RCMP Watch

(CBC News) – Bob McMynn knows first-hand how Canada’s laws allow police to eavesdrop and use emergency wiretaps without a judge’s approval.

He says Section 184.4 of the Criminal Code helped to save his son Graham’s life after a group of young men abducted the then 23-year-old university student at gunpoint in April 2006, in what turned out to be a kidnapping for ransom.

“[The emergency wiretap] was paramount in solving where my son was,” McMynn told CBC News. “Without that and other fantastic police work, we may never have got him back.”

Vancouver police had little time to ask a judge for permission, so they used the Criminal Code [Read more →]

(CBC News) – RCMP say a video recording made at the time a Stony Rapids woman was arrested will reveal the full story of the incident, which has generated a $250,000 lawsuit against the mounties.

In a statement of claim filed June 25 in Saskatoon, Angie MacDonald is seeking damages stemming from injuries she says she suffered when she was arrested by police in the northern Saskatchewan community some two weeks earlier.

MacDonald’s claim, which has not been proven in court, says an RCMP officer kicked her in the back of her left leg while she was being placed in a holding cell.

The 39-year-old mother of two claims she was arrested for no good reason. She told CBC News that she [Read more →]

(CBC News) – A woman from the northern Saskatchewan community of Stony Rapids has filed a lawsuit, alleging RCMP arrested her for no reason and broke her leg.

Angie MacDonald, 39, makes the allegations in her statement of claim that outlines her view of events, but the claims have not been proven in court.

She told CBC News on Friday that she was in her home on June 8 when officers arrived at around 1:00 a.m. CT and arrested her. She said she does not know why the RCMP did that.

She said that when she was in the detachment cells, she was kicked from behind. She said that knocked her unconscious for a time. [Read more →]

Naeema Siddiqua, Spruce Grove, Alberta (Grove Examiner) – Police are calling it an unfortunate error after entering the wrong house during a drug bust on the Enoch Cree First Nation on Monday.

According to Crpl. Wayne Oakes with RCMP K Division, Stony Plain RCMP officers were equipped with a search warrant of a suspected drug house in the remote rural area when they realized they had the wrong house.

“It was a very remote area – there were no house numbers, or street numbers,” explained Crpl. Oakes.

“We don’t like to have mistakes like this, but unfortunately they do happen sometimes.” [Read more →]

Ian Mulgrew (Vancouver Sun) – The mother of Robert Dziekanski, whose 40-year-old son died at Vancouver Airport in a confrontation with the RCMP, is traveling to Poland to lead a crusade to have criminal charges laid in Europe against the four officers involved.

In an interview Tuesday with her Polish lawyer Piotr Banasik, Zofia Cisowski said she would return to B.C. in September when the public inquiry into the Taser-related death of her son resumes.

She complained that she cannot wait for the report by Commissioner Thomas Braidwood because it unlikely to be finished before next year — more than two years since Dziekanski died Oct. 14, 2007.

“This is taking too long, far too long,” the bereaved mum said. “I am sorry I have to go to Poland for [Read more →]

Lori Culbert and Chad Skelton (Vancouver Sun) – More than 1,000 e-mails were exchanged by RCMP officers discussing Robert Dziekanski’s death and working out a communications strategy in the month following the airport Tasering, according to an internal report obtained by The Vancouver Sun.

Several of the e-mails were sent or received by RCMP Chief Supt. Dick Bent and Assistant Commissioner Al MacIntyre, who are now central figures in the controversy that led retired B.C. Supreme Court Justice Tom Braidwood on Friday to temporarily shut down the inquiry into Dziekanski’s death.

The report, called A Review of Communications Surrounding the 2007 YVR Incident, was written by four RCMP employees in May 2008 to address how Mounties shared information among themselves and with the media about Dziekanski. It was obtained by The Vancouver Sun under an Access to Information [Read more →]

(CBC News) – The unexpected disclosure of a key email between senior RCMP officers has raised questions about officers’ testimony at the Braidwood inquiry into the death of Robert Dziekanski, resulting in a delay of the probe in Vancouver until September.

The email between two senior RCMP supervisors suggests that the four Mounties who responded to a call at the airport discussed a plan to use a Taser against the Polish immigrant before they arrived.

The four officers had already stated under oath at the inquiry that they had not discussed using the stun gun before arriving at the airport.

The commission was scheduled to begin hearing closing arguments on Friday morning, but after [Read more →]

Kim Bolan (Vancouver Sun) – Twelve Crown witnesses are expected to testify next month at the trial of a former undercover RCMP drug cop alleged to have impersonated a member of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team to get information about the Bacon brothers’ location from a police database.

Prosecutor Jennifer Lopes told a trial confirmation hearing in Surrey Provincial Court Wednesday that the case is set for two days beginning July 20.

The Vancouver Sun revealed two months ago that Rapinder (Rob) Sidhu, had quietly been charged after allegedly calling the RCMP’s Operations Communications Centre in July 2007, posing as a police officer and requesting the Surrey address where the Bacons were then residing. [Read more →]

(CBC News) – An off-duty RCMP officer has been charged with assault after an altercation outside a Red Deer, Alta., bar this spring.

Two men were arguing outside the nightclub on March 26 when a woman got between them, the force said in a release on Tuesday. One of the men is alleged to have thrown the woman to the ground and then left. An investigation revealed the suspect to be an off-duty officer.

Const. Darren Ryan, 28, who works out of the Red Deer city detachment, has been charged with one count of assault.

He’s scheduled to appear in provincial court on July 14.

This is the second assault charge in two days for the Red Deer RCMP. On Monday, a veteran officer from the dog unit was charged with assault after allegedly striking a suspect he was trying to apprehend last year.

Elise Stolte, Edmonton, Alberta (edmontonjournal.com) – An RCMP corporal and dog handler is scheduled to appear on an assault charge in a Red Deer court on Tuesday.

Cpl. Francois Paquin, 46, has 21 years experience with the RCMP.

The events related to the charge date back to Aug. 31, 2008, when RCMP responded to a robbery call at the Eastview Express 24, a food mart. While there, investigators saw a speeding vehicle come up and tried to intercept the occupants, said RCMP spokesman Cpl. Wayne Oakes.

The vehicle stopped, but the five people inside fled and three of them hid in a nearby stand of trees. [Read more →]