An RCMP Officer Obstructed Justice and Lied in Court, Judge Rules

by | Jul 29, 2024 | RCMP

Dale Culver’s family wonders if they’ll ever get answers about how the Indigenous man died.

The family of an Indigenous man who died while being arrested by Prince George RCMP officers wonder if they will ever know what really happened after an officer was convicted of attempting to obstruct justice.

Provincial court judge Adrian Brooks last Thursday found Const. Arthur Dalman guilty of attempting to obstruct justice and ruled Dalman had lied under oath during his trial.

“Something went wrong that night,” said Debbie Pierre, whose cousin, Dale Culver, died in police custody on July 18, 2017. “We only got a glimpse of what truly happened and that resulted in Dale’s death.”

Pierre described “extremely mixed” feelings about Thursday’s decision, which found Dalman had obstructed justice by threatening bystanders unless they deleted videos of the arrest. A second officer, Sgt. Bayani Eusebio Cruz, was acquitted of the same charge.

Brooks found Dalman, who had been with the force less than six months at the time of the incident, deliberately lied on the stand.

He rejected most of Dalman’s evidence based on that lie and what he described as testimony “fraught with illogical missteps” and “subject to alteration on the slightest prodding.”

“It is not worthy of any belief,” Brooks found.

Despite “serious concerns” with Cruz’s evidence, Brooks said his testimony raised enough reasonable doubt to acquit the senior officer, an investigator with 22 years’ service with the RCMP.

RCMP senior media relations officer Staff Sgt. Kris Clark said in an email that Dalman remains “operational” with the force, a status that is subject to continuous review. “As there is a possibility of an appeal and we have yet to receive the full written decision, it would be inappropriate to comment further,” Clark added.

The BC Prosecution Service abandoned several other charges related to Culver’s death. Const. Paul Ste-Marie and Const. Jean Francois Monette were charged with manslaughter last year for their role, but Crown prosecutors stayed the charges, saying conflicting forensic evidence made convictions unlikely.

A third officer, Const. Clarence Alexander MacDonald, also faced an obstruction charge, which the BC Prosecution Service stayed in May. The service said it would issue a statement about its decision to stay the charge after all proceedings in the Cruz and Dalman cases had concluded, including any appeals. It declined to say whether the recent decision could affect the charges that have been stayed, citing the potential for further litigation.

According to a statement issued earlier this year by the BC Prosecution Service, Culver, who was Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan, was riding his bike in downtown Prince George shortly after 10 p.m. on the night he died. Around the same time, RCMP received a complaint of someone casing vehicles in the area.

When a police officer approached Culver believing he might be involved, Culver cycled away, the prosecution service said. The officer determined that he could be arrested, either for evading police or for not wearing a helmet.

He pursued Culver and pulled him from his bike, according to the service. A struggle ensued and the officer pressed a panic button to alert other police in the area.

Several RCMP vehicles arrived at the scene and about seven officers surrounded Culver during the three-minute altercation that followed.

Culver was pepper-sprayed in the face and punched in the head and sustained blows to other parts of his body. “I can’t breathe,” he said at one point during his arrest.

Once handcuffed and placed in a police vehicle, Culver again complained that he was struggling to breathe. Although he was responsive when examined by paramedics, he collapsed and died moments later. About a half-hour had passed since his struggle with police.

During last month’s trial for Cruz and Dalman, the court heard conflicting details about what happened during Culver’s last 30 minutes alive.

According to two Crown witnesses who testified, police approached bystanders and told them to stop recording and delete their videos. People were threatened with arrest, jail time and having their phones confiscated if they refused, the witnesses said.

But Cruz and Dalman, who both testified, insisted that the word “delete” was never used in their interactions with bystanders.

The defence argued that officers had been instructed to canvas witnesses for statements and video evidence that could be used in their case against Culver, who remained in the back of a police vehicle. It’s standard procedure for phones containing photos or video evidence to be seized and brought to the detachment for safekeeping, RCMP Staff Sgt. Todd Cruch testified.

