A victory for all Canadians

Police misbehavior gets its just desserts

Awakened before dawn by police officers who battered down the door to his home, Basil Parasiris said he acted in self-defence when he shot at a stranger at his bedroom door. A jury agreed yesterday, acquitting the Montreal-area businessman of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Constable Daniel Tessier, a father of two.

The verdict was the latest slap in this case for the Laval police. The trial had revealed that the force's search warrant relied on dubious evidence and didn't allow a night-time raid; that officers didn't properly check whether Mr. Parasiris owned guns; and that they fired by mistake into a child's bedroom. The jurors agreed with Mr. Parasiris's defence that he thought he was the victim of a home invasion.

Jurors weren't even told that the judge, Mr. Justice Guy Cournoyer of Quebec Superior Court, had invalidated the search warrant the officers were using. Mr. Parasiris was targeted in a police probe into cocaine trafficking. But Judge Cournoyer ruled that the police failed to prove he had drugs in his home and weren't justified in using force to enter.

The court was told that police didn't know Mr. Parasiris had a registered gun. The officers didn't check his name in the firearms registry, only the address. However, he had failed to report that he had moved.

About 5 a.m. on March 2, 2007, nine Laval officers used a battering ram to enter Mr. Parasiris's home in the Montreal suburb of Brossard. Constable Serge Lauzon, the first officer to enter the house, headed for the wrong bedroom, so it was Constable Tessier who went to the master bedroom. Awakened by the noise, Mr. Parasiris grabbed a Ruger .357 magnum revolver, one of three guns he kept in his closet. He testified that he fired after seeing "this big man all dressed in black and a white face" at the door. Three shots hit Constable Tessier, killing him. The last shot struck another constable in the arm.

Jurors heard that Constable Lauzon and Constable François Leblanc mistakenly thought the shots had come from a door in front of them, so they fired 10 shots at the bedroom of Mr. Parasiris's 15-year-old son. While backing up, Constable Lauzon bumped into Detective-Sergeant Nathalie Allard as she fired at the master bedroom. One of her shots struck Constable Tessier as he lay dying; another wounded Mr. Parasiris' wife, Penny Gounis, in an arm.

There were also questions about Constable Tessier's appearance. He was dressed in black and the word "police" on his bulletproof vest was obscured by a flap, the jury was told. The Crown said the slain officer wore a baseball cap with a police logo on it. But the defence noted that the ambulance drivers didn't see that cap. Instead, a black tuque was found at the scene.

Original report here


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