New B.C. inquest hears call for police recordings
So far, 7 juries have made the request
PRINCE GEORGE, B.C. One of the few facts not in dispute in the death of former Canadian peacekeeper Greg Matters is that he died on the ground at his rural British Columbia farm, shot in the back by one of the heavily armed members of the RCMP emergency response team sent to arrest him on a charge of assaulting his brother.
A coroner’s inquest into his death was supposed to take one week, then stretched into two, and now will continue at the end of January as jury members grapple with conflicting accounts in the shooting of Matters, 40, an ex-soldier in treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Already, the province’s Independent Investigations Office — which was called on its first day in operation to the farm Matters shared with his mother near Prince George, B.C. — says it may issue a supplemental report after the revelation at the inquest that the 40-year-old former soldier was shot in the back, contrary to the report that cleared the officers involved of criminal wrongdoing.
That report said unequivocally that Matters was shot in the chest.
“We are aware of the evidence that was presented to the coroner’s jury and cannot discuss it in detail, as the inquest is still underway,” Owen Court, spokesman for the office, said last week as testimony continued at the inquest.
Court said officers from the Independent Investigations Office (IIO) received a copy of an autopsy report that listed the cause of death as “gunshot wounds to chest.”
Matters’s mother and grieving loved ones question the account of police officers involved in the shooting, and the family’s lawyer made it clear at the inquest that they would like the jury to recommend video or audio recording of such police actions.
If the jury agrees, it will not be the first time. In fact, it won’t even be the first time this year.
A coroner’s inquest is held into every fatality involving police in the province and in three inquests held earlier this year, all three made the same recommendation, in the cases of Adam Purdie, Brendan Beddow and Justin Zinser.
Within a few years before that, four other juries made the same recommendation.
“Those seven inquest juries all felt that we in British Columbia — including the police, presumably — would benefit from audio-video recording capability present when police officers are in potentially dangerous interactions with citizens,” Cameron Ward, the Matters family lawyer, told the director of standards and evaluation for the provincial government’s Police Services Division while she testified at the inquest.
“What work, if any, has your organization, Police Standards, done to implement those recommendations?”
Lynne McInally said priorities and policy are set by the B.C. justice minister and the director of police services, currently Suzanne Anton and Clayton Pecknold.
“I can tell you that from within my unit we are not currently creating standards about the use of cameras,” McInally replied.
The same recommendation for recording emerged from the coroner’s inquest into the fatal RCMP shooting of Ian Bush, a 22-year-old mill worker shot in the back of the head by RCMP in Houston, B.C., after his October 2005 arrest for having an open beer outside a hockey arena and giving a false name to police.
“You can go over to Future Shop and pick up a tiny video camera with audio capability for about 50 bucks and you can clip it onto a belt or a lapel,” Ward said at the Matters inquest.
Henry Waldock, the lawyer for the IIO at the inquest, told McInally that “cameras on cops would make our job a lot easier.”
And coroner Chico Newell, who presided over several of the police shooting inquests that have made the same recommendation, had a similar question.
He asked: “If it was your son or daughter we were here to look into the facts and circumstances surrounding their death, what would you be suggesting to the jury?” Newell asked.
McInally’s reply: “To make very clear recommendations to the minister of justice in the jury recommendations about exactly what it is that the jury would like to see done.”
The recommendations, she added, should aim not just at police, but the province.
B.C. Justice Minister Suzanne Anton said it would be inappropriate for her to comment while the inquest was underway, but “the province is very aware of coroner recommendations and takes them very seriously,” she said in an email.
Sgt. Julie Gagnon, a spokesperson for the RCMP, said the force has conducted research and pilot testing of body-worn video, but there are legal and practical challenges to implementation. “The RCMP will continue to assess deployment options for body-worn video in the RCMP, for law enforcement purposes, while also respecting all Canadian legal and regulatory requirements.”