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Canwest News Service
Robert Dziekanski died due to "excessive force" by the RCMPbut also because ofthe "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 ofDziekanski’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
