Frank Paul inquiry head wants to know why 2 officers weren't charged

The commissioner heading a public inquiry into the death of an aboriginal man dumped in an alley by a Vancouver police officer has ordered the B.C. government to provide information on why two police officers weren't charged with any crime.

Frank Paul, 47, a former resident of the Big Cove First Nation in New Brunswick, died on Dec. 5, 1998, of hypothermia because of exposure and alcohol intoxication.

Commissioner William Davies said on Friday that the Criminal Justice Branch is still under a cloud almost a decade after Paul was found dead and that his job requires him to hear testimony from five prosecutors and the procedures they followed in not recommending charges.

There were five separate charge assessments done between May 1999 and April 2004.

The Criminal Justice Branch has said it could provide someone knowledgeable about the case to testify at the inquiry into Paul's death, but not the prosecutors themselves because they can't disclose privileged government information.

In a written ruling against the Crown's position, Davies said that's not good enough.

"If there is suspicion in some quarters that the branch's response to Mr. Paul's death was inadequate, my willingness to rely on secondhand evidence respecting that response, when firsthand evidence is available, would not extinguish that suspicion — it would likely inflame it," Davies said.

"The Crown's proposed alternative asks me, and the public, to trust us. In my view, my mandate will not be properly fulfilled by the procedure proposed by the Criminal Justice Branch."

The public inquiry cannot find fault, but it can recommend changes to police policies and procedures.

In January, Vancouver police Const. David Instant cried on the stand as he testified at the inquiry, saying he picked Paul up in a police wagon for being drunk in a public place and took him to the drunk tank but that the sergeant refused to admit him.

Instant testified that Sgt. Russell Sanderson, now retired, told Instant that Paul, a homeless chronic alcoholic, wasn't drunk and only looked that way because of a disability. Sanderson said Paul couldn't be intoxicated after leaving the drunk tank a few hours earlier, Instant said.

In a video recording shown at the inquiry, Paul is seen being dragged by Instant and a corrections officer into an elevator on the way up to the fifth-floor lockup because he couldn't walk.

Paul's family in New Brunswick and Maine have testified that police told them Paul was hit by a cab and left in a ditch to die, where he was found a month later.

It wasn't until three years later that Paul's relatives learned he'd been in police custody just hours before he died in the alley.

Vancouver police conducted an internal investigation of the case, after which Instant was suspended for a day and Sanderson for two days.

Stan Lowe, spokesman for the Criminal Justice Branch, said he couldn't comment until Davies' ruling has been reviewed.

"Once we've completed that, we'll decide our next course of action," Lowe said.