Robert Dziekanski: A Victim, or a Scapegoat of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)?

The RCMP are conducting preliminary investigations to
prepare material for their self managed, transparent, and democratic, audit of
the death of the Polish immigrant, Robert Dziekanski. It was he who was tasered by the
RCMP, and who died, at Vancouver airport. Or rather, if he did not die he was reported as having stopped breathing.

Whether Dziekanski  "died" from the taser assault on
his body, or from he being held to the ground in an apparent choking position
with a police officer's leg across his throat is still unclear. At least,
it is 'unclear' to the RCMP they say.

However, it appeared that at some point before the
arrival of para-medics Dziekanski stopped breathing, or in non-police parlance, he died.

We, the general public, are assured by the RCMP
spokesperson that Dziekanski didn't die when the RCMP were all over the unarmed,
Dziekanski pinning him to the floor.

Although to the uninformed, or ignorant, we viewers
of the Vancouver video of the tragic demise of Robert Dziekanski shown on national television were appalled
at the display of apparant 'officially sanctioned cruelty'.

There seemed to be a simple rational for the cause
of Robert Dziekanski's death to the average viewer: that he seemed to die, that
his pulse stopped and, coincidently, so did his breathing.

This tragic event seemed to
me to have all the hallmarks of somebody, well ... dying: but not to the
police officers, who were very close to the "deceased" at the time.

Indeed, Jonathan Woodward, a Vancouver Sun
journalist wrote on Friday, November 30, 2007: 

Reports differ on whether Dziekanski had pulse, was
breathing ..."We were doing our assessment, and we found no breath and no
pulse," said ..., the deputy chief of Richmond Fire-Rescue, in a telephone
interview in which he read from the report.

Police spokespeople have been consitant in their media
interviews insisting that it is unlikely that it was the RCMP who were
responsible for Dziekanski's lack of pulse and his apparent reluctance to breath.

 Or to put the language of police spin into everyday
language, and to paraphrase the police version of events the police imply that
they didn't kill Robert Dziekanski.

According to the Vancouver Sun journalist, Woodward
reported that even the para-medics who were called to the airport to revive the
deceased Dziekanski do not fully support the police version of events.

Of course they, the para-medics, will be probably be
blamed for the fact that Mr. Dziekanski appeared to be disoriented after being
left in a foreign airport without 'customer support' for more than 10 hours
after his arrival in Canada.

Mr Dziekanski might understandably have been just a
little frustrated at the monumental lack of human compassion shown by ordinary
airport personnel who must have seen him alone hour after hour and yet chose
to ignore him.

According to a report from Global News TV in Victoria
reported on Saturday December 01, 2007 the RCMP hope to travel to Poland soon to
investigate if the taser victim, Robert Dziekanski, had a history of criminal or
mental conditions that made him, possibly, resent being manhandled and
tasered by the RCMP when all he required was a Polish/English interpreter and to be reunited with his mother.

 In order to safeguard any RCMP officer from any nasty
public enquiry police officers are planning their trip to Poland to investigate
the dead mans "criminal" past.

The police seem to want to determine whether or not Dziekanski had
ever had medical problems that would make him vulnerable to being discomforted
if he was to receive multi-tasered shots at close range to his person; or perhaps, did
Dziekanski have a weakness to being held down to the ground with an RCMP
officer's leg across his throat?

Why do the RCMP have to visit Poland?

Why can't this information be obtained through normal
diplomatic channels such as the Polish Embassy in Canada? Or don't the RCMP officers know precisely what they are looking for perhaps they are trawling for gossip, innuendo ... anything!

Regrettably, this is the kind of attention to detail that is so
familiar to Canadians when the police audit themselves after members are caught
off-guard in 'less than positive' situations.

A word that comes to mind about this police story is
'obfuscation' that is, when an alleged offender spends time and energy in making
less clear (or to muddy facts, or potential/actual evidence), of some thing or event which is already clear to a
majority.

Consequently, the RCMP strategy is to go to Poland
in search of 'evidence' that support, or seems to support the image of a
victim newly arrived in Canada, in this case Robert Dziekanski, that would suit their agenda which
could, perhaps, be used to exonerate the RCMP of any
wrong-doing and victimise Dziekanski.

Does this make Robert Dziekanski a potential
victim, or is he to be a scapegoat: or both?

How will the average person be able to refute
so-called evidence that seems to be too neatly packaged to exonerate police
involvement in Robert Dziekanski's death on their return to Canada?

Or perhaps there will be nothing that the RCMP can use
and then perhaps a strategy to muddy the facts with unique 'evidence' created
overseas which nobody in Canada will be in a position to either accept, or
disprove

Many people have seen the Vancouver airport
security film world-wide and thousands have registered their disgust about the
behaviour of the RCMP in Canada: the tasering of a bewildered man and the
appearance of pressure of a police officer's leg across Dziekanski's throat are
of themselves disturbing.

Also disturbing are the inhumane scenes shown to
the world of Canada, a so-called democratic nation, with an underbelly of a
totalitarian police state!

If the Vancouver police are 'successful' in their
detective work in Poland then Robert Dziekanski's death will no doubt be
considered to be his own fault and coincidently, in that he succumbed to an
acute shortness of breath, that too was, undoubtedly, also of his own doing.

Are we to assume that the RCMP are being thorough in their
quest for a scapegoat? One won't be necessary if in Dziekanski's background in
Poland there is some 'criminal' or 'mental' shortcoming, no
matter how tenuous, it will be exploited.

His death will perhaps then be dismissed by the
Canadian legal/political establishment as "an act of God" and that will be that
.... investigation closed.

On the other hand, a great leap forward towards a
democratic Canadian nation might emerge from this senseless tragedy and an official
apology be made to the Dziekanski family, together with the Federal
Government making it illegal to use weapons of torture; such as  taser guns, on the streets of Canada; in
the name of Robert Dziekanski: victim and possible scapegoat of the RCMP.