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Killing of Robert Dziekanski by Canadian Police
Video 1 Viideo 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHKk5qQRzL4
Articles below
| Footage of fatal Taser incident
will be returned to Victoria man Richard Watts, Times Colonist Published: Saturday, November 03, 2007 The Victoria man who recorded an incident where RCMP
Tasered a man at Vancouver International Airport has been
told he will get his footage back. Let's hope that the video isn't doctored, Air India
style. about time someone stood up to the Police That's fascinating. Pritchard is completely correct to
have a lawyer and be pressuring the RCMP. Justice
requires defenders. I pray this footage will reveal the inapropiate
behaviour of the police officers involved. Our prayers
are with Maria Cisowski. -- No doubt! Good for Pritchard, but I won't be satisfied
until he actually gets the original, undoctored, tape
back. There are too many government bodies with no
accountability - we are rapidly losing our freedoms, and
more and more people are becoming afraid to exercise
them. The judicial system has become very cumbersome and
expensive, deterring all but the rich with plenty of time
/ money from pursuing their rights. Politicians cater to
whomever will keep them in power (regardless of what is
good for the country), and have become criminals
themselves with no regard for the law (e.g., how much
more criminal can you get than driving drunk?). Instead
of teaching our children about freedom and the rights of
the individual, we are indoctrinating them with
"computer skills" as soon as they are
toilet-trained (if not before). People are afraid to
stand out, because they are afraid of the hammer that
might beat them down. If we don't shape up, we will have
no freedoms to boast to China about; we'll be just like
them. The police need to have evidence in order to conduct
their inquiries but they also must realize that the
people have rights. The police, whether they realize it
or not, are there at the pleasure of the people. We would
be in a terrible situation if it were not for the police
but if they obtain unfettered power our situation would
be at least as bad if not worse. This tape should be
returned to its owner while the police are probably
within their rights to retain a copy. |
An eyewitness's video recording of a man dying after being
stunned with a Taser by police on Oct. 14 at Vancouver
International Airport has been released to the public.
Robert Dziekanski is jolted by a shot from an RCMP Taser.
(Paul Pritchard)
The 10-minute video recording clearly shows four RCMP officers
talking to Robert Dziekanski while he is standing with his back
to a counter and with his arms lowered by his sides, but his
hands are not visible.
About 25 seconds after police enter the secure area where he is,
there is a loud crack that sounds like a Taser shot, followed by
Dziekanski screaming and convulsing as he stumbles and falls to
the floor.
Another loud crack can be heard as an officer appears to fire one
more Taser shot into Dziekanski.
As the officers kneel on top of Dziekanski and handcuff him, he
continues to scream and convulse on the floor.
One officer is heard to say, "Hit him again. Hit him
again," and there is another loud cracking sound.
Police have said only two Taser shots were fired, but a witness
said she heard up to four Taser shots.
Robert Dziekanski falls to the floor as an RCMP officer looks on.
(Paul Pritchard)
A minute and half after the first Taser shot was fired Dziekanski
stops moaning and convulsing and becomes still and silent.
Shortly after, the officers appear to be checking his condition
and one officer is heard to say, "code red."
The video ends shortly after.
Minutes later, ambulance attendants arrived but their efforts to
revive Dziekanski were unsuccessful and he was declared dead.
RCMP spokesman Cpl. Dale Carr said no one can judge what happened
to Dziekanski by just watching the video.
"It's just one piece of evidence, one person's view. There
are many people that we have spoken to," RCMP spokesman Cpl.
Dale Carr said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon.
"What I urge is that those watching the video, take note of
that. Put what they've seen aside for the time being. And wait to
hear the totality of the evidence at the time of the
inquest," Carr said.
But retired superintendent Ron Foyle, a 33-year veteran of the
Vancouver police who saw the video tape, said he didn't know
"why it ever became a police incident."
"It didn't seem that he made any threatening gestures
towards them," Foyle said.
Much of the video was shot through the glass walls that separate
the international arrivals lounge from a secure area outside the
Canada Customs exit.
The video was recorded in three segments. The first segment shows
Dziekanski before police arrive.
Four RCMP officers subdue Robert Dziekanski after stunning him
with a Taser on Oct. 14 at Vancouver airport.
