Hearing into potential police misconduct in 2015 death of Myles Gray resumes after hot-mic delay | CBC News
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A public hearing inquiring into whether there was police misconduct in the 2015 beating death of 33-year-old Myles Gray in Vancouver resumes Tuesday after a lawyer said an offensive word during the proceedings in January, causing a one-month delay.
Brad Hickford, who had been appointed as public hearing counsel, a prosecutor-like role in the hearing run by the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner (OPCC), resigned from the hearing over the incident.
He has been replaced by lawyer Brock Martland.
Police complaint commissioner Prabhu Rajan said the focus of the hearing must remain on the events that resulted in Gray’s death.
“It is of paramount importance to me and my office to ensure that the issues raised by the allegations of police misconduct in this case can be fully and fairly addressed as soon as possible,” he said in a statement in January.
Hickford said, through his lawyer in January, that he would do everything he can to support the new public hearing counsel.
The hearing, which could run for up to 10 weeks, was only in its third day before the vulgar remark postponed the proceedings.
Witnesses so far have included Gray’s mother Margie, as well as three people who described seeing Gray before he entered the yard of a home in south Burnaby, B.C., where he died.
The hearing was in the middle of testimony from Sgt. Robert Nash, the RCMP officer who conducted the Police Act investigation into Gray’s death, before it was interrupted.
In January, Ian Donaldson, lawyer for the Gray family, said that while his clients are frustrated by the delay, it’s “only another four weeks” on top of the 10 years and five months they’ve waited since Gray’s death.
“It’s [the VPD’s] conduct in the treatment of the shirtless and shoeless man who died that is the subject of this inquiry. It’s not the conduct of a lawyer who said something,” Donaldson said.
The public hearing into alleged police misconduct in the 2015 death of Myles Gray in Metro Vancouver resumes on Feb. 24. It was abruptly halted after a hot-mic moment caught one of the lawyers uttering a misogynistic obscenity. As the CBC’s Tanya Fletcher explains, it caused a one-month delay in proceedings.
Kevin Westell, counsel for Const. Joshua Wong, one of the VPD officers involved in Gray’s death, said in January that the new schedule balanced a fair hearing and the need to conclude the matter with “relative expediency.”
“The last thing any member wanted to have happen here was additional delay,” Westell said in an emailed statement to CBC News.
“My client, for one, has no desire to have this matter hang over his head any longer than necessary and is eager to confront the allegations over the course of the remainder of the hearing.”
Westell added the officers’ counsel wanted to stress the delay wasn’t due to the officers or their lawyers.
“In our view it is the person who sullied the hearing room … with obscene, misogynistic, and demeaning language that bears fault in that regard,” he said.
VPD constables Kory Folkestad, Eric Birzneck, Derek Cain, Wong, Beau Spencer, Hardeep Sahota and Nick Thompson are accused of abusing their authority by recklessly or intentionally using unnecessary force in Gray’s death.
Gray’s injuries included ruptured testicles, a broken voice box, a fractured eye socket and widespread bruising.
Rajan announced the hearing at the end of 2024, noting Gray died after the VPD officers “used significant force to subdue and restrain him,” according to the notice of public hearing.
The OPCC has said this public hearing is one of the largest of its kind in scope.