On October 14, 2007, Robert Dziekański (Polish pronunciation: [ˈrɔbɛrd d͡ʑɛˈkaj̃skʲi]), a 40-year-old Polish man in the process of immigrating to Canada, was killed while being detained at the Vancouver International Airport in Richmond, British Columbia.
During customs processing, Dziekański began showing frustration and agitation towards airport staff. When members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) encountered him in the international reception lounge at the airport, they pinned, handcuffed and used a Taser electroshock weapon on Dziekański multiple times—with accounts suggesting the weapon was used four or five times. Dziekański died at the scene from a heart attack induced by the electrical shocks.
Video of the incident was recorded by an eyewitness, Paul Pritchard. The police initially took possession of the memory card containing the video as evidence, stating it would compromise the investigation if it were released to the public at that time. However, the following month, Pritchard was able to re-obtain the video, and sold it to the press—which brought additional prominence to the case. The final inquiry report, released on June 18, 2010, concluded that the RCMP were not justified in using a taser against Dziekański, and that the officers later deliberately misrepresented their actions to investigators. The four officers involved were charged with perjury and in 2015, two of the defendants were cleared of all charges while the remaining two were sentenced to twenty-four to thirty months in prison.
Incident Robert Dziekański was a construction worker by trade, but had also worked as a miner. He was in the process of emigrating from Gliwice, Poland, to live with his mother, Zofia Cisowski, in Kamloops, British Columbia.
Dziekański's flight was two hours late, and arrived at about 3:15 p.m on October 13, 2007. According to official sources, he required language support to complete initial customs formalities. After a primary immigration inspection, Dziekański was directed to go to the airport's secondary immigration area for further processing. However, it is unclear whether he followed this instruction. Instead, he was seen walking along the terminal and standing near the baggage carousels at various times between 4:00 p.m. and about 10:45 p.m. Dziekański's mother, Zofia Cisowski, had told him to wait for her at the baggage claim area, but this was a secured area where she was not allowed to enter. At 10:45 p.m., when he attempted to leave the customs hall, he was directed again to secondary immigration to begin processing his immigration papers. Dziekański's immigration procedures were completed at about 12:15 a.m. on October 14. After 30 minutes in an immigration waiting area, he was taken to the international arrivals reception area. Cisowski had been making enquiries of airport staff since the early afternoon. Airport staff told her Dziekański was not at the airport and she had returned to Kamloops at about 10 p.m., believing her son had missed his flight.
When Dziekański left the customs hall, he became visibly agitated. Bystanders and airport security guards were unable to communicate with him because he did not speak English. He used chairs to prop open the one-way doors between a customs clearing area and a public lounge and at one point threw a computer and a small table to the floor before the police arrived. Four RCMP officers, constables Gerry Rundel, Bill Bentley, Kwesi Millington, and a supervisor, Corporal Benjamin Robinson, arrived and entered the customs room where Dziekański was pacing about. They apparently directed him to stand near a counter, to which Dziekański complied but then he picked up a stapler sometime after being told to place his hands on a counter.
Shortly thereafter, about 25 seconds after arriving at the scene, Corporal Robinson ordered the Taser to be used. Constable Millington tasered Dziekański. He began to convulse and was tasered several more times after falling to the ground, where the four officers pinned, handcuffed, and continued to taser him. One eyewitness, who recorded the incident on her cellphone, told CBC News that Dziekański had been tasered four times. "The third and fourth ones were at the same time" delivered by the officers at Dziekański's right and left, just before Dziekański fell. According to BC Crown counsel spokesman Stan Lowe, Dziekański was tasered a total of five times. Constable Millington testified that he deployed the Taser four times, but he believed that in some of those instances the probes may not have contacted Dziekański's body. Dziekański writhed and screamed before he stopped moving. Corporal Robinson stated he then checked for a pulse, but his heart had stopped. Testimony from the other RCMP officers stated they never saw anyone, including Robinson, check for a pulse. Dziekański did not receive CPR until paramedics arrived on the scene approximately 15 minutes later. Paramedics attempted resuscitation for 20 minutes; they were unable to revive him, and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
In 2013, the BC Coroners Service ruled the death to be a homicide, citing a heart attack caused by the repeated jolts.
Controversy
Video The entire event was recorded by Paul Pritchard, another traveler who was at the airport. Pritchard handed his camera and the video to police who told him that they would return the video within 48 hours. Instead, they returned the camera with a new memory card and kept the original with the video, saying they needed it to preserve the integrity of the investigation. They claimed witness statements would be tainted if they viewed the video evidence before being interviewed by police. Pritchard went to court to obtain the video, which he then released to the media on November 14, 2007; three television outlets paid fees to Pritchard for the right to broadcast the video. After the video was made available, an RCMP spokesperson cautioned the public to reserve judgment about the police because the video represented "just one small piece of evidence, one person's view."
