I don't think anybody is really defending the guys actions, the problem is the varying use of unnecessary force, and what I mean by that is why does it vary from officer to officer so differently to the point where at times it's literally a life and death situation... the problem is almost always in the individual police officer and not the police unit as a whole...
I doubt their training manual says to release the hounds on some junkie looking skateboarder because he's a block too far from you

like I said earlier in my other post, why is it that I can tell one officer to basically go fuck himself right to his face, then walk away and all I get is a pep talk, while this idiot gets mauled by a dog for what actually is if you really think about it, a lesser incident.. yea smashing the glass happened, but he didn't literally knowingly and willingly defy and not co-operate with an officers demands like I did...

The guy was almost killed by the police for breaking a window thats the story here. Crime did not deserve this punishment hundreds of dollars in damage for a nearly lost life and a lifetime of possible complications and incurred costs to our medicare system.......One could go on and on as to why the K9 and police department for that matter should be held more accountable for their actions.
I doubt "s8r boi" would have smashed the window if someone was on the other side of it. Thats just a stupid argument.

ouch

the skateboarder would eventually run into a red light.. good thinking cop

PIVOT is already being a drama queen, don't join them. He didn't almost lose his life.

You cannot speak to what a reasonable person would do, cause a reasonable person would not smash a window after missing a bus.

Its stupid to defend criminals. You break the laws of society designed to keep society safe, you shouldn't get the right to hide behind the laws of society for your safety.

As someone else said, if this was a car window everyone here would be up in arms that some punk damaged a car and got what he deserved.

I think it was overkill to send the dog, yet it was overkill to smash a window and run. 2 wrongs don't make a right, yet the charges against him were dropped as the judge figured he's suffered enough.

agree with above
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Best post in this thread. :thumbsup:

I guessing the guy probably didn't have bus fare, and wasn't let on the bus.

Bus drivers usually let you on if you're close enough, and will usually stop for you to let you on. If he was close enough to take a full swing at the window, he would've been close enough to be let on the bus.

I will agree that the extent of the injuries were a little severe, and that not everybody would have the same instinct/training to just stop and let a dog maul you. But he probably tried to fight off the dog with his board, which would make sense that the dog kept going at his leg. The dogs are trained to stop a perp until he stops resisting arrest. Fighting off the dog isn't gonna make him stop gnawing at your leg.

The guy's an idiot for breaking the window, and the cops probably could've handled the situation a bit better, but I don't think they would send the K9 unit after you if you weren't trying to run. I'm calling BS on him getting blindsided by the dog. He just broke a window, and there are cops behind him. What would 9/10 people do? You run.

1) it hasn't been proven that he intended to break the window, we don't have the details unfortunately.

Another bus could have been passing him by @ the stop and in his anger he took a swing at the bus with his board and it just so happened to smash a window; contact may not have even been made with the window but the shock of the hit broke it. We just don't have the information.

does a reasonable person punch the wall in anger @ times? i dunno, is it outside the realm of reason? i don't think so.

2) it never made it in front of the judge, crown council let it go so as not to tie up the judges time (happens a lot)

yeah ive seen many bus drivers (years ago) let people on anyway if they don't have the fare

but the issue in this case is that the buses weren't even stopping to let people on/off which got this guy worked up.

If you look @ the sun article he's covered in Ink maybe he felt he was being discriminated against?


this brings up an interesting point we don't know if police were on the scene when he left but given that he wasn't charged with resisting/evading arrest its safe to say that the police/crown didn't feel like he was doing that at all (since he was only charged with mischief)
so we must assume that the police weren't on the scene @ the time of the incident and since the officer being blocks away @ the time of the dog attack isn't being disputed (yet)
we must assume that he was set upon by the dog unbeknownst to the victim

so my question is if its accurate that the police weren't there on the scene, @ the time of the vandalism, so as to witness it; then were they simply going after a suspect based on witness accounts? and if so how could they set the dog to go after a "suspect matching the description"?

which gives more credence to the cause of PIVOT of trying to restrict the seemingly liberal use of K9s

Doesn't mean it wasn't a possibility given the wounds inflicted. Do you know how many arteries are in your legs? Some of them are quite shallow and if torn open a man could bleed out in minutes if not attended to, especially if the femoral is hit. Officers have almost zero first aid or even first responders skills. The victim in this case has a bit of meat on his legs so it was far less likely, but had the same attack happened to a smaller person it could have been very serious. The bottom line is releasing a dog on someone has to have just cause and this DEFINITELY wasn't it.

http://vascularultrasound.net/wp-con...-arteries3.jpg

My position in this case is a mix of sympathy and apathy.

