( Canwest News Service) – The second Mountie involved in the death of a Polish immigrant at Vancouver’s airport in 2007 denied at an inquiry Thursday that he was involved in a coverup.
Const. Bill Bentley testified his recollection of the events leading to the death of Robert Dziekanski changed after seeing an amateur video taken by a bystander.
The officer said he saw the video on Nov. 14, 2007, and then contacted police investigators to give another statement Nov. 22.
“You’ve heard of the CYA principle?” asked lawyer Walter Kosteckyj, who’s representing Dziekanski’s mother at the Braidwood inquiry.
“Cover your butt, yes,” Bentley replied.
“There was no coverup, if that’s what you’re getting at,” the officer testified.
“I was just being honest,” he said of why he clarified what happened in another police statement.
Bentley said seeing the video “refreshed my memory and I wanted to set the record straight.”
Kosteckyj, a former RCMP officer, suggested it wasn’t good police procedure to arrive at the scene and “blow by” the complainants without talking to them.
“Isn’t it usual to actually go and talk to the complainant?” the lawyer asked the witness.
“There was no urgency to get there,” Kosteckyj continued. “Take some time and find out what’s happening.”
Bentley disagreed, saying the call that was dispatched “sounded urgent and the threat level was fairly high.” He added there wasn’t time to talk to the complainants.
He and his three Mountie colleagues immediately confronted Dziekanski, who could not speak English and had left Poland 30 hours earlier.
“Hi, how ya doin’?” Bentley said to Dziekanski, who was calm as police arrived. The officer didn’t realize the man couldn’t understand English.
Dziekanski bent down to his luggage, where his passport was located.
“No,” another officer told Dziekanski firmly.
The traveller then threw up his hands and began to walk away.
Bentley interpreted the exhausted man’s behaviour as an act of defiance.
The officers surrounded him and, when Dziekanski picked up a stapler from a counter, felt this was combative behaviour.
He was then Tasered by RCMP Const. Kwesi Millington, who will testify next.
Dziekanski was Tasered five times for a total of 31 seconds, although the electrical probes may not have made full contact at all times.
It took police about a minute to handcuff Dziekanski’s hands behind his back on the floor.
Bentley said after the man stopped struggling, he went unconscious, so he called for a routine ambulance.
He said he didn’t upgrade the ambulance call to Code 3 — emergency lights and siren — until Dziekanski began turning blue.
“Didn’t you think CPR might be appropriate?” Kosteckyj asked.
“No,” Bentley replied, “because he was still breathing.”
The officer said he continued observing Dziekanski but didn’t check his pulse or do a pain test to check the level of consciousness.
He said he upgraded the ambulance to Code 3 after Dziekanski stopped breathing.
Dziekanski, 40, died at the scene. Cause of death was listed as “sudden death following restraint.”
He had no drugs or alcohol in his system that night. He had spent about 10 hours in the airport, unable to find his mother.
He had never been on a plane before and came to Canada to live with his mother, who had waited hours at the airport but eventually returned home to Kamloops after being told by officials that her son could not be located.
The Crown announced last December that no charges would be laid against the officers, who were justified in their use of force.
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