The Commission dismissed my witnessing of a ruthless police assault upon a homeless man, Jason Harry, because I didn’t have a witness.

Victoria police, BC, Canada
wick...@police.victoria.bc.ca

Re: Formal complaint #05-13728 from David Piney (witness of police aggression suffered by Jason Harry).

Sorry to take so long documenting the details of my complaint Rhys: time is becoming scarcer for me.

On March 30/05, around noon, I'd just left Spectrum employment center and seen Jason benignly waiting for the light in order to cross Douglas at Johnson --along with approximately six other nondescript pedestrians-- when two cops approached him from behind shouting at him. They grabbed his arm aggressively but Jason remained benign and wholly surrendered to them. Even so, the cops seemed to increase their aggression, yelling at him to get to the ground while they tried to wrestle him down by pulling his legs out from under him as he leaned against the wall they had forced him into. It took them a few minutes, and the grotesqueness that struck me most was the benign demeanor of Jason throughout it all, which made the cops' aggression seem clearly uncalled for. Their hostility seemed even more out of place when I tried to provide my contact information to them or to Jason as a concerned witness, and they responded to me by bitterly driving me away, implying that I'd be next. I could see no badge name or number on either cop, but one finally responded to my inquiry and told me he was badge #6.

I immediately called the station to complain from the employment center 60 seconds away, and Keith Lidner said he'd visit the cells and provide Jason with my contact information when he arrived. When I called him back later in the day he told me that he'd visited the cells and "delivered my message", thus implying he'd fulfilled this crucial responsibility. When I told him I'd seen Jason by fortuitous coincidence just after he was released and he hadn't been given my contact information, Keith mumbled it must have been someone else that he visited. Later he said Jason was released before he got there.

I’ve since found out that Jason had cussed the cops earlier and they had followed him and responded with punitive coercion (an ageless and simplistic ol’ boy tactic which the Just Society knew to be inherently problematic and thus remedied with the enshrined principles of Canada’s great Charter of Rights). My generation is all too familiar with this hand-me-down ol’ boy culture and its legions of hierarchical wannabes at every level who are willing to wield violence and whimsical decree as perceived behaviour correction. The problem of course is the resulting normalization of violence and the subordination of others as a cultural norm: a fact which is corroborated by the most violent cultures on the planet, which notoriously most utilize coercion as a corrective tool.

As for Jason’s swearing at the cops: It’s been my experience generally that if someone swore at someone else they usually deserve it. And the human right to cry out against injustice cannot be suppressed without complicated social consequences (unduly exceeding the simple effort and tolerance needed to hear out the complainant with due respect). Further, I think it’s a benchmark of the competence of today’s leadership in a world that accepts so many serious behavioral wrongs and yet which arbitrarily outlaws simple words as intolerably bad. It’s a fact of life that impassioned colloquial expression from the little people of this culture is often expressed a cuss. So what! It’s wholly benign, and usually meaningless. What’s really gross to me is the fact that Jason was brutalized for simply (benignly) expressing himself. And in my experience, the odds are that his impassioned complaint was probably justified.

I am often criticized for adding these philosophical summaries to my rants. But I realize there are people of conscience out there who truly are trying to do the right thing in life (which is often difficult to determine) and thus it’s for their benefit in pursuit of social solutions that I offer my rational.

Since I believe the only real solution to the curse of crime and human predation is to engender an intrinsic concern for the well being of each other in the heart of humanity, I naturally see the paramilitary basis of today’s policing services as inherently problematic. Its resort to raw expediency as an operational policy, naturally engenders propensities which contradict principles that are crucial for equitable human relations --which continues to author legions of victims. Since police are one of the few visible representatives of society itself on a day-by-day basis, the trickle down effect of their social example and operating standards inevitably normalizes more of the same in the public generally. This simple fact has far too little priority with today’s policy makers.

Thus I believe society’s most important interface with the public should be from more exemplary institutions, such as search and rescue teams that could be geared up to handle policing duties. Instead of patrol cars and paramilitary officers armed with guns and clubs and a shoot-to-kill raw expediency, search and rescue teams could respond to emergencies unarmed with specialized work trucks filled with needed tools. Their non intrusive posture, puncture proof clothing and hidden defensive mechanisms would exemplify their public mandate (which is not primarily for enforcement, but for professional intervention in order to personally encourage our people in an exemplary fashion to do the right thing in life) and thus to make people feel guilty for primitive conduct. It would be the mandate of the publicly invisible and last resort SWAT team backup to fulfill the enforcement duties --a function which inevitably will decline under the heightened encouragement of social standards that a policy of exemplary leadership would provide.

