Police Involved Deaths from Several Perspectives: Statistical, Academic, Legal and Procedural
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David MacAlister Robert Holmes Gareth Jones Farzana Kara André Marin Hanna Slarks John Wadham Dominic Wood POLICE-INVOLVED DEATHS: THE NEED FOR REFORM © B.C. Civil Liberties Association, 2012 The material in this book of essays has been prepared and published for educational and discussion purposes only. It is not legal advice and it is not intended that these essays should in any way replace legal advice from a qualified lawyer. Individuals with specific legal problems should seek advice from a qualified lawyer. Contents may not be commercially reproduced, but any other reproduction is encouraged. Where reproduced, attribution should be given to the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. Thanks to the Law Foundation of B.C. for their support of this project. The Law Foundation of British Columbia 1340 – 605 Robson Street Vancouver, B.C., V6B 5J3 www.lawfoundationbc.org To order copies of this book, please contact: B.C. Civil Liberties Association 550-1188 West Georgia Street Vancouver, B.C., V6E 4A2 Tel: 604.630.9757 email: [email protected] www.bccla.org Police-involved deaths have attracted considerable media and public scrutiny in recent years. As a society, we value life, liberty and security of the person as core values worthy of constitutional protection. When government officials interfere with these core values, the call to publically account for that interference is understandably very significant. In 2011, the RCMP reported the results of a poll that revealed many Canadians still had confidence in the RCMP; however, confidence levels were quite low in western Canada where a number of recent incidents attracted negative attention to the police force (CBC News, 2011a). In B.C., only 56 percent of respondents polled by the RCMP indicated they believed the RCMP was an accountable organization (Sherlock, 2011). Summarizing the report for the Vancouver Sun, Tracy Sherlock noted that only 57 percent of British Columbians believed the RCMP investigates public complaints appropriately and with transparency. The RCMP‟s own poll revealed serious deficiencies regarding public confidence in RCMP leadership and openness of communication with the public. Mediocre public support for the RCMP in western Canada follows on the heels of several high profile incidents resulting in deaths at the hands of the police, many of these incidents involving the RCMP. In 2008, Raymond Silverfox died after being held in RCMP cells in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, where he vomited 26 times over a 13 hour period without receiving medical attention. In 2007, Robert Dziekanski died during a tasering incident involving the RCMP at Vancouver International Airport. In 2005, Ian Bush was shot in the back of the head by an RCMP officer while in police custody in Houston, BC. In 2004, Kevin St. Arnaud was shot to death by an RCMP officer in Vanderhoof, B.C. under suspicious circumstances. Additionally, numerous incidents involving RCMP officers and city police officers mistreating individuals under their care have led to public distress over the actions of those who are supposed to be serving and protecting the public from harm. Our society does not condone the killing of anyone. When those who have been authorized to use deadly force kill a member of the citizenry they have been charged with protecting, it arouses serious concerns. The capacity to use force is often seen as the core of the police role (Bittner, 1991). Not far below the surface of all police interactions with the public is the potentiality of the police imposing solutions and exerting their will through the coercive use of force to accomplish what they perceive to be desirable ends. It is the very fact that the police have the capacity to employ force where it is needed that calls for scrutiny into their exercise of force, particularly where it results in serious harm or death to those with whom they come into contact. Society has specifically allocated the police the right to use, or to threaten to use force beyond the authority given to the regular citizenry. To be perceived as legitimate, police use of force must be subject to open and transparent accountability. Prior to the widespread availability of video cameras, much of the work of the police was invisible to the public. While police carry out much of their work in public, the wide-ranging discretion that has been allocated to them results in decisions that are best characterized as “low-visibility” (Goldstein, 1960). Police exercise their discretion in how to best resolve situations they encounter with very little oversight or accountability for their decisions. The 1991 videotaped beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles California was a watershed event worldwide in the visibility of police decision-making and in the development of a new public attitude towards police violence, “the dramatic videotape gave new credibility to allegations of a sort that many people – including police