On July 18, 2017, shortly after 10 p.m., Dale Culver lay face down on the street in downtown Prince George.
He’d rolled onto his stomach as an RCMP officer sprayed him in the face with pepper spray. As more officers arrived, one punched him in the head. Others kneed or kicked him in the head or upper body, pummelled his legs with “hammer fists” and twisted his ear as they tried to arrest him. As roughly seven officers surrounded him, an officer sprayed pepper spray into his gloved hand and held it over Culver’s face.
“I can’t breathe,” Culver said at one point during the arrest.
Culver, who was Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan, was eventually placed in handcuffs, brought to his feet and walked with assistance to a police vehicle, where he again told officers he was struggling to breathe. When paramedics assessed him about a half-hour after his altercation with police, he was responsive. Less than a minute later, he collapsed and died.
On April 5, the BC Prosecution Service announced it would abandon its case against two RCMP officers charged with manslaughter in Culver’s death. A 12-page statement from the BCPS, which includes details about the night Culver died and how BCPS grappled with forensic evidence in the years that followed, explains why Crown lawyers decided to stay proceedings against the officers. The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada
Three forensic pathologists working with the BC Coroners Service initially agreed that police actions the night Culver died contributed to his death.
A year ago, BCPS laid manslaughter charges against Const. Paul Ste-Marie and Const. Jean Francois Monette. Both pleaded not guilty.
But as the officers’ pretrial inquiry approached, Crown counsel made the rare move of seeking input from an independent pathologist — Ontario’s chief forensic pathologist, Dr. Michael Pollanen. His dissenting opinion resulted in the charges being stayed earlier this month.
“Based on the evidence available, the BCPS is not able to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the two officers committed a criminal offence in relation to the arrest of Mr. Culver,” BCPS wrote in its statement.
Once charges are stayed, the Crown has one year to resume proceedings before they are dropped.
One very, very important fact I want people to see:
Police incidents resulting in death have never led to a conviction in BC
Charges against police officers in B.C. are an “extreme rarity,” according to an investigation by the Globe and Mail last year. The Independent Investigations Office of BC, which investigates police incidents that result in serious harm or death, examined 220 deaths over the past decade and recommended charges in 14 cases, it said. Just one of those cases went to trial — and it led to an acquittal.
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Not while they get away with it and aren’t held accountable, no.
And here’s me over in the corner thinking that maybe those with a monopoly on state-sanctioned violence should be held to a higher standard than the general public, not a lower one.
If that had been a gang of thugs (🤔), you can bet that everything would be done to pursue the case. And not just two people, but the whole gang as participants in a criminal activity.
It is quite strange to see the police seem confused as to why the public doesn’t trust them. Guys, you literally kill people, the news covers it, and then you just shrug. Why would anyone trust you?
Your source is a hard leftist that frames the narration according to who they want to look bad and who they want.to look good without any cross examination. Through deliberately leaving out selective information they are ultimately lying to you, and by you sharing them then you are pushing their lies.
There is system racism by cops to indigenous people, this is not the only source. An indigenous Grampa and granddaughter went to a BC bank and had the RCMP called on them and arrested for legally wanting to access their account. That would not happen to a white Grampa
