A long-anticipated hearing into the police-involved death of Myles Gray in 2015 is being adjourned for four weeks, after it was derailed by an obscene remark and the subsequent resignation of counsel for the proceeding in Vancouver.
Counsel for the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner Chris Considine says lawyers representing police, including a woman who may have been the target of the vulgarity, are opposing the return of public hearing counsel Brad Hickford, despite a plea from the adjudicator to “get over it.”
Get daily National news
Considine says a replacement for Hickford is being appointed, but it will take time for them to get up to speed on the case in which seven Vancouver officers deny misconduct in Gray’s beating death, which a coroner concluded was a homicide.
Richard Neary, the lawyer for Hickford, says his client is grateful for support from adjudicator Elizabeth Arnold-Bailey, but he is standing by his decision to quit because he doesn’t want to be a “distraction” and because of applications “threatened” by other lawyers at the public hearing.
Hickford is under investigation by the Law Society of B.C. over a remark caught on a hot microphone last week, describing someone as “stupid” and using an extreme obscenity that is sometimes used to describe women.
Arnold-Bailey says she questions how the proceeding that was set to last 10 weeks will not “run out of time” given the lawyers’ schedules and the need to secure a location.
More to come.
Comments