Robert Dziekanski’s mom issues statement on second anniversary of death

By Carlito Pablo

Publish Date: October 13, 2009

A memorial mass will be held tomorrow (October 14) to mark the second anniversary of Robert Dziekanski’s death moments after he was tasered and pinned to the ground by four RCMP officers at the Vancouver International Airport.

Dziekanski’s mother, Zofia Cisowski, will be joined by friends and supporters at the mass, which will be held at 5 p.m. at Vancouver’s Holy Rosary Cathedral (646 Richards Street).

A commission headed by former B.C. Court of Appeal judge Thomas Braidwood will this week conclude receiving closing statements from lawyers involved in the inquiry to determine the circumstances surrounding the death of the 40-year-old Polish immigrant.

In a statement released today (October 13) by the Canadian Civil Rights Movement, Cisowski reiterated calls for the appointment of an independent special prosecutor to look into whether criminal charges can be laid against the four RCMP officers who confronted her son.

The statement reads as follows:

Tomorrow will be 2 years when my dear and lovely son Robert was killed by RCMP at the airport. In an investigation of this horrible tragedy for me, RCMP investigated itself and found no basis to charge four RCMP officers, rather blame my son.

RCMP “evidence” was delivered to Criminal Branch of BC and the Prosecutor decided not to lay charges. He did not give adequate and proper explanation why not, even though he had best evidence – Paul Pritchard VIDEO.

Policemen were not charged and they were not dismissed. Instead RCMP went to Poland to investigate my son past.

Due to public outrage and shock what happened in YVR and RCMP cover-up, BC government established Braidwood Inquiry Commission. During the hearings we learned more evidence that they should be charged.

Those hearings were unbearable for me, especially when Video was played hundreds times and policemen were accusing my son.

Half a year ago, my friends prepared petition to BC government and requested that independent special prosecutor be appointed. With almost 5,000 signatures Canadian Civil Rights Movement requested that Mr. Robert Gillen, Assistant Deputy Attorney General, appoints this Prosecutor.

Mr. Gillen has refused. He is hiding behind Braidwood Commission final Report which is not legally binding. The Rapport constitutes only recommendations which Mr. Gillen may choose to implement or not. Therefore I request again that Mr. Gillen appoints this Prosecutor.

I’m not able to wait any longer. Even if Judge Braidwood recommends the charges to be laid and Mr. Gillen decides so, with court proceedings it may take all together 5 years for the final result.

Too much time will go by and justice delayed will be justice denied to me.

 

VANCOUVER – The death of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver’s airport was caused by excessive use of force by the RCMP and a failure of the system to guide the visitor, the Braidwood inquiry was told Monday.

In his final submission, lawyer Walter Kosteckyj, representing Dziekanski’s mother, Zofia Cisowski, urged the inquiry commissioner, Thomas Braidwood, to recommend that the RCMP’s use-of-force training model to be scrapped.

He also urged the commissioner to recommend that a provincial police force be created to replace the use of the RCMP in B.C.

“There has to be a recommendation that a provincial police force must be put in place,” Kosteckyj said.

He added the RCMP “by not being answerable to the (provincial) legislature is undemocratic.”

The commissioner has the authority to find fault and make recommendations to the provincial government in his report.

Dziekanski, 40, died at about 1:30 a.m. Oct. 14, 2007 at Vancouver International Airport after he was Tasered five times and restrained by four Mounties..

The weary traveller had arrived at the airport about 10 hours earlier after a long flight from Poland.

He had come to Canada to live with his mother and start a new life.

His mother had told her son to stay in the baggage carousel area and she would meet him there.

She didn’t realize it, but the international arrivals baggage carousel was in a secure area, not accessible to people waiting for loved ones in the greeting lounge.

Dziekanski, who spoke no English, stayed in the secure area for about eight hours and never connected with his mother, who eventually returned home to Kamloops after being told her son could not be found.

Part of the systemic failure, Kosteckyj said, was the failure to get Dziekanski an interpreter.

“We were told how easy it was to get translation services,” the lawyer said.

“An interpreter should have assisted Dziekanski.”

A Canada Border Services Agency employee noticed Dziekanski walking around the customs area – about eight hours after he was initially processed – and led him to the exit to the public area.

Dziekanski, appearing exhausted and unable to find his mother, became frustrated and started throwing around furniture and threw a computer on the floor, prompting a 911 call to police.

