Should the police investigate themselves when things go wrong? Family and friends of two B.C. men shot dead by rookie RCMP officers say the answer is definitely not.

Both deaths occurred in logging towns along Highway 16, west of Prince George in north-central B.C. The first came just before Christmas 2004, in Vanderhoof, where a suspect in a drugstore robbery, Kevin St. Arnaud, was shot three times by Const. Ryan Sheremetta. About that, there's no dispute.

"I respectfully suggest that the investigative report they received was completely biased because the investigators were in a gross conflict of interest."
— Cameron Ward, lawyer

Less than a year later in Houston, three hours west of Vanderhoof, Ian Bush was caught with an open beer at a hockey game. He was arrested by Const. Paul Koester and died 20 minutes later, inside the police station. Koester had shot him once, in the head. That, too, is undisputed.

In both cases, the RCMP found no fault with the officers and no charges were laid.

The case of Ian Bush

Linda Bush, Ian's mother, is suing the RCMP.

"I don't have confidence in the same force investigating it," she said. "It doesn't matter who they are, they're people. They're going to, even unconsciously, look for reasons to believe their fellow officer's story, just because they're human."

Sitting in front of her son's picture, Linda Bush said she does not pretend to know the solution.

"I'm a mom who's lost a son," she said. "I don't know what to do about it. But the people who do know what to do need to talk about it now. Politicians need to talk about it, and they need to face facts. It's always easier to blame the victim than to deal with the facts."

The RCMP's statement of defence in Linda Bush's lawsuit says that Ian Bush attacked Const. Koester, choked him from behind and told him to "take his last breath." Doubts arose, though, when it emerged that Bush had been shot in the back of the head.

In a small town where Bush was a popular young sawmill worker, people are skeptical.

"I don't see how they can call it self-defence. If you shoot someone in the back of the head, that means their back's turned to you," said J.R. McInnes, a friend who was with Bush at the hockey game.

Nor were people satisfied with the many months it took for the Mounties to complete their internal investigation.

"I think the outrage was, it was the unknown, everything was kept quiet. And it was just, how could this happen?" Houston Mayor Sharon Smith said.

The RCMP insist that Const. Koester was punched, choked and bruised in the encounter, and that he fired to save his own life.

The inquest into Bush's death is scheduled for May 2007.

The case of Kevin St. Arnaud

In the Vanderhoof case, a recently concluded inquest only increased the level of concern. The testimony of the officer involved was contradicted by five other witnesses — including a second RCMP officer who was present.

Once again, the young officer who fired his gun said he acted in self-defence. Const. Sheremetta said he was called to a break-in at the local pharmacy and chased the suspect, Kevin St. Arnaud, across a snow-covered soccer field. But then, he said, St. Arnaud turned on him with what he called "a death look," while reaching for his pocket and saying, "you're gonna have to shoot me." Sheremetta said he slipped and fell onto his back, then, fearing for his life, fired upwards at St. Arnaud. He testified that St. Arnaud was "almost overtop of me."

"The bottom line is, to me, the guy had surrendered."
— Abe Klassen, eyewitness to shooting of Kevin St. Arnaud of Vanderhoof, B.C.

The forensic evidence did not back up Sheremetta's story. Nor did his partner, Colleen Erickson.

A 24-year veteran of the RCMP, Erickson is now on leave and serving as chief of the Saikuz First Nation, just outside Vanderhoof. She said the RCMP ordered her not to speak to the CBC but, in her testimony at the inquest, she said she was close enough to see the muzzle flash from Sheremetta's gun. He did not fall down and did not fire upwards, she said. Rather, he was standing in what she called "a police shooting stance … feet apart." Nor did she hear St. Arnaud say, "You're gonna have to shoot me."

Three forensic experts also testified that the shots had to have been fired from some five metres away and that the bullets entered St. Arnaud's body on a downwards, not upwards, trajectory.

The fifth witness to contradict Sheremetta was Abe Klassen, a retired logger who was passing by. He stopped to watch and says he saw St. Arnaud "surrender."

"The guy threw up his hands, and turned around and was going towards the police," said Klassen, adding that he could not understand why the officer fired. Read an excerpt of the interview.

