A PLEA TO PREMIER DAVIS

Guest Post By Cabot Martin

A Plea to Premier Davis: call a Public Inquiry into the Dunphy shooting - NOW

On Friday past, the RNC officer (so far unnamed) who shot Donny Dunphy sent out a letter that sped through the provincial consciousness like a bitter March wind.

As a result, in the midst of tragedy, we are confronted with the unwelcome need to push on down a road of inquiry that seems to open into a place we have not been before.

It is a place far from those days, not very long ago, when it was our happy boast that our very own RNC was the only unarmed police force in North America.

We evidently have not paid enough attention to policing matters and to what the RNC has been up to with this PSU business.

For instance, how did this letter, this extraordinary intervention by Officer “X” , an officer subject to an ongoing police investigation, get written in the first place?

IS RCMP TRYING TO ISOLATE ITSELF FROM RNC IN DONNY DUNPHY SHOOTING?

The public is aghast that a man who issued a number of innocuous tweets on Good Friday could be shot dead on Easter Sunday by the Premier’s bodyguard, an RNC Officer. 

What is troubling, is that an immediate Judicial Inquiry was not called, in the very same manner that inspired three previous Public Inquiries where deaths had occurred at the hands of the police. Had the Premier directed the Attorney General to commence such a process, the multitude of questions which abound might have been muted.

A man has been shot dead. The decision-making chain which led to his death began in the Premier’s Office. I can think of no Government that would not have ordered a Judicial Inquiry immediately, in the circumstances.

We need that judicial process to provide certainty that the rule of law has not been breached by the shooter and by others. 

DONNY DUNPHY TRAGEDY: ANYTHING LESS THAN A JUDICIAL INQUIRY IS UNACCEPTABLE

The shooting death of Donny Dunphy by an RNC Officer of the Protective Services Unit (PSU) is a tragedy. In the circumstance, it demands nothing less than the thoroughness and independence afforded by a Judicial Inquiry. 

The late insertion by the RCMP of long retired Judge David Riche as an “independent observer”, an apparently new species of “oversight”, is no replacement for a full Judicial Inquiry – especially when it is inappropriate for the RCMP to be conducting the investigation in the first place. 

The process speaks to damage control both for the RNC and for the Government. The RCMP is a non-arms-length Agency in this case. 

An apparently defective chain of decision-making placed the PSU Officer in Mr. Dunphy’s home. The very first decision in the matter originated in the Premier’s Office. There have been inappropriate statements by the Premier.

All this has added a distressing political dimension to the case; one that begs for complete transparency.