As the media mayhem over the Stanley Cup riot subsides, there are more important issues that need to be addressed related to policing in this city, and in BC.

On July 22 at about 8:33 p.m., members of the Vancouver Police Department approached a man wielding a machete on Powell Street, near Dunlevy. He was initially shot by a beanbag gun, and then, a short time later, with shots from a gun.

Within a few minutes of being approached, Darrell Elroy Barnes was on the pavement. Emergency-health services personnel were immediately on the scene and Barnes was officially pronounced deceased at Vancouver General Hospital a short time later.

The shooting was the third police-related death in Vancouver in July 2011.

Escalation of force is a complicated issue, but it needs to be said that members of both municipal police departments and the RCMP are often too quick to resort to disproportionate force when it is unnecessary. Is it really essential to shoot to kill even when an officer’s gun is drawn?

As identified by SFU criminologist David MacAlister, the number of police-involved deaths in B.C. is alarmingly high and apparently out of proportion to the number of deaths arising in other Canadian jurisdictions. In B.C., 267 individuals died through police involvement between 1992 and 2007.

On a per capita basis, you are about 2.5 times more likely to die through police involvement in this province than in Ontario. B.C. is Canada’s capital for police deaths according to the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.

Based on the numerous incidents where police have responded disproportionately to a given situation, there has been a failure in looking at how police train their own members. Additionally, the rank-and-file culture within departments is toxic, and oftentimes disconnected from reality. There needs to be better training for officers on dealing with people with mental-health issues, with a specific focus on use-of-force training, which trains officers to de-escalate situations.

As well, when there is a police-related death, there is often a cone of silence that develops from police forces that undermines transparency. On August 13, 2007, Paul Boyd was shot a total of eight times after a confrontation with the Vancouver Police Department. Crown counsel decided not to press charges.

Michael Van Hubbard was shot to death by police on March 20, 2009 while carrying an X-acto knife. He was mistaken as a suspect in a vehicle break-in.

In B.C., until the system finally changes, the police still investigate the police even when an officer is believed to have been responsible for causing the death of someone under their care. This is at odds with the way things are done in some other Canadian jurisdictions, and in other democracies.

Dick Bent, formerly a senior member of the RCMP in B.C. who withheld an important email during the Braidwood Inquiry on the tasering death of Robert Dziekanksi, is now been hired on contract by the provincial government to make recommendations on a strategic and operational framework for the newly proposed Independent Investigation Office.

As the civic-election debate will soon begin in earnest, citizens deserve a rational discussion of the issues rather than a sensationalized story about a four-hour riot. At the provincial level, the attorney general and the premier also need to support a process for the Independent Investigation Unit that will actually have public credibility.

The well-oiled PR machines of the VPD and the RCMP should not be setting up the rules of the game for the new Independent Investigation Office. They don’t have the credibility or the track record to be giving sage advice.

Am Johal is a Vancouver writer with an interest in civil liberties and fair treatment of everyone regardless of their socioeconomic status.