By JOHN MINER,
“The situation that developed that night was dangerous. Officers were put at risk, vehicles were driven at the police, shots were fired,” OPP Association lawyer Ian Roland told the Ipperwash inquiry yesterday. “In those circumstances Acting Sgt. Deane honestly believed, mistaken or not, that the situation required him to act.”
Others can argue whether Deane should have been ordered to the park that night, Roland said, but the decision to be there wasn't his.
Deane was found guilty of criminal negligence causing death for the shooting George, who the court determined was unarmed. Deane's subsequent appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada was rejected.
He was scheduled to testify at the judicial inquiry earlier this year but was killed shortly before his scheduled appearance in a crash.
The police union is asking Justice Sidney Linden to find that Dudley George had a gun when he was shot or alternatively that Dudley George had a stick or pole in his hands when he was shot, which Deane mistook for a long gun.
The union's request is “truly astonishing for its lack of credibility or merit,” Stoney Point residents say in their written submission to the inquiry.
“The only police witness who claimed to have seen a firearm in the possession of any of the First Nations’ people was Constable Chris Cossitt, a proven perjurer who testified he saw shooting from a car.
“As detailed in our initial submissions, Cossitt even admitted that he had lied under oath at a criminal trial,” the Stoney Point submission said.
As for Deane's own testimony at his trial, the court found that it had been fabricated, the native group said.
The police union rejected suggestions its members were racist arguing that t-shirts and mugs produced after the incident with a broken arrow were not intended to offend natives.
Roland said the union has also apologized and still carries the apology on its website, for recorded comments by two officers during the crisis.
One officer carrying out surveillance was recorded referring to a native as “just a great big fat f---ing Indian.”
Another officer replied: “We had this plan. If we got five or six cases of Labatt's 50 we could bait them. Then we could get this big net in a pit, creative thinking, works in the south with watermelons.”
Roland said it is unfair to label all officers racist based on the comments of a couple of its members.
In a separate submission yesterday, OPP lawyer Mark Sandler lambasted the media for not reporting on the action of the police service to improve native relations in the wake of the Ipperwash crisis.
Sandler said the force has initiated a one-week native awareness course that has been taken by more than 2,000 officers.
Background checks and psychological tests are conducted to ensure officers considered for promotion accept diversity, Sandler said.
“We are proud of the progress in the years since Ipperwash,” he said.
Regarding the actual events at Ipperwash, the OPP asked
The chief coroner of
The
Lawyers for the natives occupying the former army camp have called for
Speaking for the chief coroner, lawyer Al O'Marra also called for governments to provide counseling services for natives who experience violent and traumatic events involving police actions.
O'Marra said people on both sides of the fatal clash still carry the emotional scars from that night and there needs to be help to repair the wreckage.
The chief coroner also asked Justice Sidney Linden to find that Dudley George's death was a “homicide” in the dictionary meaning of a death caused by another person.
Finding it was “murder,” as some have urged, would be inappropriate, O'Marra said.