The B.C. RCMP are being asked to publicly release security footage that allegedly shows officers Tasering a hogtied Métis man in police cells before his in-custody death.
Clayton Willey, 33, died in Prince George in July 2003 after suffering cardiac arrest while being transported from the police station to the hospital in an ambulance.
Willey had allegedly been Tasered several times — with his hands hobbled to his ankles behind his back — as he lay face-down in police cells after a violent arrest in the parking lot of a Prince George mall.
A coroner’s report blamed his death on a cocaine overdose.
Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, is among those who police have let view an edited version of a security video.
The UBCIC and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association are asking that security tapes be made public.
Phillip said the footage — allegedly showing Willey being Tasered several times in push-stun mode while on the floor — is tougher to watch than the video of the RCMP Tasering of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver’s airport.
“It was sickening,” Phillip said. “It was very difficult to watch. It stirred a deep anger within myself.”
Leonard Cler-Cunningham, a journalist who is writing a book on aboriginal deaths in police custody, said RCMP are not releasing the video publicly out of privacy concerns for the dead man.