(Paul Pritchard)
He is clearly agitated, yelling in Polish, and appears to be
sweating. He can be seen taking office chairs and putting them in
front of the security doors. He then picks up a small table,
which he holds, while a woman in the arrivals lounge calmly
speaks to him in apparent effort to calm him down.
4 officers arrive in lounge
In the second segment, Dziekanski picks up a computer and throws
it to the ground. Three airport personnel arrive and block the
exit from the secure area, but Dziekanski retreats inside and
does not threaten them.
Then four RCMP officers arrive in the lounge. Someone can be
heard mentioning the word Tasers.
Before police arrived, Robert Dziekanski picked up a small table
and put it in the doorway between the customs exit area and a
public lounge.
(Paul Pritchard)
Someone replies, "Yes," as the officers approach the
security doors.
Police have said repeatedly that there were only three RCMP
officers involved in the incident, but the video shows four men
in RCMP uniforms.
People in the lounge can be heard clearly telling the police
Dziekanski speaks no English, only Russian. His mother later said
he only spoke Polish.
Police enter the secure area with no problems and can be seen
with Dziekanski standing calmly talking with officers. They
appear to direct him to stand against a wall, which he does.
As he is standing there, one of the officers shoots him with a
Taser.
Paul Pritchard, right, accompanied by his lawyer, Paul Pearson,
at a recent press conference, said that he feels police are
trying to manipulate the truth.
(CBC)
RCMP officers have also said police did not use pepper spray
because of the large number of people at the airport at the time.
But the video shows Dziekanski standing alone with the four
officers in an otherwise empty area, which is separated from the
public area by a thick glass wall.
Paul Pritchard shot the video with his digital camera, but
afterward he surrendered it to police for their investigation on
a promise that they would return it within 48 hours.
Pritchard hired lawyer
The next day, police told Pritchard they would not be returning
the recording as promised.
Carr previously stated investigators kept the video longer than
they anticipated in order to protect the integrity of the police
investigation while they interviewed witnesses.
Saying he feared a coverup by police, Pritchard then engaged a
lawyer to start legal proceedings to reclaim the recording.
Police returned the recording to him on Wednesday.
Dziekanski, 40, died on Oct. 14, hours after he arrived at
Vancouver International Airport. He was on his way to Kamloops to
live with his mother in the B.C. Interior.
The Polish immigrant arrived from Europe the previous day around
4 p.m., but for some unknown reason he did not clear customs
until after midnight.
Robert Dziekanski with his mother Zofia Cisowski in Poland,
before she immigrated to Canada.
Dziekanski's mother had already returned home to Kamloops after
waiting for several hours at the airport. She claims airport
officials offered her no help locating her son.
The RCMP's integrated homicide investigation team, the B.C.
coroner's service, the Vancouver International Airport Authority
and the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP are
each conducting their own investigations into the incident.
from http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=a48c7e1e-d9cb-4aea-8512-5a0511809fb4
| 'I just felt sick,' says witness to
Taser case Paul Pritchard says seeing victim's mom weep
on television prompted legal challenge Eve Edmonds , Richmond News Published: Friday, November 02, 2007 At first he was amused, then he was sickened, now he's furious. Paul Pritchard, 25, recorded police using a Taser gun on Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver International Airport Oct. 14; Dziekanski later died. Immediately following the incident, police interviewed Pritchard and asked if they could have the memory card that contained the recording from Pritchard's Sony digital video camera. Pritchard gave it to them, under the condition it be returned within 48 hours. Three weeks later, the card still hasn't been returned and Pritchard has been told he might not get it back for another couple of years, when the investigation is completed. Police claim they don't want the recording to be made public because it may taint the memories of other witnesses -- a point Pritchard calls ridiculous. "I don't know how it can influence others," said Pritchard, who spoke to reporters in Victoria yesterday. "It's simply what happened." Pritchard's lawyer, Paul Pearson, believes the RCMP's argument is "disingenuous" at best. "They certainly made their version of events public." Pearson wonders why they would worry about tainting witnesses when they issued a press release describing in some detail what they claim was the sequence of events. Police are also refusing to release Dziekanski's toxicology report, which showed that Dziekanski was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the incident. The lawyer for Dziekanski's mother made