Report clearing Vancouver police in Myles Gray beating death ‘flawed,’ lawyer says

The lawyer for the family of a man beaten to death by Vancouver police says a disciplinary report clearing the officers of wrongdoing was flawed and didn’t consider key evidence.

Ian Donaldson, lawyer for the family of Myles Gray, says the report by former Delta police chief Neil Dubord found allegations of misconduct in the 2015 death unsubstantiated.

Donaldson says the report may have found the seven officers involved in Gray’s beating death didn’t commit misconduct, but he doesn’t believe they were cleared because “important evidence” wasn’t included in the disciplinary probe.

Donaldson says this includes evidence from a coroner’s inquest into Gray’s death, including some given under oath, and he found its absence “surprising.”

He says the procedure to review police misconduct is “flawed and imperfect and incomplete,” and the findings undermine public confidence in police due to a “lack of respect for accountability.”

Gray, 33, died after being subdued by the officers after getting into a dispute with a resident near the Burnaby-Vancouver border.

He suffered injuries including ruptured testicles and fractures in his eye socket, nose, voice box, and ribs.

The initial 911 call on the day he died was about an agitated man who was behaving erratically and who had sprayed a woman with water from a garden hose.

The Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner said on Thursday it was reviewing Dubord’s decision over the death of Gray, which was classified as a homicide by the coroner’s inquest last year.

Melissa Gray, Myles’ sister, isn’t putting much stock in yet another review.

“If they’re going to hire a retired judge to look at it … the police can still appeal it. So, I don’t have any hope for anything moving forward,” she explained.

She describes the entire process as a “joke.”

“I wonder how much money has been thrown at this. It essentially just seems like a make-work project for these people. I just don’t get how something can be ruled a homicide, and then at the same token, they can find no wrong-doing.”

Melissa tells 1130 NewsRadio what the last nine years have been like.

“It’s awful, and it’s hard to make sense of the world when these are the people who are supposed to protect you, and they just get off for this. I just can’t make sense of it,” Melissa explained.

With files from Renee Bernard.