But Brooks rejected the suggestion that there had been no direction by police to delete video that night.

In reaching his decision, Brooks meticulously broke down the evidence, using security footage from a nearby business to establish a detailed timeline that began shortly before 11 p.m., as Culver was being arrested.

Dalman’s conviction hinged mainly on a conversation the officer had with Kenneth Moe, a bystander who had recorded a three-minute video of the scene following Culver’s arrest.

Moe testified that he felt “violated” when Dalman approached and threatened to confiscate his cellphone and charge him with obstruction if he refused to delete the footage.

Brooks said he found “several issues” with Dalman’s version of events. He rejected testimony from Dalman that he had been seeking witnesses when he approached Moe, noting that the officer had walked past several other people as he continued on to Moe, who was still recording video.

Brooks also noted that Dalman’s testimony included a description of two or three witnesses whose “first response to him is that they have deleted their videos.” He questioned the logic of anyone voluntarily deleting a video they had just recorded.

Finally, Brooks pointed to a passage from Dalman’s entry into the RCMP’s database a week after Culver’s death that was “identical” to Cruz’s entry, including a matching typo. That directly contradicted Dalman’s testimony that he had not reviewed Cruz’s database entry prior to writing his own, Brooks said.

“When the entire context is reviewed, it becomes clear that Dalman’s lie was deliberate,” Brooks said. “I reject the entirety of his evidence as to the conversation with Ken Moe on the basis of that deliberate lie.”

Brooks said he found Cruz defensive on the stand, that he “jousted” with Crown counsel and he “avoided committing to answers that should not have been so difficult.”

“Those serious concerns mean that I do not believe Cruz when he says that he did not use the word ‘delete’ when speaking with Moe,” Brooks said. But “a reasonable doubt remains,” he said.

Brooks said he found Moe credible. He said that even though Moe “does not recall the exact words used,” he was certain that he was directed by Dalman to delete the video. Brooks also noted that deleting the video “only increased the likelihood of arrest,” as it could have meant destroying important evidence.

“I believe Moe. Dalman directed him to delete his video and Moe did,” Brooks said.

This is the first time that a charge recommendation by the Independent Investigations Office of BC, which was established in 2012 to investigate police incidents involving death or serious harm, has resulted in a conviction following a trial.

An investigation last year by the Globe and Mail found that in 220 police-involved deaths investigated by the IIO since 2012, only one went to trial. It resulted in an acquittal.

The stayed manslaughter charges against RCMP officers Ste-Marie and Monette marked the first time a police officer in B.C. has been charged in the death of an Indigenous person.

In April, the BC Prosecution Service declined to lay charges against RCMP officers who shot and killed Jared Lowndes, a Wet’suwet’en man, in Campbell River three years ago.

At the time, the IIO’s former chief civilian officer, Ron MacDonald, called on the province to review the prosecution service’s handling of charge recommendations by the police watchdog.

Given last week’s conviction, Pierre is hopeful that Crown prosecutors will consider reopening the manslaughter case in her cousin’s death. A coalition of Indigenous and legal organizations, including the families of Culver and Lowndes, wrote a letter asking the BC Prosecution Service to reconsider the stayed charges in May but say they have yet to receive a response.

“Very rarely do the families get this opportunity to hear what happened that led to the death of their loved one,” Pierre said. “We only got snippets of it during this court case, being that it was obstruction charges. They’re obstructing justice in some form. So that leads me to wonder about the manslaughter charges.”

Pierre noted that the RCMP maintained a presence throughout the court process for Dalman and Cruz, with more than two dozen uniformed police officers attending last week’s decision.

She said it felt like “us and them.”

“They have a duty to serve and protect all. I don’t feel that is happening. By the way they carried themselves in the courtroom, I don’t believe we have that, as Indigenous people,” Pierre said.

She said she hopes that one day Culver’s children and all Indigenous people will feel comfortable calling on police in an emergency.

“Today, we don’t have that confidence,” she said.

Read the original article by Amanda Follett Hosgood on The Tyee website.