Against a man armed with a banana.

by Tony Wilson

For those of you who don’t know, our Law Society’s President, Gordon Turriff, QC has been touring the province giving speeches to various communities and organizations on what lawyers do, why we need them, and the role of the Law Society in regulation of the legal profession. I went to one of his first speeches in New West, not only because I live there, but because I feared if I didn’t show, he’d be speaking to a room full of empty chairs and I’d be chastised for not strolling three blocks from my house to fill a seat in the New West Library. I was wrong. More than 40 people showed up on a night they could have stayed home and watched TV.

Mr. Turriff said lots of things that night, but what struck a chord for me was his view that as bad as criminals, gangs and terrorists are, nothing is worse than the power of the state when that power is abused. That’s one reason why we have the Rule of Law and why lawyers are sworn to uphold that rule. It’s to prevent the state from inching its way into a police state. Zimbabwe was given as an extreme example of a state where there is no Rule of Law. But Zimbabwe is just the easiest example of state power gone wild.

The world is filled with political regimes that trample on rights, incarcerate without due process and engage in torture and state sanctioned murder. Fortunately, the opportunity to descend into a “thugocracy” is limited in those nations that have a free press, an active Bar, and an independent judiciary. But, I would have to add, also plenty of video cameras.

I like the police. It’s a tough job to deal with bad people. But my own faith in what the police do has been shaken by the revelations from the Braidwood Inquiry on the death of Robert Dziekanski at YVR by four RCMP officers, who as we all know by now, tasered the Polish immigrant without spending any time trying to defuse the situation. How do we know how much time? Because everyone in the world who saw the video on YouTube counted the seconds.

With apologies to Karl Marx, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce, and finally as an old Monty Python sketch. It seems Mr. Dziekanski was tasered four or five times because… he was armed with a banana. Oh sorry. I meant a stapler. I have two staplers on my desk as I write this. They are verrrry scaaaary things.

But the whole thing is more complicated than how dangerous a banana (sorry… stapler) can be in the wrong hands.

The officers’ own notes of the event were so contrary to the videotape taken by the bystander that they had to admit their notes did not reflect the reality of the video. The officers’ notes were “not accurate;” which is a polite term for what comes out of the rear end of a steer. And now, at the time I write this, we hear an email that ought to have been disclosed to the Inquiry was withheld by the RCMP. Absolutely outrageous!

I wouldn’t say this if I hadn’t seen the video, but I have to ask: how often do police officers misrepresent events in their notes to justify their actions or achieve a desired result (like a conviction?). How often are an officer’s notes simply “spin” clothed as truth? How often are the facts fudged because the officer thinks he’s not being filmed?

Although some might not see the link between Mr. Turriff’s speech on Zimbabwe and the death of Mr. Dziekanski, I think we have to watch the police as well as the bad guys, lest we become a police state, inch by inch. Respect for the Rule of Law is certainly one way. But the other way to ensure the police don’t get out of control is to video them at every, and I mean every, opportunity.

The Rule of Law is important, but if there were no video of Mr. Dziekanski’s death, we’d have all thought the officers’ notes were gospel, staplers were dangerous and the Braidwood Inquiry wouldn’t have happened.

Vancouver Franchise Lawyer Tony Wilson practices at Boughton Law Corporation in Vancouver, and has written for the Globe and Mail, Macleans Magazine and Canadian Lawyer. twilson@boughton.ca | www.boughton.ca/people/lawyers/tony_wilson

This article was published in the August 2009 issue of BarTalk. © 2009 The Canadian Bar Association. All rights reserved.