Before the video was released, the RCMP repeatedly claimed that only three officers were at the scene. There were actually four. The RCMP also said that they did not use pepper spray because of the risk it would have posed to bystanders. The video, however, suggested the incident occurred in an area separated from bystanders by a glass wall. The incident occurred inside the international arrivals area, which is separated by glass. Those waiting to greet arriving international passengers could view the area from the waiting lounge on the other side of the glass. An RCMP spokesperson stated that batons were not used, which was contradicted by the video.Camille Bains, Lawyer Walter Kosteckyj, a former RCMP officer, said he did not understand "why one of the officers, seen in the video recording, collapsed his expandable baton beside Dziekanski's head" when he was on the ground. "That may have frightened him even more," he said.
Criticism of the RCMP The RCMP officers involved in the Dziekański death, constables Gerry Rundel, Bill Bentley, Kwesi Millington, and supervisor Corporal Benjamin Robinson, have been widely criticized for their handling of the incident. A retired Vancouver Police superintendent commented after viewing the video that Dziekański did not appear to be making "any threatening gestures" towards the police and he did not see why it became a police incident. Particularly contentious is that the RCMP officers made no attempt to defuse or gain control of the situation before resorting to the Taser.
In August 2007, before Dziekański's death, RCMP changed its protocol on Taser use, suggesting that multiple Taser shocks may be appropriate under certain circumstances.
The RCMP's handling of the incident led to charges that they misrepresented the facts. The BC Civil Liberties Association filed a complaint in 2007 arguing that the evidence shows that the Taser was not used as a last resort and condemning the RCMP for its attempt to suppress the video and for casting aspersions on the character of Dziekański. An RCMP spokesman, Sergeant Pierre Lemaitre, was heavily criticized for providing a false version of events prior to the public release of the video. He stated that Dziekański "continued to throw things around and yell and scream", after the arrival of the police officers, which was later revealed by the video to be false. Sergeant Lemaitre committed suicide in 2013 due to his involvement in the case, according to his wife, who alleged he was made a pariah and demoted by the RCMP.Widow of Pierre Lemaitre, RCMP's Robert Dziekanski spokesman, sues Mounties His wife said Lemaitre was merely providing the facts he was given, and was prevented from correcting his public statements after he found out the truth.A rage in his head': RCMP spokesman's widow says 'attacks from within' got to him
On December 12, 2008, the Criminal Justice Branch of British Columbia issued a statement, finding that although the RCMP officers' efforts to restrain Dziekański were a contributing cause of his death, the force they used to subdue and restrain him was reasonable and necessary in all circumstances; thus there would not be a substantial likelihood of conviction of the officers in connection with the incident and accordingly criminal charges were not approved. |Criminal Justice Branch statement Three of the officers remained on duty elsewhere in Canada, while the supervisor, Corporal Benjamin "Monty" Robinson, resigned from the force on July 20, 2012, prior to a sentencing hearing after being found guilty of obstruction of justice stemming from a vehicle collision that resulted in the death of a 21-year-old Vancouver man. No charges for Mounties in Dziekanski Taser death
The officers have been subject to criticism, both in the media and in formal proceedings before the Braidwood Commission of Inquiry. The officers were served notices of misconduct by the commission forewarning them the commissioner may include a finding of misconduct in its final report.Rundel v. British Columbia – Braidwood Commission, 2009 BCSC 814, at para. 11, edited transcript of the oral reasons for judgment of Silverman J., June 15, 2009. The warnings allege specific but overlapping grounds for each of the four. The collective allegations are that they failed to properly assess and respond to the circumstances in which they found Dziekański. They repeatedly deployed the taser without justification and separately failed to adequately reassess the situation before further deploying it. The notices allege that afterwards they misrepresented facts in notes and statements, furthered the misrepresenting before the commission and provided further misleading information about other evidence before the commission. The four officers each sought judicial review to prevent the commission from making findings based on the notices.Rundel v. British Columbia – Braidwood Commission, 2009 BCSC 814, at para. 17, edited transcript of the oral reasons for judgment of Silverman J., June 15, 2009. The petitions were dismissed. Three of the officers appealed and lost.Bentley v. Braidwood, 2009 BCCA 604, Reasons for Judgment of the Honourable Madam Justice Saunders, December 29, 2009. In July 2013 one of the three officers was cleared of perjury. The remaining two officers stood trial in 2014.
On February 20, 2015, Constable Kwesi Millington, the RCMP officer who fired the Taser on the night Robert Dziekański died eight years previously, was found guilty of perjury and colluding with his fellow officers before testifying at the inquiry into Dziekański's death, and on June 22, 2015, was sentenced to 30 months in prison.
Taser debate