officers – formerly dismissed as unbeliev- able” (Skolnick and Fyfe, 1993, p. 3). In Canada, the 2007 videotaped alter- cation between the police and Robert Dziekanski had a similar impact. However, in the intervening years, the advent of 24 hour news stations, the popularity of social media, and the huge popularity of YouTube as a video- sharing website combined to make public access to the video instantly possible (Goldsmith, 2010). The heightened visibility of police wrongdoing that has been captured through the widespread use of video cameras and cell phone cameras by members of the public has transformed that public‟s attitude towards the police. Police have lost control of their image management. The result has been a decline in perceived police legitimacy and an increased demand for accountability. While the number of Aboriginal Canadians dying through police involve- ment remains unknown, we do know that Aboriginal people are disproportionately represented throughout the criminal justice system. While they make up approximately 3 percent of Canada‟s populations, they make up 18 percent of provincial and federal prison admissions of sentenced offenders (Calverley, 2010; Perreault, 2009), and 21 percent of offenders sent to remand (Porter & Calverley, 2011). While there might not be any evidence of Aboriginal people dying at a higher rate than non- Aboriginals through police contact, their higher rate of police contact and jail admission results in high numbers of in-custody and police-involved deaths in comparison to the population at large. The lack of available systematic information on Aboriginal deaths in custody was clearly identified by Hannum (2003) in a report prepared for the Native Courtworker and Counselling Association of B.C. That report revealed the difficulty in trying to identify the extent of Aboriginal deaths in police custody. Many agencies fail to identify race/ethnic background, causing the information to disappear into more general statistics on deaths in custody. The report noted that B.C. Coroner‟s data had revealed that, between 1993 and 2003, 60% of all Aboriginal deaths in custody occurred while in police custody; among non-Aboriginals, only 25% of in-custody deaths arise while in police custody (p. 4). The report goes on to note that amongst deaths in-custody in Vancouver during the same time frame, a greater proportion of Aboriginals were likely to be classified as “undetermined deaths” compared to non-Aboriginals (20% versus 8%). Accidents were ruled as the cause of death for 40% of Aboriginal cases, compared to 28% for non-Aboriginal. These figures just begin to paint the picture of Aboriginal deaths in custody. Despite calls for the collection of race-based statistics to give us a better picture of the extent of Aboriginal over-representation among police-involved death cases (Cheema, 2009), there appears to have been no move in recent years to gather such data. The Manitoba Aboriginal Justice Inquiry (Hamilton & Sinclair, 1991) found that Aboriginal people are arrested and held in custody in circumstances where non-Aboriginal persons would either not be arrested at all or arrested but not held in custody. The Inquiry found that a Winnipeg police officer acted on the basis of racial stereotypes, engaging in the stop of an Aboriginal man (J.J. Harper) that was unnecessary and based on racialized motivations, ultimately resulting in the death of that man at the hands of the police. Prejudice and discrimination against Aboriginals by the police in Canada has been alleged through several academic studies, including that by Havemann, Couse, Foster, and Matanovitch (1985), who found Aboriginal youth were less likely to receive police warnings than non-Aboriginals across the country. Similarly, in the same year, Harding (1985) found police were two to three times more likely to charge Aboriginals than non- Aboriginals for public intoxication in the city of Regina. Differential charging practices are not confined to Aboriginal Canadians. The Ontario Commission on Systemic Racism (1995) found that some police officers act on the basis of stereotypes and discriminatory views of other ethnic minorities, particularly blacks. White accused were found to be more likely to be released by the police and if brought into custody, were less likely to be detained following a bail hearing. A pattern of police bias against racialized groups in Ontario was also identified by Mosher (1998). Canadian data on the race and class backgrounds of those who die in police custody, or through police contact, is lacking. However, it can be noted anecdotally that many of those dying through police-initiated contact come from these backgrounds. Raymond Silverfox was an Aboriginal man from the Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation with deep family roots in the Whitehorse community (CBC News, 2011b). Robert Dziekanski was a working class immigrant seeking to start a new life in Canada (Braidwood, 2010). While Kevin St. Arnaud and Ian Bush did not come from disadvantaged backgrounds, many other individuals who have fallen at the hands of the police did.