Supervisor 'very proud' of customs officers' handling of Dziekanski

The customs officers who dealt with Robert Dziekanski in the hours before he was repeatedly stunned with an RCMP Taser at Vancouver's airport went "above and beyond" their duties, their supervisor said Monday at a public inquiry into the man's death.

Dziekanski, a newly arrived immigrant, died in the early morning of Oct. 14, 2007, more than 10 hours after his flight from Poland touched down.

The Canada Border Services Agency has faced criticism because officers didn't call a translator for Dziekanski, who didn't speak English, to find out why he had spent hours unnoticed in a secure customs area.

The inquiry in Vancouver has also heard that at one point an officer told a friend of Dziekanski's mother that he likely wasn't at the airport, which prompted Zofia Cisowski to return home to Kamloops, B.C., without her son. Officers waited two hours to try to contact Cisowski once her son finally surfaced, and by that time she had already left.

Officers gave Dziekanski water, inquiry hears

Still, Alexandra Currie, an acting immigration supervisor who was working that night, said officers took extra care helping Dziekanski find his bags, bringing him water and walking him through the various stages of processing for new immigrants.

She said they eventually tried to locate Cisowski, searching a public waiting area, paging her and leaving a voicemail message at her home in Kamloops.

One of the officers even knew a few words of Polish and was able to help him fill out one of his forms.

"They went above and beyond what we normally do," Currie told the inquiry.

"A lot of the actions that took place — looking for the family, going outside the customs hall, making pages, giving him water, retrieving his luggage, all of that — that's not in our job description, and I was very proud of the officers that evening."

Communicated using hand gestures

Currie first encountered Dziekanski after 10:30 p.m. PT, when two officers brought him to her office over concerns that he had been in the airport so long.

Dziekanski's flight had landed roughly seven hours earlier, and after he first entered the customs area, he spent more than five hours unnoticed before finally approaching immigration officers.

Currie said she asked Dziekanski in English where he had been, and then used hand gestures, pointing to her watch and then placing her head on her hands to mimic sleeping.

Dziekanski nodded his head yes, Currie said.

Crown prosecutors in B.C. have previously said they believed Dziekanski might have been sitting on a bench or sleeping near the baggage carousels, but it wasn't clear how they might have reached that conclusion. It's still not known where exactly he might have been and how he went unnoticed for so long.

While Currie knew Dziekanski didn't speak English, she said it's not standard practice to call a translator, and it appeared border officers were able to process him successfully without one.

Officer tried calling 4 Polish translators

Another officer, Juliette van Agteren, told the inquiry later Monday that she checked the border agency's list of Polish translators and found four.

Three phone numbers were out-of-date, and another translator did not want to be called for cases that would take less than two hours.

Van Agteren was the officer who searched for Dziekanski's mother, paged her and tried calling her in Kamloops.

"We wanted him to feel comfortable," she said. "He had already been there for a lengthy time, he was very jet-lagged and we felt that any assistance we could give to him would enable him to meet up with his relatives and continue on."

Van Agteren said Dziekanski seemed satisfied when he finished the screening process, said "thank you" and appeared to acknowledge her as he left.

Two other officers who testified Monday both agreed Dziekanski was calm, respectful and obedient when they dealt with him.

Other witnesses who testified last week, including flight attendants, airport staff and a passenger on Dziekanski's flight into Vancouver, gave similar accounts.

But less than an hour after Dziekanski left the customs and immigration screening area, he began throwing furniture in the airport's international arrivals area. Four RCMP officers were summoned and within seconds of their arrival, Dziekanski was jolted up to five times with a Taser. He died shortly thereafter on the airport's floor.