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Charge against Montreal G20 protester dropped
By JAN RAVENSBERGEN
The Crown has dropped a criminal charge against a Montreal man arrested after he videotaped undercover cops during a peaceful Montreal demonstration protesting against the mass arrests in 2010 of G20 opponents.
Scott Weinstein, a nurse, had for the past 17 months been facing a charge of assault on police with a weapon – his bicycle.
His trial had been scheduled to begin Wednesday morning.
Ending a court session that took about half a minute, Judge Yves Paradis of Quebec Court declared the matter closed.
Weinstein, who has maintained from the start that he did nothing illegal, told reporters minutes later that he wishes to file a police ethics complaint alleging evidence-tampering by police.
Michael Derkson, retained as an expert witness by Weinstein, told reporters he had been poised to testify that the memory card of a digital camera cops had confiscated from Weinstein upon his arrest had been tampered with, in what appeared to be an attempt to remove data.
A digital timestamp he extracted from the memory card shows this tampering took place while Weinstein had been in police custody, Derkson added.
The computer specialist said he partially restored the data on the memory card after running specialized software on it: “It took 10 to 12 hours,” he estimated.
Derkson said he recovered “80 to 90” images that someone had made an effort to delete while Weinstein was in police hands for about five hours.
Destruction of evidence is an offence under the Criminal Code.
Prosecutor Hélène Décarie said she made the decision to drop the charge against Weinstein “following discussions with my witnesses” – three police officers apparently involved in the arrest – and “with the defence,” lawyer Julius Grey.
“The file is finished with, on either side,” she added.
Asked by The Gazette if she will consider laying any charge stemming from the apparent attempt by police to destroy evidence, she responded: “I will not comment on that. … I do not have those elements.”
Weinstein had earlier stated: "If my video supported the police claim that they warned me to back off and I then assaulted them, the police would surely have used the video evidence against me.
“Instead,” Weinstein added, “they destroyed the video evidence which supports my contention that I did nothing wrong.”
While Grey has often been voluble on other cases, he proved less so, at least in this case:
“The case has been dealt with, and I am happy,” Grey told reporters.
Asked about the alleged destruction of evidence, he responded: “I won’t talk about that.
“I don’t have a mandate for any other actions and, as far as I’m concerned, this case is finished. … I think justice has been done this morning and that was the only mandate I had.”
Weinstein said he had been focused on beating the criminal charge and isn’t familiar with the mechanics of the existing Quebec complaints procedures against police, but that he intends to file a written complaint.
“That’s a problem in Quebec,” he added: “It’s the police who police the police.”
Fundamentally, he said, “undercover police were trying to infiltrate the protest,” had been ejected from the march by protesters, were angered and were “looking for revenge” when Weinstein left the protest march and started videotaping them, unaccompanied, on a nearby sidestreet. The incident took place shortly after noon July 1, 2010, on St. Dominique St. near Pine Ave. E., just north of the downtown core.
In future, Weinstein said, he and anyone else videotaping or photographing police should make sure they are accompanied by “civilian witnesses.”
“I don’t want this to be seen as ‘no harm done,’ ” Weinstein said.
“There was harm done.”
Source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Charge%20against%20Montreal%20protester%20dropped/6085003/story.html