The article in the Vancouver Sun (Man sues City of Vancouver, officers over police dog bite) says that he was near Hastings and Clark--that's a tough part to catch a bus on a busy night; everyone's gotten on downtown and nobody's getting off until Commercial or Nanaimo. It's entirely possible the busses were passing him by and/or were stopped due to traffic problems anyways but not letting people on.

Let's imagine, however, that you're on that bus. That some guy with a skateboard and covered in tattoos starts banging on the door (with his fists) and yelling at the driver. If you were the driver (or a passenger), would you feel safe in letting that person on to an already crowded bus? And then that guy picks up his skateboard and smashes it against a window, cracking or breaking it? Windows on busses are double-glazed (I think that's the correct term), but the sound of a shattering window near my head if I were sitting would freak me the fuck out.


There was one time I was at commercial and a group of guys were standing near where the back doors would open. The driver asked a woman who wanted to get off to get off at the front so that those people couldn't get on without paying. When she got off, the driver immediately began to drive away, and the group of guys got angry, kicked the door (as the bus was moving) and cracked the door glass enough that there were small pieces of glass on the floor of the bus.

Everyone had to get off, even though it was just the door glass that was cracked a bit. The bus was driven by that driver back to the depot and everyone had to wait in the cold for the next bus.


I can imagine that whatever happened that night was probably longer. Attending officers probably showed up at the scene and were given reports by the people who were on the bus of "a crazed man smashing the window in for no apparent reason, and then skating off".

When the police hear reports of a crazed man who is willing to smash public property, should they simply go about their business and do nothing? If someone else were hurt by this guy (let's assume he wasn't just calmly skating home and was going to take his anger out on someone else), what would the public's reaction to that have been? "VPD pays little regard to bus vandal, assault victim alleges"

The strength and level of their reaction given the expected knowledge of the situation is not surprising.

He claims to not know that police were on the lookout or following him and that he had no idea he was being chased by a police dog. Various news articles also say he was skating in alleyways and had headphones in his ears. Now I don't skate, but I do take alleyways sometimes, and the idea of travelling down them freaks me out 'cause I always worry about cars or crazies jumping out at me and not being able to hear them is scary. I think having your headphones on kind of mitigates things as far as that goes.

"I couldn't hear him yelling at me to stop!"
"Why not?"
"I was listening to KoRn!"
"So what should he have done?"
"Yell louder!"


All that having been said, I do kind of feel for the guy. I'm kind of surprised that they're not trying to put any weight on the employer for dropping him for being injured or the BC Labour Board for helping him out. The number of stitches he has and the injuries he's faced are ridiculous, but so was what he did. I'm not at all saying that this is completely justified or balanced or anything else, but I think it's one of those situations where it's caveat malefactor (criminal beware).

People say Tazers are dangerous, yet the time when they are most dangerous is when the suspects continue to resist after they have deployed (when the officers must compress the chest for confinement after tazing). I'm not at all saying this is analagous, but I'll tell you this: I'd rather get tazed than shot.


This whole thing sucks for him, I agree. But if it were me on that bus, I think I'd've been pissed if the cops DIDN'T deploy the dogs.

The way I see it, if you don't commit crimes, you will have roughly a zero percent chance of being bit, shot, tazed, handcuffed, and anything else.

A) He broke a window which could have caused harm to someone...

B) I heard on the radio this morning that he was running away on his skateboard

C) Dogs are for catching bad guys.

D) These wounds Shows people not to fuck with police and face your problems like a man.

E) Someone that Losing their temper because of missing a bus should get anger management treatment. Yes, if I missed the bus I would get frustrated but breaking a window is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over the top.

in this case he deserves anger management treatment and community service hours, he shouldn't have to pay any fines.

letting the dogs out on a citizen matching the description of a vandal is uncalled for no matter how you twist it... what if it ended up Not being the guy police were looking for?

the point shouldn't be whether you feel this guy deserved to have his leg handicapped for life for breaking a window; it should be whether the police were in the right of releasing the dogs on someone fitting a description (which they aren't even in their training)

Tax money well spent?