those findings public. Pearson and his client are also determined to make Pritchard's recording of the incident public. They are scheduled in B.C. Supreme Court in Victoria today (Friday) to make an application to have the memory card returned. "They have no legal right to hold on to it because, at this point, there's no indication that this is a criminal investigation," Pearson said. Perhaps what infuriates Pritchard most is the sense of betrayal. "At that time, (the officers) were really nice, really professional, and I was trying to co-operate and help out." Pritchard stayed at the airport for four hours after the incident to be interviewed and show the recording. Now Pritchard suspects he was lied to all along. He notes an officer suggested making a copy of the card. "I was ready to do that, then they came back and said the technician wasn't there so they would have to keep it until they got a copy made." Pritchard now thinks they had no intention of giving him back the recording. An officer also told Pritchard that his was the only recording made because the surveillance cameras in the area are only for monitoring and don't record, another point Pritchard finds somewhat questionable. Police appear like they have something to hide, said Pritchard. And, indeed, Pritchard's memory of events doesn't mirror the details in police accounts. For one, Dziekanski had been acting strangely for a good hour before any security arrived to defuse the situation. "Security was called numerous times. A couple of people actually went off to try to find security, nobody came." -- I just felt sick,' says witness to Taser case Paul Pritchard says seeing victim's mom weep on television prompted legal challenge Eve Edmonds , Richmond News Published: Friday, November 02, 2007 Pritchard said at first, he and another man were amused by Dziekanski's antics. "We thought maybe he was drunk." But the 40-year-old's behaviour got increasingly bizarre. At one point, Dziekanski stacked his suitcases in front of the glass doors between the immigration area and the public lobby. A chauffeur who was there to meet someone told Dziekanski to get out of the way as a flight was landing and people would be coming through soon. An argument ensued. It was clear Dziekanski didn't speak English. Email to a friend Printer friendly Font:****There was a phone nearby to call a translator, but the phone didn't work," said Pritchard. At some point, Pritchard remembered he had his video camera in his luggage. He took it out and began filming. Dziekanski's odd behaviour continued to escalate. "He would pick up the computer, then put it down, pick up a keyboard and put it down." He then began banging on the glass windows and yelling in a foreign language. "We started to wonder, maybe he was getting on a plane, not getting off one. So you've got this guy with bags, acting weird, yelling in a foreign language in an airport -- you don't know what's going to happen." Finally, two security guards and three officers arrived. "As one of the officers ran past me, I heard him say 'can I Taser' or 'should I Taser,' something like that. I hope the recording picked it up." Within seconds, police surrounded Dziekanski, who backed up behind a desk on the immigration side of the glass wall, Pritchard said. Policed yelled something, then shot him with the Taser gun, said Pritchard. "I heard pop, pop, pop, pop." Dziekanski fell to the ground. There was still a struggle on the ground as the officers tried to handcuff him. Then Dziekanski went limp. "I thought maybe that's just what happens when people get Tasered." Suddenly, one of the officers jumped up and yelled, "code red" and ran off. "That's when I felt sick." It took another eight minutes, by Pritchard's reckoning (others say 12), for paramedics to arrive. "She (the paramedic) checked for vital signs and immediately started doing CPR," said Pritchard. When Pritchard was later asked by an officer if he had any concerns about how the police handled the situation, Pritchard said he couldn't understand why the officers just stood there waiting for the paramedics to arrive and didn't perform CPR themselves. As a lifeguard, Pritchard said even he could have performed CPR. By the time Pritchard, who had just flown in from China to YVR, arrived home in Victoria, he hadn't slept in 52 hours. "I put it out of my head for a while and then I was watching the news and seeing his mother crying and I just felt sick again and realized I had to do something." He told the police if he doesn't get the memory card back, he would go to the media, and if that doesn't work, he will take them to court. "I don't really want to be doing this. Taking the police to court doesn't exactly look good on the resumé, but I can't just roll over." "In China, I teach English and I talk to my students about human rights. They have no human rights over there, and I tell them about Canada where we have rights -- and then this happens." It might be time to adjust the lesson plan, he added. Police did not return calls to the News by press time. ----- Comment Anonymous said... |