“He had been traveling in excess of 30 hours and had no idea where his family was,” Kosteckyj said.

He added that a citizen started yelling at Dziekanski, who got mad and threw things around.

Four officers arrived and gave Dziekanski conflicting orders – one told him to produce his papers, but when he tried to get his passport from his luggage, another officer told him not to go into his baggage and ordered the man to stand over by a counter.

Dziekanski threw up his arms and grabbed a stapler, which the police took as a threatening move.

“Mr. Dziekanski was having an emotional crisis and these police officers should have been able to see that,” Kosteckyj said.

He added police should have tried to defuse and resolve the situation without using force.

Just before one of the officers deployed his stun gun, Dziekanski said in Polish: “Have you lost your mind?”

They were his final words.

Dziekanski fell down and began writhing on the floor when he was first Tasered for five seconds.

Police initially thought Dziekanski was resisting arrest, but the inquiry was told that Const. Kwesi Millington, the officer with the Taser, kept pulling the trigger four more times, causing Dziekanski’s muscles to contract.

“I submit to you that the third, fourth and fifth deployments were gratuitous and unnecessary,” Kosteckyj said.

He added that once police had handcuffed Dziekanski’s hands behind his back, police failed to properly care for the man while in custody.

One officer testified Dziekanski turned blue and his breathing sounded like he was snoring.

But the officer who testified he was monitoring Dziekanski’s breathing and pulse said he didn’t see the man turn blue.

“How is it possible to be monitoring someone turning blue and not notice it?” Kosteckyj asked.

He estimated Dziekanski was unconscious for about six minutes before the ambulance arrived.

Firefighters, who were first on the scene, believed Dziekanski was dead when he was examined.

One of the firefighters was also critical of police refusing to remove the handcuffs from Dziekanski so he could be properly assessed.

Kosteckyj urged the inquiry to make a finding that the Taser jolts were the primary cause of Dziekanski’s death.

He said the four Mounties who arrived at the scene failed to act professionally but instead acted in panic, then provided statements to justify their actions.

Grace Pastine, the lawyer representing the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said in her final submission that the Dziekanski’s death outraged the public and has become a symbol of police wrongdoing.

She said Dziekanski was tired and confused, being unable to find his mother at the airport after leaving home 31 hours earlier.

Dziekanski needed help and understanding, she said, but was met with an almost immediate Taser response.

“They failed to communicate,” Pastine said.

“Dziekanski needed help and understanding,” she told the inquiry.

“Each of the Taser deployments constituted an unjustified use of force,” she said.

The use of the Taser, she added, was “excessive, unreasonable and unjustified.”

The officers also failed to provide Dziekanski with proper medical attention after he was handcuffed, Pastine said.

She said the four officers provided a “self-serving and misleading interpretation of the evidence in order to justify their actions.”

The officers made statements that Dziekanski raised the stapler swung it toward police and advanced toward the officers, which the bystander’s video proved were false recollections.

She said the RCMP Sgt. Pierre Lemaitre made three factual errors immediately after Dziekanski’s death – he said three officers were involved, that Dziekanski was Tasered twice and had to be wrestled to the ground.

The fact that the RCMP decided not to correct these errors for 14 months shows a “shocking disregard for the public’s right to know,” Pastine said.

The RCMP then provided the media with inappropriate speculation about Dziekanski, suggesting he was under the influence of alcohol or drugs when he died, which proved to be untrue, she added.

There were also major errors with the police investigation of Dziekanski’s death, Pastine said, pointing out that the four officers involved were allowed to remain together before giving statements.

She said the incident shows that when a civilian dies in police custody, police should not investigate their fellow officers.

“Police are entrusted with protecting lives. And when they fail to do so they must be held accountable,” Pastine concluded.

The Polish government is disappointed that no criminal charges were laid against the RCMP officers involved in the death of Robert Dziekanski, the Braidwood inquiry was told Monday.

But the Republic of Poland appreciates that the B.C. Government established the inquiry and allowed the Polish government to participate, said the letter, which was read out by Don Rosenbloom, the lawyer representing Poland.

“We are confident that your finding and recommendations will contribute significantly, both domestically and internationally, to understanding how a fairly minor event can escalate to such a tragic end,” the letter said.

“The release of the video recording of the death of our national, Robert Dziekanski…while difficult to watch, has personalized this tragedy to millions of citizens in Canada. In Poland and, indeed, in the rest of the world.”