If missing the bus means potentially losing your job for being late, I could see why he would get upset. We are in some tough economical times and jobs are scarce. Not condoning breaking a window but I do understand his frustration in missing the bus when put in the context of being really fucked.

Not all bus drivers in Vancouver are nice or patient either. I have caught the bus outside the Horseshoe Bay Ferry Terminal and more than once seen a few people running down the street trying to catch the bus while the driver ignores them. Even the passengers on the bus call this out to the driver's attention and he doesn't stop.

What this guy should have done is pull a Marty McFly: hop on his board and grab onto the back of the bus while playing Huey Lewis and The News - Power of Love

That's a good point. They are damn lucky this guy was the actual perp.

Idiot got what he deserved. I honestly wish this happened to ALL idiots. There is always the argument that Canada as a nation is a nation of rights and freedoms, but this unfortunately has been misconstrued systematically to allow LOTS of crimes with slap-on-the-wrist punishments. There is a cost to everything -- us allowing idiots like this and a multitude of other crimes requires judicial enforcement and correctional services. Who pays for this?
Ask yourselves that when you look at your pay stub and notice half your pay is fucking gone. I would much rather have a murderer executed than pay $100,000/year for the rest of his life in prison.

the healthcare costs of rehabilitating and caring for this guys leg for the rest of his life is astronomical in comparison to the broken window...

and it actually costs more to execute someone than it is to imprison them here's an article which tries to demonstrate this (for the USA)

To execute or not: A question of cost? - US news - Crime & courts - msnbc.com

"letting the dogs out on a citizen matching the description of a vandal is uncalled for no matter how you twist it... what if it ended up Not being the guy police were looking for?"

Speaking of "twisting" things...even Pivot never made that statement. Where are you getting that info from? Dog use their noses to trail suspects from crimes all the time. It's called "Tracking". Handlers don't just release the PSD and let it roam the back streets alone like some urban wolf pack. They stick very close by and are almost always on the other end of the leash. They may let the dog run towards a target when they make visual contact but have to be very close to do so. An adult male carrying a skateboard that just smashed a window can use it to injure or kill the dog so the handler would need to be close.

.

Who else hopes that this guy was one of those faggot skateboarders from the riot? :fullofwin:

The police wouldn't use it as a tactic to apprehend people if the risk was as high as you're making it out to be. Nice try though.

This has to be the weakess and lamest post yet. You don't swing a skateboard without the intention of damaging something.

As for punching a wall, I've done it in anger, yet it is definitely outside the realm of reason. I don't feel it was reasonable when I've been angry enough to destroy something, in fact is the opposite, completely unreasonable I couldn't control myself better.

It was a missed bus. If it was witnessing a loved one run over by the bus, I'd have some sympath for acting out unreasonably. Yet its not.

Save your weak ass reply for another topic.

Interesting debate. I am going to start by going by the skateboarders story.

If he was skating away with his head phones on and has no idea the cops were "chasing" him, then I would assume that he's not moving at a high rate of speed. Any person male/female in ok shape would be able to run fast enough to catch him and catch him of guard, easily being able to throw/push him to the ground. You would now have his attention, being able to tell him what is happening. If he threatens or runs then warn him about the dog. He runs, or try's to attack, release the dog and this is never in the news.

I know that if it was me getting attacked by the dog I would just lay down and tell them to stop and listen for instructions. The handler being close by would call off the attack and its another case of "book'm dano". So in this case I think the skateboarder did not comply. Thus letting the handler wait un-till he/she thought that the the officer was not at risk by going in for the arrest (inflicting more injuries on the skateboarder). OR he/she lost control of the dog.

Just my thoughts. Who else thinks that this wouldn't have nearly the amount of attention on it if it wasn't for the Robert Dziekański incident?

There seems to be more and more complaints about police these past few years. I got an idea, any lawsuits and payouts with the police found at fault should be taken directly out of their collective pay/pension. This would stop their whole cowboy attitude and help police keep each other in check. I don't know how much the VPD paid out for the Robert Dziekański incident, I'm guessing it was a pretty penny. If they took that compensation/money to pay lawyers out from police pay instead of the tax pot I'm sure the "I'm sorry" would have come sooner to save time cost instead of extending it was excuses such as "he (Dziekanski) was brandishing a (imaginary) stapler! I was scared for my life!"