A BC Supreme Court judge has said it “makes absolutely no sense” for Julie Berg to have to try to personally fund her participation at the public hearing into her complaint about her brother’s death. Justice Stromberg-Stein made the comment at the end of a hearing to address whether an “agreed” statement of facts had been properly admitted at the public hearing.

The judge also suggested that legislative changes to the Police Act were overdue, and that any such changes would “hopefully” grant complainants a greater right to participate at public hearings.

Julie Berg has been fighting for over four years to obtain accountability for an incident that occurred on October 22, 2000. Her brother Jeff, 37, a man with no criminal record, no history of violence, no drugs or alcohol in his system and who was unarmed, died after he was confronted by Cst. David Bruce-Thomas of the Vancouver Police Department. Jeff sustained serious injuries in the incident, including bruises to his face, head, neck and testicle, while Cst. Bruce-Thomas was unscathed. Civilian eyewitnesses have testified under oath that they saw a police officer kicking him while he was motionless on the ground, testimony corroborated by forensic pathologist Dr. Laurel Gray. Jeff died in hospital of a traumatic aneurysm sustained to his carotid artery. His death was ruled a homicide by a coroner’s jury.

Following a lengthy investigation by Cst. Bruce-Thomas’ VPD colleagues, no criminal charges were laid against him. Cst. Bruce-Thomas has received the support of VPD Chief Jamie Graham, who suggested publicly that Jeff deserved the treatment he received at the hands (and feet) of the police. Graham suggested that he and the three acquaintances Jeff was with had been involved in a “home invasion”, although none of them were convicted of any such offence and no reliable evidence has ever been offered in court that a home invasion occurred.

The public hearing ended on December 17, 2004 and a decision is expected in January. Publicly funded lawyers attended the lengthy hearing to represent the interests of the Police Complaint Commissioner, Cst. Bruce-Thomas, the VPD and the Vancouver Police Union. Ms. Berg was unable to obtain public funding for legal counsel.

The Vancouver Police Department’s public relations people have been spinning in circles trying to defend the actions of a member who recently arrested a Langara College journalism student. The female student, who happens to have a law degree, was taking pictures with a zoom lens from a distance while a VPD member confronted some squeegee kids at a Vancouver intersection. The VPD member apparently took exception to the photographer’s actions and slapped handcuffs on her, citing “obstruction” as the reason for the arrest. The police officer reportedly told her that she was getting her first lesson in journalism. No charges were laid against anyone, including the squeegee kids, and the student was eventually released from police custody.

According to Vancouver police spokesperson Sarah Bloor, the student was arrested “for her own safety”. It would be tempting to write this sorry incident off as an isolated case of overzealousness on the part of the VPD members involved, but similar incidents happen much too often in the City of Vancouver.

There can be no doubt that police officers perform a difficult and often dangerous job and that they should enjoy the respect and trust of the public. From my perspective as a lawyer who routinely handles complaints of alleged police misconduct and as a person who was subjected to unwarranted abuse by the VPD, I regret to say that there is a serious problem within the department.

In my opinion, a significant number of VPD members routinely ignore the laws that they are sworn to uphold. This may be due to inadequate training, lack of proper supervision, a sense that they are immune from discipline, or perhaps a combination of these factors.

The VPD is conducting an internal investigation into the student’s complaint. This will undoubtedly be an educational experience for her as well. She will learn that a VPD internal investigation is a sham, that the Vancouver Police Board is ineffectual and that the Police Complaint Commission has inadequate resouces and an unsatisfactory statutory framework to provide effective oversight of the municipal police in this province.

A group of MBA students at the University of British Columbia have launched an appeal from a British Columbia Supreme Court decision dismissing their claims against the University. A Notice of Appeal was filed in the Court of Appeal on November 8, 2004.

The students received letters offering them places in the University’s MBA program for a tuition fee of $7,000. The letters said that “fees for the year are subject to adjustment and the University reserves the right to change fees without notice”. Later, after students had accepted their offers of admission and paid their deposits, the University’s Board of Governors set their fees at $28,000, four times the amount the students had thought they had agreed to pay.

One of the students learned of the fee increase while attending his opening week of classes in the fall and commenced a lawsuit for breach of contract. His claims and those of his fellow students were dismissed by Madam Justice M.E. Boyd on October 8, 2004. The judge rejected the students’ claims that the University was liable for breach of contract or misrepresentation.

Read the decision under appeal

The Office of the Police Complaint Commission has determined the complaint of Thomas Evon Stevenson’s family to be unsubstantiated, after reviewing a secret report prepared by the Chief Constable of the Nelson Police Department.

Stevenson was killed in December, 2002 when Vancouver Police Department Sgt. Milligan fired three bullets into his chest as Stevenson sat in a stolen vehicle that had earlier been disabled and staked out by police. Milligan was standing in front of the car and said he fired after he saw Stevenson reach for a gun within the darkened vehicle. VPD investigators later found a toy plastic gun lying by the left rear wheel of the vehicle. Stevenson’s fingerprints were not found on the toy pistol.

In January of 2004, a Coroner’s jury determined the death was a homicide and recommended that police not investigate themselves and that video cameras be installed in police cars. To date, neither of these recommendations have been implemented.

The Nelson police chief was called in to perform an external investigation and he apparently produced a three part report. The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner has refused to let the Stevenson family or its lawyers see the report, but it has confirmed that no investigator performed a reconstruction of the incident scene to determine whether Sgt. Milligan’s statements that he saw a gun before he fired were plausible.

The family’s wrongful death lawsuit continues.

After a week of dramatic testimony, the four-man, one-woman jury at the coroner’s inquest into the deaths of Sherry Heron, Anna Adams and Bryan Heron delivered its findings and recommendations.

The jury found that Sherry Heron and Anna Adams were the victims of homicide, while Bryan Heron’s death was “undetermined”. Seven recommendations for procedural improvement were directed to the RCMP and to the Mission Memorial Hospital.

Coroner Marj Paonessa and the jury had earlier heard that Senior Correctional Officer Bryan Heron received a restraining order at 3:33 p.m. on May 20, 2003, left work and went to Mission Memorial Hospital, where he walked in to his wife’s hospital room and fatally shot her and her mother. The hospital staff had received a copy of the restraining order, but took no steps to keep Heron away or hide his wife from him. Bryan Heron died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the bush on May 23, 2003 as police closed in.

A week earlier (May 13, 2003), Sherry Heron’s sister, brother and brother-in-law had gone to the Mission RCMP and reported incidents of domestic violence and threats by Bryan Heron against his hospitalized spouse. RCMP Cst. Mike Pfeifer interviewed a frightened and upset Sherry Heron that day, who confirmed the threats and said she feared for her and her family’s safety. Cst. Pfeifer spoke to his own father, a corrections colleague of Byan Heron’s, and was told Heron was a “good person”. Cst. Pfeifer did not investigate the matter further.

The incident was remarkably similar to a tragedy in Veron seven years earlier, where an estranged husband killed nine members of his family before taking his own life. That incident also resulted in a coroner’s inquest. At the time, a headline in The Province newspaper read, “RCMP ignored death threats”. The article continued, “The Mounties ignored a woman’s complaint that her estranged husband had threatened to kill her and her family, an inquest into their deaths heard yesterday.”