Juno News - July 07, 2019


Justice is supposed to be blind. Not in Canada it seems.


Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

144.54814

Word count

635

Sentence count

31


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Constable Daniel Montasian is on trial for the manslaughter of Somali-born Abdihir Rahman Abdi, who died in the course of the arrest of Abdi in which he was allegedly sexually assaulted by a fellow officer.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Things are not always as they appear and memories in high stress situations can
00:00:14.160 play tricks on well-meaning people. This happens often in allegations of police
00:00:19.720 brutality when officers trying to make an arrest with an uncooperative suspect
00:00:24.120 have to use violent methods to take control. Such was the case in an Ottawa
00:00:29.280 courtroom this week in the manslaughter trial of Ottawa police officer Constable
00:00:33.380 Daniel Montasian. Montasian was charged following the arrest of Somali-born
00:00:38.620 Abdihir Rahman Abdi who died in the course of the arrest. Police were responding to
00:00:44.540 six complaints of sexual assault, women being groped by Abdi. Montasian and
00:00:49.460 Constable Dave Weir engaged Abdi and he fought back. He was holding a 30-pound
00:00:55.220 construction rubber weight above his head and was swinging it trying to fend off
00:00:59.820 the officers. Ross McGee, a federal civil servant, was jogging with his wife in the
00:01:06.160 area at the time of the arrest. He said he was, quote, shot and surprised, unquote, at
00:01:12.260 the sight of Constable Montasian immediately without warning deliver five or six
00:01:18.400 haymakers to Abdi's head while Constable Weir restrained Abdi's arms. He said as
00:01:24.200 much to a CBC reporter which triggered protests in Ottawa streets as Black Lives
00:01:29.020 Matter mustered their outrage. He was cross-examined at trial by Montasian's
00:01:35.000 defense counsel, Solomon Friedman, and admitted some of the impressions he formed
00:01:39.380 that day were incorrect. After being shown frame-by-frame security camera footage of
00:01:45.060 the arrest, he said, quote, I think obviously there are some aspects of the
00:01:49.220 statements I've made in certain places that have been demonstrated to me to be
00:01:53.200 incorrect, unquote. He goes on, quote, it has certainly changed my impressions of
00:01:59.080 the events of that day and changed my impressions of the conduct of the officers,
00:02:03.720 unquote. In other words, statements he gave to the SIU investigators, to the CBC and in
00:02:11.120 court, were wrong. What he thought he saw was wrong, likely created by his preconceived
00:02:17.580 notions of the police and how they treat minorities. He is, after all, a bureaucrat
00:02:21.980 and doesn't live in the real world. But he will face no consequences for giving
00:02:26.900 inaccurate information to the court. Contrast that to the four RCMP officers who
00:02:33.940 responded to a disturbance complaint at YVR Airport in October 2007 that
00:02:39.560 ultimately resulted in the death of Polish traveller Robert Zakansky. In the
00:02:44.420 follow-up Braidwood inquiry, the four testified and there were minor
00:02:48.560 inconsistencies in their testimony. In essence, there was the question of whether
00:02:53.040 they wrestled Zakansky to the ground or they wrestled with him on the ground. A
00:02:58.440 moot point, one might think.
00:03:01.740 But a special prosecutor was appointed and the four were charged with perjury.
00:03:05.900 Two were convicted and jailed, and two were acquitted.
00:03:11.060 The two were jailed because they remembered things a little differently during a high-stress
00:03:16.280 situation with adrenaline flowing, having to go hands-on with an uncooperative suspect.
00:03:21.640 Just as an aside, all four have filed lawsuits against the RCMP, one has since settled.
00:03:28.660 Two of the officers have laid criminal complaints with the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission
00:03:35.020 for the RCMP against the Commissioner of the RCMP, Brenda Luckey, and then Commanding Officer
00:03:40.920 of E Division in BC, Brenda Butterworth Carr.
00:03:43.800 These complaints are wending their way through the system as we speak, and investigators from
00:03:50.080 K Division in Alberta have been assigned to investigate the allegations. Although, I will
00:03:55.660 say it is hard for me to understand how two NCOs can investigate superior officers with any
00:04:01.080 effectiveness, but that remains to be seen.
00:04:03.580 Meanwhile, Ross McGee told blatant untruths to a court in the prosecution of a police officer,
00:04:11.100 and he walks away unscathed.
00:04:14.100 Justice is supposed to be blind, not in Canada it seems, and most especially not when police
00:04:20.260 are the accused.
00:04:21.900 For True North, I'm Leo Knight.