RCMP spokesman Cpl. Pierre Lemaitre said the force knew that Sheremetta's version would not fit with the other evidence, but stood by him anyway. Read an excerpt of the interview.

In this case, too, there's a lack of trust in the RCMP's internal investigation.

"They wanted to make the evidence fit (Sheremetta's) story," said Dolores Young, Kevin St. Arnaud's mother. An RCMP investigator told her that in 17 years of service, he'd never seen any officer found at fault, she said.

Conflict of interest?

Cameron Ward, a Vancouver lawyer who acted for the family at the inquest, said B.C. is "in the dark ages" with respect to allowing police to investigate their colleagues. There would have been a very different outcome if the gun had been fired by a civilian, Ward said.

"There are inconsistencies and contradictions in virtually every homicide file."
—Crown prosecutor Oleh Kuzma

"If you had two people confronting each other in a soccer field, all the while being watched by a senior RCMP officer from some 30 or 40 feet away, and one drew his gun and shot the other dead and the victim was unarmed, there would have been a charge laid in a New York minute," he said.

The Crown prosecutor in Prince George, however, disagrees.

"There are inconsistencies and contradictions in virtually every homicide file," Oleh Kuzma told the CBC. "In this case, it was more important that both officers who were at the scene described the victim approaching the officer in an aggressive manner."

On that point, the truth is not clear. The veteran officer, Colleen Erickson, used various words in her testimony to describe St. Arnaud's motion: he either "charged" or "walked" or "shuffled" towards Sheremetta. Erickson did not call St. Arnaud "aggressive" or say he moved "aggressively."

For his part, Cameron Ward, a veteran defence lawyer, notes that other witnesses heard someone shouting, "Get back here, you son of a bitch!" That suggests, he said, that St. Arnaud may have been moving towards Sheremetta because he was ordered to do so.

But Ward believes a more fundamental problem is that internal investigations by the police are not credible.

"The investigators devoted all their time and effort to trying to justify the shooting and to defend their colleague," he said. "Ian Bush's family, Kevin St. Arnaud's family, don't have the benefit of an unbiased justice system that is free from conflict of interest. And none of us have that benefit unless and until we stop allowing police to investigate their own."

Ian Bush's friend, J.R. McInnes, put it more succinctly. "If you did something, would you be allowed to investigate yourself? I don't think so."

An addendum to this story: On March 21, Paul Kennedy, chair of the Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP, announced that his group will begin monitoring RCMP internal investigations in B.C. to ensure that they are unbiased. Kennedy called this a "pilot project," adding that it is a "direct response to concerns raised in various quarters as to the impartiality of RCMP investigations into incidents where the actions of RCMP members have resulted in serious injury or death."

About the TV documentary:

Title: Hard to Believe
Correspondent: Terry Milewski
Producer: Cedric Monteiro
Editor: Michael Taylor-Noonan

Related interviews:

Extract of witness Abe Klassen's interview with CBC's Terry Milewski.

Q: So, you don't think the officer told the truth?

A: Well, you always hate to call anybody a liar, but the thing is, I know what I seen and that's what I'm telling.

Q: You saw Kevin St. Arnaud with his hands up?

A: Yes, I did.

Q: To you, it looked like it was over, they got him?

A: Absolutely. Absolutely. To me, it was over.

Q: Did it look like he was threatening the officer?

A: No, no, no, no.

Q: Did you hear him yelling, you gotta shoot me?

A: No, no, nothing like that.

Q: Did he put his hand in his pocket at any point or move to put his hand in his pocket?

A: No, not at that time.

Extract of witness RCMP spokesman Cpl. Pierre Lemaitre's interview with CBC's Terry Milewski.

Lemaitre: There were no surprises in the coroner's inquest to us. What we heard we already knew.

Q: So you knew that Sheremetta's story about what happened would be contradicted by five other witnesses?

A: Yes, we did and we presented that exact investigation to the Crown.

Q: Doesn't that fact bother you?

A: Again, I repeat, it’s been my experience and certainly the experience of major crime investigators that when you have witnesses who recollect an event, it's always a little different.

Q: But, with respect, it's not a little different, is it? He said he was on his back shooting up at somebody looming over him telling him, "you're going to have to shoot me." Everyone else said that never happened.

A: That was his evidence and that's what he said he remembered.