The ambassador said “justice must be achieved, responsibility determined and wrong-doers be made accountable through criminal prosecution.”

Rosenbloom argued Dziekanski’s death was caused by “a total breakdown in the operations” of the airport.

He said perhaps the legacy of his death is the fact that translator services now are readily available at the airport.

He said Dziekanski’s interaction with police did not justify any use of force.

“Mr. Dziekanski, on first contact, wasn’t aggressive but was calm and compliant,” Rosenbloom said.

He said when police first arrived, Dziekanski said “Polician policia,” indicating he was relieved that police had arrived to help him.

“There is an alarming lack of communication among the officers at the scene,” he said.

He added police gave Dziekanski conflicted commands, then concluded he was defiant, so Tasered him.

“The foundation for the police Tasering was the resistant and defiant conduct,” Rosenbloom said.

But the video shows Dziekanski obeying the officers before he was shot with 50,000 volts from the stun gun, he said.

“Our position is that absolutely no force was called for,” the lawyer said.

He argued that the inquiry commissioner should also find misconduct against all four officers for failing to provide proper medical attention to Dziekanski “while he was dying on the floor.”

Rosenbloom will continue his submission Tuesday at the inquiry.

A total of 15 lawyers will make final submissions.

nhall@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Excessive force, systemic failure killed Dziekanski: lawyer’s closing at Braidwood inquiry

 By Suzanne Fournier, The Province, October 4, 2009 Comments (4)

Robert Dziekanski died due to “excessive force” by the RCMP but also because of the “overall systemic failure” by federal border agents and airport personnel to help the sponsored Polish immigrant safely find his family.

Those charges were made by lawyer Walter Kosteckyj, on behalf of Dziekanski’s mother Zofia Cisowski, as closing arguments finally began Monday in the case of the 40-year-old man who was Tasered, restrained and died at the Vancouver airport on Oct. 14, 2007.

Cisowski listened intently in federal court as Kosteckyj carefully cited factors that led to her son’s death.

Almost two years ago, Cisowski waited for her son in vain at the airport for more than 10 hours, until officials told her to go home to Kamloops. No interpreter was ever located to tell Dziekanski his mother was waiting for him.

“The RCMP are responsible in large measure because of the excessiveness of the force used,” said Kosteckyj concluded, noting the Tasering and restraint of Dziekanski was “at its worst, a premeditated and planned attack.”

Kostekcyj was citing an internal RCMP email divulged last June, when the commission was originally slated to wind up, quoting RCMP Supt. Wayne Rideout as saying the four officers decided in advance to use a Taser at the airport.

Kosteckyj expressed Cisowski’s gratitude to bystander Paul Pritchard, who videotaped Dziekanski’s brief but deadly encounter with the RCMP and then went public with the video after getting a court order forcing the RCMP to return it to him.

The Pritchard video, which has been aired repeatedly at the inquiry, appears to starkly contradict the evidence of the four RCMP officers who Tasered Dziekanski “within 24 to 30 seconds of meeting him” that the man was combative or aggressively wielded a stapler as a weapon.

Kosteckyj, speaking to sole Commissioner Tom Braidwood, who will issue recommendations for change, also called for a provincial police force that is fully accountable to the B.C. legislature.

He noted that “the Government of Canada says we support your commission and have cooperated fully,” but federal lawyers dispute Braidwood’s jurisdiction to make recommendations about the RCMP or federal border agents.

“That is undemocratic,” charged Kosteckyj.

Kosteckyj said Dziekanski was an “unsophisticated traveller” with “very moderate health issues,” despite suggestions that he was somehow to blame for his own death owing to poor health or erratic behaviour.

Dziekanski came into contact with several federal border agents, airport employees and bystanders, none of whom found him aggressive or combative.

“There was a positive duty to get an interpreter,” said Kosteckyj, noting neither airport nor border officials did so.

Kosteckyj read out a lengthy list of statements given by the four officers, along with their testimony to the commission, in which they all give virtually identical — but later clearly shown to be erroneous — versions of the incident.

The officers — Const. Bill Bentley, Cpl. Benjamin Monty Robinson, Const. Gerry Rundel and Const. Kwesi Millington, who deployed the Taser five times — all insisted Dziekanski was combative, swung a stapler wildly as a weapon against them and did not hit the floor at the first Taser shot but kept fighting until wrestled by them to the floor.

