A Delicate Dance

The Robert Dziekanski death at the hands of the RCMP is like a tarbaby. Officials keep thinking they can extract themselves from its sticky embrace but every maneuver just attaches them more firmly in a series of lies.

Here is a video of the B.C. Attorney General finally admitting to what has been obivious from the start: the police statements about the death are inconsistent with the facts, especially the damning facts of the video tape of the death at Vancouver International Airport.

Here is a video that is a textbook case of how police spin a lie to cover their crimes and then how the attempt to maintain the lie unravels under a judicial inquiry.

Here is a video where the police make the absolutely incredible claim that "raising arms and turning away" is aggressive and threatening behaviour and that "holding up a stapler" is brandishing a deadly weapon that justifies the use of force (and resultant death of Robert Dziekanski).

Here is a video of the commanding officer at the "take down" of Robert Dziekanski. He is caught in his lies and the offers up the preposterous claim "just because I was mistaken doesn't mean I was lying".

What is absolutely disgusting about the RCMP's behaviour, besides the killing of an innocent immigrant, is the lengths that the organization is willing to go to in covering up its actions. In the court case it has come to light that they have spent a fortune hounding and "investigating" anybody and everybody involved except their own RCMP officers! They sent investigators to Poland to dig through Robert Dziekanski's past, but they never took the time to sit down with the officers and compare their filed police reports of the incident with the videotape or inquire into the huge discrepancies between their self-serving "reports" and the facts presented on the videotape.

This is not a "one time only" problem. And it isn't restricted to the RCMP. In Canada there has been a long history of respect for authority which has corrupted our institutions. The fact that police investigate themselves means that a "friendly understanding" will cover up crimes. This needs to stop. This is a disgrace. Worse, it is a crime. And when crime infests the very institution that is supposed to police crime, then you have a very, very serious problem. Watch the following:



Note: oddly, the above video is not available from the CBC (the government news organization). I'm just wondering... is the CBC being told to "tone down" their reporting over the corruption within the national police? This possibility is very disturbing.