PARK BEATINGS BY POLICE GET PUBLIC AIRING

Evidence Against Fired Constables Will Finally Be Tested

VANCOUVER - A public hearing into the dismissal of two Vancouver police
officers for assaulting a trio of petty criminals in Stanley Park two years
ago is the only way to discover the truth of what happened, said Dana
Urban, counsel for the police complaint commissioner.

Urban told adjudicator Donald Clancy, as the hearing began on Monday, that
the proceeding is unique.

Former constables Duncan Gemmell and Gabriel Kojima asked for a review of
the decision made by Vancouver police chief Jamie Graham to fire them for
their part in the affair. Gemmell and Kojima will argue they should be
reinstated.

Four other officers involved received a variety of punishments, including
demotions, after the six pleaded guilty to assaulting three men they took
from Granville Mall to Stanley Park in a police wagon.

The officers were all members of Team Four which patrolled District One. It
covers the West End and the crime-ridden Granville mall area, notorious for
murders, assaults, drug dealing and theft.

The men, with long criminal records, were driven to a parking lot at Third
Beach, removed one by one from the wagon and beaten.

Gemmell and Kojima were dismissed from the force a year later for
discreditable conduct, with Gemmell also being charged with writing a false
report about the incident.

Police Complaint Commissioner Dirk Ryneveld took into account public
interest when ordering the hearing and "whether there was a reasonable
prospect that a public hearing could assist in ascertaining the truth,"
said Urban.

He said the provincial court judge who sentenced the officers for
assaulting the men, and the police chief, relied on admitted statements
entered by Crown counsel and defence lawyers.

"The respondents [Gemmell and Kojima] admitted guilt ... yet in both
proceedings no evidence was led, either oral evidence or exhibits. The
decision-makers were not allowed, or required, to ascertain what happened
in Stanley Park and Granville Street on Jan. 14, 2003, in order to
determine the true facts.

"They were bound by the facts before them," said Urban.

Neither the judge nor the police chief could go "outside the box" to
determine what really happened.

Urban said the commissioner was concerned that there was no evidence,
presented in court or at the disciplinary hearing, that was tested by
cross-examination. That procedure, Urban said, is accepted as the most
reliable way to come to the truth.

"It's in the public interest that we now launch this evidentiary phase of
the process in search of the truth as to what these two officers did," he said.

He told Clancy -- who is retired from the B.C. Supreme Court -- that it
would be his duty to decide if each of the disciplinary faults before
Graham were proven to a civil standard of proof.

Urban said he didn't think that issue would be troublesome.

"The real issue before you is ultimately whether or not the decision by the
chief constable to dismiss these two officers was appropriate, based on the
evidence you'll hear and tested by cross-examination," said Urban.

Another issue Clancy will have to grapple with, said Urban, is whether, in
a democratic society such as Canada, it should matter that the persons
against whom the police acted were "disreputable."

Urban said the police witnesses who will be called will give different
versions of what went on that night.