Login / RegisterPolice Complaint Commissioner rejects one-day suspension for Vancouver officer
British Columbia’s Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner (OPCC) has rejected the proposed one-day suspension of a Vancouver police officer who was captured on video pushing a disabled woman to the ground in June 2010.
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During an informal prehearing conference on August 10, Cst. Taylor Robinson and the Vancouver Police Department agreed to the proposed discipline of a one-day suspension and training in available force options.
Commissioner Stan Lowe stated in a letter to Robinson and Sandy Davidsen, who filed the complaint against the officer, that the proposed discipline “does not reflect or adequately address the seriousness of Constable Robinson’s misconduct.”
A surveillance video of the June 2010 incident showed Davidsen being pushed by Robinson as she walked by him and two other police officers on a busy Downtown Eastside sidewalk. Davidsen suffers from cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis.
Davidsen’s lawyer, Scott Bernstein, called the decision "a good step."
"Definitely Sandy isn’t happy with the kind of slap on the wrist discipline that was metted out in the first half, so we’re really happy that they’re taking another look at it," he told the Straight by phone.
Robinson will now face a formal disciplinary hearing on October 5.
Bernstein has requested that a retired judge, rather than a police officer, be appointed to review the case and make recommendations.
“One of our main complaints with the police over the years at Pivot has been this idea that police are well-positioned to discipline their own members, so this is something that we’ve fought against, and our bottom-line position is that there’s inherently a conflict of interest between the police doing this,” he said.
How long do you think it would take to get a beat down and be arrested for assaulting a police officer by one of their partners if you shoved a cop over?
Cops should be forced to wear glasses that have a central camera that records video and audio of their day (minus breaks) that is streamed live to a central server that police cannot interfere with. The technology is there. It would cost money sure but we'd save a fortune in police lawsuits and arrests and convictions would be a lot speedier too when the evidence is incontrovertible.
Police complaint commissioner Stan Lowe now says he rejects the one-day suspension suggested for Const. Taylor Robinson, the Vancouver cop who shoved a disabled woman to the ground. But where was Lowe in the six weeks following the assault?
It took place on June 9, 2010. But it didn’t become public knowledge until July 22, 2010, when media obtained surveillance video. Then, and only then, did Vancouver police and the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner publicly acknowledge that they already knew about the assault and that they learned about it soon after it happened. A few days after July 22, 2010, an investigation by an outside police force was ordered and Robinson was transferred to other duties. Up to then he was still walking a beat in the same neighbourhood, where there was a good chance he would encounter his victim again.
There’s no credible indication that the VPD or OPCC took appropriate actions until after the media picked up the story.
The Crown decided to stay a criminal charge. That shows one weakness of B.C.’s new Independent Investigations Office. The IIO will only be able to recommend that B.C.’s police-friendly Crown attorneys lay charges. Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, by contrast, can pursue charges against police itself.
Even with the IIO in operation, police will continue investigating police in the vast majority of cases, with a review by the OPCC. As the Robinson case shows, the OPCC completely lacks transparency and accountability.
In the upcoming months the OPCC will face a measure of scrutiny for the first time in its history. A BC Liberal/NDP legislative committee will audit a few of its cases. The assault on Sandy Davidsen should be one of them. But given the way both sides of the legislature have consistently come together to thwart police accountability, there’s plenty of reason for scepticism about this committee, as there is for police accountability overall.
What would the penalty under the law have been if Davidsen had given the exact same push, with the exact same results, to Robinson? That should be the scale of the punishment applied to Robinson. 1-Day suspensions are for things like coming in to work without a required uniform.
Police are entrusted with authority to use extraordinary force denied to other citizens in the course of their duties. But randomly pushing someone to the ground for no reason at all is not within the scope of those duties, and since it is outside of the line of duty, it should be punished at least has severely as a non-police citizen engaging in the same action. I say at least, because the police swear oaths to the law, and the average citizen does not; An oathbreaker should always be punished more severely than one who commits the same act without breaking their oath.
Even before I see that article, I can spot a number of problems with Greg is Wrong’s defence of the VPD/OPCC. An outside police force, not the VPD, should have been called to investigate. (Yes, that still means cops investigating cops, but it’s a little less intimate.) That didn’t happen until the media found out.
The VPD simply claim, without substantiation, that they investigated. They made that claim after the media found out.
Robinson should not have continued walking a beat in the same neighbourhood where he could easily encounter his victim again. According to the news accounts I’ve seen (of course I’d like to see the July 22, 2010 Straight story), he wasn’t transferred until the media found out.
Both the VPD and the OPCC had a responsibility to issue a public statement. They didn’t until the media found out.
Before the media found out, the VPD’s only response to the assault was to send the victim a self-serving rationale masked as an apology, supposedly written by Const. Robinson but which Robinson didn’t even sign. The OPCC showed no objection.
After the media found out, the VPD eventually came up with the one-day suspension and the OPCC now calls for a stronger penalty.
http://www.straight.com/article-335681/vancouver/vancouver-police-invest...
The article does say that VPD were investigating. I had stated that VPD didn’t say that publicly until July 22, 2010, and then they said so without substantiation. This article doesn’t contradict me on that point either. Moreover the VPD/OPCC should have called in an outside police force from the beginning.
I think the VPD probably did look into the matter but laid it to rest with the unsigned letter of “apology” that was actually a self-serving excuse.
To reiterate: The VPD and OPCC should have each made public statements soon after the assault occurred, which was six weeks before July 22, 2010; an outside police force should have been called in to investigate; Const. Robinson should have been transferred out of the neighbourhood; the VPD and OPCC should not have let the matter rest with the so-called “apology.”
Yet that’s how it remained until July 22, 2010, six weeks after the assault, when the media found out.