“The third, fourth and fifth deployments of the the Taser . . . were gratuitous, unneccessary and were violent far in excess of any provisions” for force made under the Canadian Criminal Code, Kostecky charged.

He also said that airport senior managers should have called in the airport’s own Emergency Rescue Services, which could have responded the fastest. Kosteckyj noted that by the time first responder Richmond Fire Capt. Kirby Graham arrived, Dziekanski “was already deceased.

“When the B.C. Ambulance Service arrived a minute later, they testified Mr. Dziekanski” was blue and impossible to revive, although paramedics tried hard to do so, Kosteckyj charged.

Kosteckyj is the first of 15 lawyers to make closing arguments at the commission.

He will be followed by Don Rosenbloom for the government of Poland, as well as lawyers for the federal government, for each of the four RCMP officers, for two RCMP media-relations officers and two senior RCMP officers, for YVR, for Taser International, and for the city of Richmond.

sfournier@theprovince.com

© Copyright (c) The Province

Poland’s government wants the Braidwood inquiry to make “significant findings of misconduct”

Vancouver — From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail Last updated on Tuesday, Oct. 06, 2009 06:44AM EDT

against the four Mounties who tasered Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski in a 2007 confrontation that led to his death.

Poland’s Vancouver-based lawyer made the request in closing submissions Monday to inquiry head Thomas Braidwood, who is probing the death of Mr. Dziekanski on Oct. 14, 2007.

Don Rosenbloom accused the police of “blatant” wrongdoing, suggesting there was no need to taser Mr. Dziekanski, and that the four Mounties involved cooked their accounts of the incident, which has prompted an enduring debate about the police use of stun guns.

“Mr. Commissioner. It takes a strong nation to have the courage to microscopically examine such deep problems within its institutions, but as painful as the incident might be, society is strengthened by engaging in such proceedings,” Mr. Rosenbloom said as lawyers for at least 14 other parties looked on in the hearing room.

“No nation should pretend it is immune from institutional failure, whether it be the police forces or otherwise. Poland wishes to praise Canada and British Columbia for pursuing such an exhaustive and courageous examination of the incident.”

The praise was echoed in a letter from Piotr Ogrodzinski, Poland’s ambassador to Canada, that Mr. Rosenbloom read to the inquiry. Mr. Ogrodzinski saluted the B.C. government for launching the Braidwood inquiry, and Mr. Braidwood for welcoming Mr. Rosenbloom.

But the ambassador acknowledged disappointment that the Crown decided in December, 2008, not to lay criminal charges against the four Mounties.

There is an instinctive reaction among viewers who have seen the widely viewed bystander’s video of Mr. Dziekanski’s fatal confrontation “that justice must be achieved, responsibility determined and wrong-doers be made accountable through criminal prosecution,” he wrote.

Mr. Rosenbloom was far more blunt than Poland’s top diplomat.

“We are inviting a finding from this commission that absolutely no force was called for in these circumstances. It’s our position that Mr. Dziekanski had been unnecessarily subjected to tasering; the officers showed a callous disregard for his medical condition as he lay dying on the floor and their indifference was neither in conformity with police standards nor basic humanity,” he said.

“We ask that there are significant findings of misconduct in respect to the action of the four officers.”

He added: “There was blatant police wrongdoing at the scene, compounded by the officers untruthful reporting of the incident, both in their police statements and here at the inquiry. Additionally there were misjudgments of senior officers and an unwillingness by the RCMP at the highest level to acknowledge error.”

Lawyers for the four officers will have an opportunity to make their own closing submissions later this week.

Mr. Dziekanski drew the attention of police when he began acting erratically after a long flight from Canada to Poland and an hours-long wait to hook up with his mother, a Kamloops resident waiting to meet him so he could begin a new life in Canada.

When the 40-year-old labourer, who did not speak any English, picked up a stapler in a manner police deemed threatening, he was stunned five times and cuffed. He died of a cardiac arrest that was not officially linked to the taser.

Walter Kosteckyj, a lawyer for Mr. Dziekanski’s mother Zofia Cisowski, said the case needs to be reopened by the B.C. Attorney-General. Mike de Jong has ruled out such action until he has a chance to review Mr. Braidwood’s eventual report.

 

 

 

 

By NEAL HALL, VANCOUVER SUN October 4, 2009 Comments (45)

Robert Dziekanski’s mom issues statement on second anniversary of death

Robert Dziekanski’s mom issues statement on second anniversary of death