Criticism of Vaud public prosecutor’s office in police violence case
Published: Friday, Nov 10th 2023, 15:50
Updated At: Friday, Nov 10th 2023, 15:54
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An independent commission has criticized the Vaud public prosecutor's office following the death of a black man by police gunfire in Morges VD. It is of the opinion that the public prosecutor's office should continue the proceedings against the police officers.
An expert commission, which was set up in May to clarify the circumstances of the death, presented the preliminary results of its investigation in Lausanne on Friday. It found that the man had been left lying injured on his stomach for six and a half minutes without any assistance from the police officers involved.
Nevertheless, the public prosecutor's office decided not to bring charges of homicide or failure to provide assistance, she criticizes. The case shows that an independent civil society investigation into this death is urgently needed.
The investigation was carried out in collaboration with Border Forensics, a research and investigation agency based in Geneva. The commission, which emerged from civil society, is interdisciplinary and is made up of experts from the fields of law, medicine, forensics and social sciences. It works on a voluntary basis and in close cooperation with the victim's family and their lawyer Ludovic Tirelli.
According to the commission, the initial findings will focus on the phase of failure to render assistance. Further investigations will focus on the time of the killing in order to rule out the hypothesis of self-defense, it added.
Reconstruction of the events
A short film shown to the media on Friday reconstructs eight minutes of the events of August 30, 2021 on platform 4 of Morges station, when the police shot the 38-year-old man from Zurich. According to the public prosecutor's investigation, the man, who suffered from mental health problems, had previously threatened the police officers with a knife on the platform. The man died of his gunshot wounds at the scene.
In an initial statement, the police said that they had helped the victim immediately. However, the police later changed this version and explained that the first resuscitation measures were carried out by a nurse who was present at the scene more than four minutes after the last shot.
The film meticulously and chronologically compiles several images, video clips and audio recordings to provide a new account of the facts, said the victim family's lawyer. This makes it possible to better analyze, explain and understand the evidence.
The man who had been shot was left lying on his stomach for six and a half minutes without the police officer who had fired three shots at him or the three other police officers involved administering first aid as quickly as possible. The video shows that the police officers initially pushed the stabbing weapon aside and handcuffed the victim. According to the footage, the lateral position appears to have been applied late.
The Commission and Border Forensics are of the opinion that "security measures were given priority over rescue and resuscitation measures" without any of the police officers "attending to the state of health" of the victim.
No decision yet
At the request of the Keystone-SDA news agency, the Vaud public prosecutor's office stated that the criminal investigation that had been initiated "is still ongoing and no decision has yet been made". The police and several witnesses have already been heard.
"On October 10, 2023, the public prosecutor's office sent the parties to the proceedings a notice of the imminent conclusion of the proceedings and gave them one month to send their requests for evidence," replied its communications officer Vincent Derouand.
This has been done, according to lawyer Tirelli. "Yesterday, Thursday, we sent out these preliminary results with the film and an expert opinion on the question of failure to render assistance, as well as various motions for evidence, which also concern the question of homicide," he said.
The family's lawyer said he was "very confident" that the case would ultimately be heard in court. If the case is dismissed, Tirelli will appeal to the criminal appeals court of the cantonal court and, if necessary, go all the way to the federal court.
©Keystone/SDA
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