined period of time.

• To impose a positive duty on specified Border Services officers to page and actively search for any passenger for whom an alert has been issued under the immediately preceding paragraph.

• Until the single integrated database system recommended above is in operation, to ensure that all Border Services officers at the Vancouver International Airport have prompt and easy access to both the Integrated Primary Inspection Line Database and the Field Operations Support System.

Communication between arriving passengers and greeters awaiting them

2. I recommend that the Attorney General urge the appropriate federal minister or ministers:

• To implement a policy of inviting each prospective immigrant, when applying overseas for immigrant status, to consent in advance to their sponsor being informed when they do enter Canada.

• To impose a duty on a Canada Border Services officer at the Vancouver International Airport, who receives an enquiry from a greeter about an arriving international passenger:

o To determine whether the passenger has crossed the Primary Inspection Line.

o If the passenger has crossed the Primary Inspection Line more than two hours ago, to page the passenger and to record in the passenger’s file in the proposed single database system the

particulars of the greeter, the greeter’s relationship to the passenger, any special assistance that the passenger may require and, where appropriate, a message from the greeter to the

passenger.

o If the passenger has not crossed the Primary Inspection Line, to make a note in the proposed single database system containing similar information.

• To impose a duty on a Border Services officer at the Vancouver International Airport, who deals with an arriving international passenger at Secondary Customs or Secondary Immigration, to inform the passenger:

o of the details of any enquiry by a greeter that is recorded in the proposed single database system; and

o how the passenger may communicate with the greeter.

• To install in the Customs Hall one or more closed-circuit TV monitors showing the greeters who are waiting in the public Meeting Area of the International Terminal Building, unless the minister is satisfied that there are legitimate security reasons for not doing so.

Interpretation services

3. I recommend that the Attorney General urge the federal Minister of Public Safety to ensure that:

• CBSA officers at the Vancouver International Airport receive training, regularly updated, on what interpreter services are available to them and to arriving international passengers, and how to access such services.

• CBSA provide its officers at the Vancouver International Airport with adequate resources (e.g., interpreter services, printed multilingual forms, etc.) to ensure that arriving international passengers:

o know where they have to go within the Customs Hall, and how to get there;

o know what is being asked of them, when an officer is required to seek specific information, and are able to communicate such information to the officer;

o know if a greeter has attempted to contact them; and

o are assisted in their own language, if they appear to be confused or distressed.

VANCOUVER AIRPORT AUTHORITY

Communication between arriving passengers and greeters

4. I recommend that the Attorney General urge the federal Minister of PublicSafety:

• To install, in the Vancouver International Airport’s Customs Hall, a digital Passenger Information Board on which waiting greeters can place their name, so that arriving passengers are aware of their presence.

• To permit the Vancouver Airport Authority’s customer service agents to page from the public Meeting Area into the Customs Hall, and vice versa.

Safety and security

5. I recommend that the Vancouver Airport Authority:

• Revoke the current “observe and report” mandate applicable to its

contracted security patrollers.

• Set minimum standards for security patrollers that include:

o training in first aid (including CPR) and verbal de-escalation techniques; and

o an expectation that they will actively assist members of the public who are in distress.

Emergency and medical response

6. I recommend that the Vancouver Airport Authority, RCMP, Richmond Fire-Rescue, and BC Ambulance Service:

• Work together in formulating a plan of action for dealing with police use-of-force incidents at the Vancouver International Airport that evolve into medical emergencies.

• Train, with regular updates, their personnel on any such plan of action formulated by them, including live training exercises.

Public report on implementation of these recommendations

7. I recommend that, within two years of this report being made public, the

provincial Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General report publicly and in writing

to the Legislative Assembly on the extent to which the federal government and the

Vancouver Airport Authority have implemented the recommendations contained in this

report, and if one or more recommendations have not been implemented, the reasons

why.

POSTSCRIPT — POLICE INVESTIGATING THEMSELVES

8. I recommend that:

a. British Columbia develop a civilian-based criminal investigative body, which I suggest be named the Independent Investigation Office (IIO).

b. The IIO be mandated to investigate all police-related incidents occurring throughout the province, in which:

• “police-related incidents” include, but are not necessarily limited to, incidents:

o in which a person dies or suffers serious harm:

i. while in the custody or care of a municipal police officer or RCMP officer, or

ii. the death or serious harm could be seen to be the result of the conduct of any municipal police officer or RCMP officer, or

o which involve possible contravention, by a municipal police officer or RCMP officer, of:

i. any provision of the Criminal Code, or

ii. any other federal or provincial statute that, if the incident were investigated by a police officer, might in the minds of reasonable, informed members of the public undermine confidence in the police.

• “serious harm” means injury that:

o creates a substantial risk of death,

o causes serious disfigurement, or

o causes substantial loss or impairment of mobility of the body as a whole or of the function of any limb or organ.

c. The IIO be accountable to the Ministry of Attorney General.

d. The IIO be led by a director who is neither a current nor former police officer, appointed by Order-in-Council for a fixed, renewable term of five or six years.

e. No member of the IIO shall have served anywhere in Canada as a police officer.

f. Notwithstanding para.(e), during the first five years of operations, the IIO

may include as members former police officers, provided that:

• they have not served as a police officer in British Columbia within the preceding five years,

• they take no part in any investigation relating to a law enforcement agency in which they were employed,

• they constitute no more than a minority of the investigators who are assigned to a particular investigation, and

• their employment with the IIO expires by the end of the five-year transitional period.

g. To ensure the IIO’s unquestioned authority to act, its essential powers be entrenched in legislation, such as:

• the IIO director and investigators have the status of peace officers,

• the chief constable or commanding officer of the RCMP of the jurisdiction in which a police-related death occurs must immediately advise the IIO of the incident,

• pending arrival of the IIO at the incident scene, the chief constable or commanding officer of the RCMP must ensure that the scene is secured and that officers involved in the incident are segregated from each other,

• officers involved in the incident must not communicate with each other about the incident, except as authorized by the IIO,

• the IIO becomes the lead investigative agency, and the home police department or RCMP has no investigative responsibility or authority, except as granted by IIO,

• a witness officer must promptly make himself or herself available for an interview with the IIO investigator, and must promptly deliver to the IIO all notes, reports, and other investigative materials relevant to the incident, and

• a respondent officer may be — but is not compelled to be — interviewed by the IIO, and must in all cases promptly deliver to the IIO all notes, reports, and other investigative materials relevant to the incident.

h. In every police-related incident assigned to the IIO, a special prosecutor be appointed in accordance with the Crown Counsel Act.

i. The provincial Ombudsman have jurisdiction over the IIO.

Previously, the B.C. Criminal Justice Branch ruled out charges against the four officers saying evidence supports the officers version that the force they used was “reasonable and necessary”. The officers tazered Dziekanski five times after they said he was waiving a stapler at them and approaching them in a threatening manner.

The RCMP formally apologized in April to Ms. Cisowski for his death, agreed to an undisclosed cash settlement, and contributed $20,000 to a scholarship in his name.

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