Const. Siggy Pietrzak faces a single charge of assault related to a May 2020 arrest in central Kelowna recorded on video. The video shows Const. David Carter and Const. Regan Donahue struggles to capture Tyler Russell, before Const. Pietrzak arrived on stage and hit Russell in the face several times. Following the release of the video, Pietrzak took over the administration and was subsequently made available for a fee. The charge of assault was announced about a year later. Last month, several of the officers involved in the arrest testified at Pietrzak’s trial, in addition to Russell. On Friday, Crown Attorney David Heiney worked to persuade Judge Mariane Armstrong to allow “expert testimony” from Staff Sgt. Leonard McCoshen, but defense attorney David Butcher opposed allowing McCoshen’s testimony. McCoshen, a Alberta homicide investigator, has more than 30 years of experience with the RCMP, including seven years of general duty early in his career. He is now a member of the RCMP National Force Usage Committee and has been certified as a “use of force” expert in previous police trials. He has also taught an RCMP course since 2004 and is estimated to have trained nearly 1,000 officers. During Friday’s voir dire, where submissions were made to determine the admissibility of McCoshen’s “expert” evidence, Hainey argued that most, if not all, cases of “use of force” such as the Pietrzak case involved expert kind of specialist. “You will find it difficult to find a case of use of force in Article 25 that does not include the exact type of evidence the Crown seeks to provide,” Heiney told Judge Armstrong. Article 25 of the Penal Code regulates the permitted use of force by officers in the performance of their duties. But Butcher spent most of the day on Friday examining Sgt. McCoshen. Eventually, Butcher argued that the veteran officer’s experience as a street officer was “very old” and that McCossen’s testimony about his background was “either bloated and exaggerated or irrelevant.” “This man is not qualified and it is not necessary to give evidence,” Butcher said. “His data is quite historical and has much less substance than the 40-page CV might suggest.” He suggested that police officers who had previously testified at the trial – Pietrzak’s colleagues – were equally qualified to talk about the appropriate use of force required at the time of arrest. Hainey noted that Pietrzak’s defense did not initially oppose the admissibility of forensic evidence on the use of force, but that has now changed. In his final submissions on the matter, Hainey cited a ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada on the matter. “This is the Supreme Court of Canada saying that this is right, you have the right to hear expert evidence about the use of force by the police in the implementation of education and policy with a given set of facts. “That’s crucial to what I’m saying,” Hainey said. Judge Armstrong was reluctant to decide whether to allow McCossen to testify at a later date. McCoshen has already drafted a “report on the use of force” in the Pietrzak case, but it is unclear what McCoshen will think of Pietrzak’s arrest if he is allowed to testify. The trial is set to resume on June 23 and 24. Towards the end of Friday, Butcher and Heini said it was unclear whether they would be completed within the last two days of the scheduled trial, and Judge Armstrong asked them to investigate finding another two days for trial if necessary.
