VANCOUVER - An inquiry has heard a Vancouver police officer filed a complaint against his own department after a drunk aboriginal man was dumped in an alley by police and later froze to death.
Sgt. Andy Hobbs laid the complaint in August 1999, eight months after Frank Paul was found dead of hypothermia.
But by the time his complaint was filed, the Vancouver Police Department had completed an internal investigation that resulted in minor discipline for two officers involved in Paul's' death.
And Crown counsel had also concluded no charges would be laid against the officer who left Paul in the alley and a sergeant who refused him admission to the city drunk tank.
Don Morrison, the then police complaint commissioner, says he didn't call for a public hearing into the case because the officers involved would not have been compelled to testify, unlike at an inquest.
But he says Solicitor General Rich Coleman refused his request for an inquest because that would raise issues of racial discrimination and public acrimony would almost certainly follow.
