BEI accused of releasing ‘biased’ details to media

In the days following their son’s death during a police intervention, Cesur Celik and June Tyler sat down for interviews with Quebec’s Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes.

In separate sessions at their home in Île-Bizard, they recalled what they witnessed during his last moments.

The parents had called the Montreal police for help shortly before 2 a.m. on March 6, 2017. Koray Kevin Celik, 28, was in crisis and intoxicated. They feared he could hurt himself and didn’t want him leaving the house.

After entering their home, they say, police officers brutally beat their son after handcuffing his hands behind his back. Two officers used police batons, they say, and another covered Koray’s mouth while he was kneed, kicked and punched. His parents screamed for it to stop.

But none of those details were mentioned in the version of events relayed in a news release the BEI issued in August. That discrepancy, and the fact any information about the incident was included in the first place, is now at the core of a lawsuit the family has filed against the agency.

The suit argues the BEI released “biased” and “inaccurate” information about the police intervention and published details it wasn’t legally obligated to.

“This isn’t about the money,” Cesur Celik, 65, said of the suit this week. “What we’re trying to do is re-establish the facts.”

In Quebec, the BEI investigates police interventions in which a person is killed, suffers serious injuries or is shot by an officer.

Per its own regulations, the agency must issue news releases when it takes over an investigation and when it hands its findings over to Quebec’s Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions, which ultimately decides whether charges should be laid in a case.

According to the lawsuit, the BEI contacted Koray ’s parents in early August to let them know the investigation was complete and a news release would soon be published.

The BEI employee described what the release would say, and the parents argued it didn’t portray what they witnessed.

The next day, the family sent the BEI a lawyer’s demand letter. It said they wouldn’t object to the news release as long as the BEI also made public its investigation that led to the information published in the statement.

If not, the letter stated, then the release should be reworded to convey “a neutral representation of the facts of the case.”

The BEI acknowledged the letter the next day, the lawsuit says, but the news release was issued the same day.

“The investigation shows the following facts,” the release said.

It stated that Koray became aggressive toward officers and ignored their orders. An officer tried to control him, using her police baton, but couldn’t do so.

“Three other officers bring the man, who is resisting, to the ground,” the release said. “Once on the ground, they quickly realize the subject is unconscious and cannot detect a pulse.”

The family is adamant that’s not the case. It maintains the officers provoked Koray without making any attempts to de-escalate the situation and beat him “to the moment his heart stopped.”

But the lawsuit isn’t about the cause of Koray’s death, said the Celik family’s lawyer, François Mainguy. The family is still awaiting a coroner’s report (the BEI has said Koray suffered a heart attack) and has been provided little other information, he said.

Rather, the suit is mainly about the BEI’s decision to include the description of what it says happened and the “very serious hurt and grief ” doing so caused the Celik family.

Mainguy called it “outrageous” that the family found out what the conclusions of the BEI’s investigation appear to be — and that the parents’ version of events seems to have not been deemed credible — in the context of a news release being issued.

“Before the moment the liaison officer called them,” he said, “they had no idea where the investigation was going.”

Mainguy argues the BEI had “no legal obligation” to disclose any of its investigation’s findings in the news release.

“They chose to do it, for reasons that we don’t understand, that we are not able to explain and they were not able to explain to us in the communications we had prior to the lawsuit,” he said.

The suit is filed on behalf of Koray ’s parents and two older brothers.

It seeks $40,000 in moral damages and $10,000 in punitive damages, arguing the BEI’s “intentional conduct and complete disregard” of the family’s rights has caused them severe pain and suffering.

The BEI would not comment on this story but said it “respects the judicial process that is underway.”