The RCMP's new, civilian commissioner, Bill Elliot, has an ideal opportunity to show us what he's made of. He can re-open the investigation into the shooting death of a Houston, B.C. teen by constable Paul Koester.
It's a case that has left the RCMP under a cloud in British Columbia. The constable was alone with Ian Bush in the Houston detachment. That much we know. A short while later, Bush was dead with a bullet fired into the back of his head. It's what happened between those events and the manner in which the force's internal investigation was botched afterward that demand a hard, second look.
The force didn't interrogate the shooter, Koester, for three months after the killing. Investigators succumbed to the constable's demands that they submit questions in writing to him in advance. Koester was obviously treating the incident as a homicide, why weren't the investigators?
More evidence adduced at last week's coroner's hearing only heightened suspicions. Koester claims Bush had him down and was choking the constable from behind. Finally, the officer claims, he drew his sidearm and somehow managed to position the gun behind Bush to fire directly into the back of his supposed assailant's head.
No one has been able to show the Koester maneuvre is even physically possible. It seems pretty obvious that such a shot would require very long, rubber-like arms. Why has nobody tested the Koerster story to show how impossible that shot would have been?
Even worse was the testimony at the coroner's hearing by an forensic expert on blood spatters. His uncontradicted evidence is that the blood patterns at the scene were inconsistent with the constable's claims but, instead, indicated that the officer was behind Bush when he fired the bullet into the kid's brain.
What is going on? People are convicted of homicide every day on the strength of mere circumstantial evidence and yet here we have direct, physical evidence reinforced with solid forensic analysis and - nothing. And what about our faux-Liberal, provincial government? Surely these unexplained controversies will leave premier Campbell to launch a badly-needed public enquiry, eh? Guess again. Campbell says no inquiry.
"We're working right now with the federal government to look at ways that we can maybe improve the complaints process and the review process." Gord, you want to improve the complaint process? That's it?
Before you completely write this one off, Gord, how about you get on the floor with someone on your back choking you and show me how you would put a bullet in that man's head? If you can't do that Gord, and you can't, don't sweep this homicide under the carpet.
Which brings us back to Bill Elliot. The reputation of "his" force in British Columbia is in shambles. It appears the RCMP botched the investigation of one of its own in what appears to be a case in which the young prisoner was dispatched with a shot to the head, fired from behind him. The blood spatter evidence introduced over the RCMP's objections last week, strongly suggests a coverup by officers to help one of their own.
If Elliot is serious about cleaning up the RCMP, he can't give this one a pass. If he does nothing, the skeptics have their answer.
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