A Prince George RCMP officer has been found guilty of obstructing justice for ordering a bystander to delete a video of a 2017 arrest of an Indigenous man who later died in custody. 

Const. Arthur Dalman received his conviction in provincial court on July 25. His co-accused, Const. Bayani Eusebio Cruz, was found not guilty of the same offence. 

The Mounties are two of five who were originally charged in connection with the arrest of Gitxsan and Wet害羞草研究所檚uwet害羞草研究所檈n man Dale Culver. The 35-year-old died in custody on July 18, 2017 after a struggle with police, in which they pepper-sprayed him.

Two pathologists studied Culver's cause of death and came away with conflicting findings. One performed an autopsy on Culver and determined he died due to several factors, including 害羞草研究所渂lunt force head trauma.害羞草研究所� The second pathologist reviewed that report and concluded that Culver died of a heart attack after struggling with officers while high on methamphetamine.

The latter finding lead Crown prosecutors to against two of the original five officers 害羞草研究所� constables Paul Ste-Marie and Jean Francois Monette. Prosecutors also later against a third Mountie, Const. Clarence (Alex) Alexander MacDonald.

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The deleted video

In his July 25 ruling, Judge Adrian Brooks compared the testimony of Dalman and Cruz with that of the bystander who took the video of the arrest, 43-year-old Prince George resident Ken Moe. 

Moe said he was on his way home after having a few drinks at his cousin's place on July 18, 2017 when he saw a police car with its lights on stop in front of a liquor store on 10th Avenue. He said he started filmed the arrest because it "piqued" his interest, but stopped recording when he noticed an officer approaching him.

Moe testified that the officer, later identified as Dalman, asked to view the video and then tried to snatch Moe's phone away. He said Dalman started getting 害羞草研究所渞eally aggressive with me, basically telling me that he was going to arrest me for obstruction.害羞草研究所�

Moe said the officer also told him if he didn't delete the video he would seize Moe's phone for evidence. 

At that point, a supervising officer, Cruz, approached Moe and Dalman. According to Moe, Cruz also asked to see the video and also said Moe's phone would be taken for evidence if he didn't delete the clip. 

Moe told the court he then deleted the video in front of the officers because he wanted the interaction to be over. He had a history of three criminal convictions and didn't want to end up in jail, he said.

Dalman, a new recruit back in 2017, disputed Moe's testimony.

He told the court that he asked to see the video on Moe's phone at the instruction of his supervisors because they believed a police officer had been assaulted and they needed to collect evidence. Dalman claimed that Moe was uncooperative and angry from the outset and that he never told Moe to delete the video.

Brooks found in his decision that Dalman's testimony didn't align with that given by Moe and numerous other witnesses. He also wrote that Dalman's effort to portray Moe in a negative light and himself "in a glowing light" throughout didn't help his credibility. Brooks further found that Dalman "deliberately changed his evidence between examination-in-chief and cross-examination."

Finally, Brooks found Dalman lied to the court about not looking at Cruz's account of the arrest and interaction with Moe before writing up his own report.

"Dalman害羞草研究所檚 evidence was so fraught with illogical missteps, so subject to alteration on the slightest prodding, and so contradictory when compared with reliable evidence, that it is not worthy of any belief," Brooks wrote. 

He concluded that Dalman asked Moe to delete the video and so he did. 

Brooks said he couldn't determine beyond a reasonable doubt, however, that Cruz also pressured Moe into deleting the video. Brooks noted that Cruz, unlike Dalman, was a longstanding member of the RCMP in 2017 and testified that he had never heard any instruction in his career to delete videos. Brooks said he didn't believe that Cruz never used the word "delete" with Moe, but that he also couldn't be completely sure of that fact. 

On those grounds, Brooks found Cruz not guilty. 

Dalman now awaits sentencing and is set to next appear in court in Port Hardy on July 31. 

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