Police "Expert Witness" Questioned After Justifying Cop Executing Disarmed Man Already Shot Eight Times

CBC News
Aug. 30, 2012

A video obtained by CBC News showed Boyd on his hands and knees when he was shot. (CBC)

The father of a man shot by Vancouver police while he crawled on his hands and knees is asking investigators re-examining the case to question the use of an expert who cleared the officer involved in the shooting.

David Boyd says he believes the Vancouver Police Department and B.C.'s Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner should never have relied on the opinions of police psychologist Bill Lewinski.

"It seems like he was the kind of witness you call in if you want to have the police exonerated," Boyd said.

Boyd's son, Paul, was shot eight times following an altercation with police in 2007. But it was a final shot to the head while Boyd was on the ground and disarmed that killed the mentally ill animator.

Stan Lowe, the police complaints commissioner, retained Lewinski as an expert and devoted some detail to his opinions in his final report into the shooting. The report was released in March.



Lowe wrote that Lewinski "reasonably explained" why Const. Lee Chipperfield fired on an unarmed man by concluding the "intense emotional reaction to the events, coupled with a restricted focus," had, "rendered him inattentionally blind."

Although Boyd was on the ground some distance away, Lowe says Lewinski's analysis was that the emotional intensity of the event left him "shooting to save his life rather than being focused on shooting to stop Mr. Boyd."

David Boyd says when he learned Lewinski's opinion was involved in clearing Chipperfield, he was upset.

"There's no point in asking someone when you know what the answer's going to be," he says. "And I think it just makes the whole thing laughable [that] they would go to someone like this."

Lewinski is a behavioural scientist and executive director of a private, for-profit police training business in Minnesota called Force Science Institute Ltd. He's also a professor emeritus of Law Enforcement at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

The former Canadian social worker and school teacher is frequently sought after by U.S. police forces that are facing civil or criminal cases following lethal shootings. Lewinski has been recognized as an expert in reaction, perception and memory by a number of state and federal courts in the U.S.

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