Ipperwash sentence to be appealed

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The lawyer for Warren George, the last person to go to court for his role in the Ipperwash Provincial Park incident two-and-a-half years ago, is appealing his client's six-month jail sentence.

"Basically, the sentence is preposterous," said lawyer Jeff House.

Warren George was sentenced in early April after Ontario provincial court judge Greg Pockele found him guilty of criminal negligence causing bodily harm and assault with a weapon (a car).

House said the sentence is unfair considering that an Ontario Provincial Police officer charged with negligence causing death during the Ipperwash standoff for the fatal shooting of protester Dudley George, was given a conditional sentence of two-years-less-a-day to be served in the community, not jail.

Outside the Sarnia courtroom, following the sentence, Crown Prosecutor Henry van Drunen is reported to have said that George would not get a conditional sentence like the police officer, because he doubted a conditional sentence could be served in a community "which regards Warren George as a hero."

House said his client was not considered a hero, but a victim.

George was part of an occupation at Ipperwash Provincial Park in September 1995. The occupation came after almost 60 years of dispute between the people of the Stoney Point band and the federal government. Before the Second World War, the Canadian government moved the Stoney Point members from their land to construct a new military base. The government told the band members they would get their land back after the war. That promise never materialized. Stoney Point band members have since joined the Kettle Point First Nation. Frustrations came to a boil around Labor Day of 1995 when several Stoney Pointers took control of the land within the provincial park, claiming it was a traditional burial ground. The police were called in to disperse the protesters.

One of the first clashes came as Kettle Point councillor Cecil Bernard George was trying to warn the protesters of the advancing police force. Court testimony indicates that the police force caught up to the councillor and beat him to the ground.

House said medical evidence presented at the trial noted at least 28 separate areas on the councillor's body which showed signs of blunt force trauma, consistent with being beaten by the batons carried by the police members.

House said some protesters saw the beating and tried to help the councillor.

Warren George drove a car from inside the blockade on Sept. 6, 1995, to help the 40-year-old councillor who was lying in the nearby car park. George followed a bus driven by a 16-year-old Ipperwash protester who was also going to the assistance of the man.

House said his client followed the bus which forced the police officers to scatter away from the injured man lying in the middle of the car park.

As Warren George approached in the car, one officer is reported to have jumped in front of the vehicle, drawing his service revolver. George saw the man pointing the gun and swerved to avoid being shot. The car careened into a group of police officers, striking several of them.

House said testimony of the officers in court showed that the collision was not a significant one. The car was only travelling at 15 kmh, he said, and the worst injury to any of the officers was a twisted leg.

House said his client was lying on the seat of the car and put the vehicle into reverse after hitting the officers. It was then that the police opened fire.

"He tried to back up and the police officers tried to shoot at him . . . there were a dozen bullet holes in the car," he said.

The lawyer said his client was justified in trying to swerve out of the way of the police officer who pointed the gun at him.

"He turned rapidly to the right because he didn't want to get shot," said House.

It was during the gunfire that Dudley George, another protester, was shot and killed by one of the police officers. The court heard that 70 shots were fired in al, by the police officers during the incident.

House said he doesn't understand why his client is the only one of those charged to be sentenced to jail time.

The other protesters, including the youth who drove the bus, were acquitted.

Adding to the frustration, House said he was the defence lawyer for the youth and believed that Warren George's case was similar.

The jail sentence surprised the lawyer and Warren George's family.

"I didn't have a sense that things were not going well until [Pockele] read his sentence," said House.

The lawyer strongly believes that Warren George's defence is sound and the court proceedings were flawed.

Warren George had every right to try and help a person being beaten by law enforcement members, House said. The only reason he hit the officers with his car is that he was forced to turn into them.

"It's not negligence to try and avoid being shot."

House is appealing the sentence and conviction based on those two points, as well as the granting of the conditional sentence to the police officer.

He said the Criminal Code calls for parity or fairness in cases containing similar circumstances. That was not upheld in this instance, he said.

"The officer was charged with criminal negligence causing death, and he received a conditional sentence. Then, Warren George was convicted - and wrongly convicted in my opinion - and he was given jail time," said House.

The appeal is not expected to be heard by the Ontario Court of Appeal until after summer. In the meantime, Warren George has been released from custody on bail and is awaiting the appeal.

"I conveyed the wishes of the community, the council and the family for an independent investigation," Fontaine said. "This matter will be raised with the justice minister and I expect that we will receive an answer fairly soon."

In an initial interview, Tsuu T'ina Nation administration spokesman Peter Many Wounds, said no one is certain exactly what took place or what the events were leading p to the fatal shooting of the mother and her child.

"We don't know for sure all of the events that occurred," Many Wounds said. "Obviously there was an incident. Obviously there is a mother and child dead. It's a tragedy and we're trying to find out exactly what happened."

Whitney exonerated both the social worker and band police of any wrongdoing and said they had been following department procedure in dealing with the incident.

"To the best of the knowledge that we have, all of the appropriate steps were taken and that we need to continue, we need to have the continuance of those programs in our community."

However, Tsuu T'ina Nation Mount Royal College students Marlene Owl Simon and Cory Cardinal do not share Whitney's view that the social worker and the band police officer are totally blameless. Simon said they were too aggressive in attempting to seize Jacobs' children.

"The Child and Family Services, they just go up to a house and take the children away," Simon said. "If the people wanted that we could keep the White child and family services out there." Simon said that the social worker's qualifications to handle the type of situation she was confronted with should be questioned. She also feels that the worker and the band police did not need to involve the RCMP.

"I don't think they should have been involved," Simon said. "They should have sent somebody ahead or somebody who Connie would talk to, maybe another family member, to go in there and talk with her."

Cardinal, chief of the colleges Native student society, the Four Directions Lodge, agreed with Simon that the events prior to Voller's deadly shotgun blast could have and should have been handled better.

"If that was a White person they wouldn't have shot right away," Cardinal said. "She had a weapon, they knew that, why would they come and confront her like that with so many children in the house."

He said the shooting of the Tsuu T'ina mother and child could have a negative effect on the reationship between the RCMP and First Nation communities.

"I think that it's going to cause a lot of resentment not just in Tsuu T'ina but on other reserves as well with the RCMP," Cardinal said. "You're going to have people afraid to call in the police because they won't know how they're going to act.

"If you have an incident like that, don't you think they would have negotiators or experts in the field."

The shooting came just two days after a First Nations Justice Conference was held in Calgary to discuss ways of reintroducing traditional methods of justice administration to First Nation communities. The consensus among the delegates to the conference was that family and community need to be involved directly in finding root causes of problems in First Nation communities and possibly avoid situations like the one in Tsuu T'ina.

Harley Crowchild, director of the Tsuu T'ina/Stoney Corrections Society, was a delegate to the conference and he said he was in full support of family and community involvement in justice. He said he doesn't know whether the child and family services have incorporated traditional methods of problem resolution into their programs or, if so, how far the traditional approach extends. "Whatever they did they followed it by the books, I guess," Crowchild said. "They're all aware of those (traditional) methods, but I don't know if they practice it. Maybe people were a little too hasty. Maybe the RCMP were a little too hasty."

Many Wounds said the surviving children are with their father and all are staying with relatives for the meantime, but they will receive new housing, possibly within the city of Calgary. Many Wounds said funeral arrangements for Jacobs and her nine-year-old son Ty will be made known by the family following the release of the medical examiners report.