A transition from today’s model could be achieved by simply offering the public an experimental choice between these two styles of policing services. Thus by the public dialing 912 instead of 911 for example, a wholly exemplary search and rescue type team would be dispatched, representing holistic intervention strategies (which a consensus of psychologists have long espoused as the only real solution to our culture’s continuing fostering of crime). And if these search and rescue teams were funded by police budgets the existing policing system would automatically decline with their increasing popularity. Thus offering a wholly democratic mechanism to both prove the practical viability of the search and rescue team’s functionality, and at the same time efficiently downsize the current system to little more than SWAT team backups –a function which couldn’t ordinarily occur under foreseeable circumstances.

In fact I believe the continuation of the current system has more to do with the absence of an effective transition mechanism than anything else. We’ve simply inherited today’s justice system from the warrior aristocracy of old, and have continued in its traditions in spite of the grotesque injustices that are endemic with the ethos. Humanity deserves better. But unless we can establish an exemplary system we can all trust to do the right thing, there will be no hope for developing the inherent human standards needed, and the primacy of the self interest ethos from our animal kingdom roots will continue its scourge, along with the human predator that it inevitably fosters.

I hope you agree, and find this effort helpful.

David Piney.

The Police Complaint Commissioner dismissed my witnessing of a police assault upon a homeless man, Jason Harry, because I don’t have a witness. The fact that contact information for Jason was never provided to me (which formed the basis of my original complaint) was conveniently ignored –thus I have no way of knowing if they approached Jason helpfully, coercively, or not at all. I must admit, in my considerable experience with the system this is a typical police response.
David.
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Semptember 2nd 2005
Mr. David Piney
General Delivery
Victoria, B.C.
V8W 2L9 Re: OPCC file 2804 - DA file V05-35
Dear Mr. Piney:
This letter is being written in response to your request that the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner review your complaint against Constables Cowan and Gubbins, both members of the Victoria Police Department. Your complaint, originally received at the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner on May 18 , 2005 was subsequently dismissed by Chief Constable Paul Battershill, the Discipline Authority for the VPD, following an investigation by Sergeant Rhys Wickes of the VPD internal investigation section.
l have now had an opportunity to review the complete Victoria Police Department Internal investigation file into your complaint. The file contained statements from both respondent officers, copies of police notes, miscellaneous internal e-mails, CPIC records, a further e-mailed statement from you and a "will say'' from Sergeant Lindner, an interval investigator with the Victoria Police Department.
Following my review of the file material, l am satisfied with the decision of the Victoria Police Department to dismiss your complaint against Constable Cowan and Gubbins. There were no independent witnesses to Mr. Harry's arrest and Mr. Harry himself was not interested in providing any information to the police about the incident. There is nothing in the tile material to support your statement that Mr. Harry's arrest was either "unwarranted'' or ruthless''. l believe the detailed letter from Chief Constable Battershill dated July 7 , 2005 has more than adequately dealt with the public trust issues outlined in your complaint.
Your public-spirited suggestions on how to solve the "curse of crime and human predation", while interesting and l am sure well intended, would not, in my opinion, be the solution to the many faceted problems faced by police officer's in today's society. Although perhaps an extreme example, one only has to take a look at what happened in New Orleans in the few days following the recent disaster in that city. Unarmed search and rescue teams were being assaulted in the streets and medical evacuation helicopters were being shot at and assaulted by armed citizens of that city. Although there are instances of some police officers abusing their authority, there are, from my experience and observations, many more instances of compassionate and caring police officers going out of their way to assist some of the less fortunate members of our society. Even though your complaint against the Victoria Police Department was not substantiated l believe it is important that individuals who have concerns about police conduct do report those concerns. Thank you for taking the time to request this review by the OPCC.

I concur with the decision of the Discipline Authority to dismiss your complaint. Our tile will be closed and the OPCC will take no further action.
Yours truly,
Bruce M. Brown

Senior Investigative Analyst
cc Sergeant R. Wickes
cc Constable S. Kowan
cc Constable B. Gubbins

OFFICE of the Police Complaint Commission Victoria, Bc
Senior Investigative Analyst Bruce M. Brown,
Mailing Address: PO Box 9895, stn Prov Govt Fax: (250) 387-0198
Tel: (250) 387-5212 Toll Free 1-800-663-2421