N.S. mother receives RCMP response 18 months after filing complaint

HALIFAX – It’s been eighteen months since Trine-Lise Good filed a complaint against the RCMP over how they handled the investigation into her son’s death. She’s finally heard back, but it’s not the answer she expected.

“You didn’t admit to any wrongdoing and I feel that there were wrongdoings in there. They didn’t investigate properly. If they had have done it in the first place I wouldn’t have had to file a complaint,” Trine-Lise Good tells Global News.

Her son Ryan Good died on December 10th 2012, after taking a combination of cocaine and Dilaudid. He was 21-years-old.

Ryan’s family felt from the beginning police didn’t investigate deeply enough, and are frustrated with the RCMP’s response to their complaint. “It rendered me speechless really because there’s so many inconsistencies and I just feel wronged again,” Trine-Lise Good says.

Amy Graves filed a similar complaint against the RCMP after her brother’s death. Josh Graves died from a combination of alcohol and prescription drugs in March of 2011.

After filing a complaint and having her brother’s case re-opened, Graves received an apology from police. “I don’t know how a federal organization whose supposed to have standardized protocol… how in one area they can be doing something completely different than in a different area an hour away,” Graves says.

Both Amy Graves and Trine-Lise Good says there were a number of delays in getting a response from police over the way they investigated Ryan Good’s death, and say that the report has a number of inaccuracies. “It refers to the drug as Hydrocortisone which is eczema cream. If all of those officers reading over that complaint can’t articulate the difference between Hydrocortisone and Hydromorphone and send that off, then that’s a problem,” Graves tells Global News.

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Trine Lise Good is now in the process of filing an appeal to the response. “This will not bring Ryan back. This is draining, it’s draining. Do I want to do this? No. But I started it and I want to finish it, and I don’t want anyone else having to go through this.”