Case one: This one's interesting. I suspect that if your evidence laws are anything like those in my country, what the officer did was an illegal search. But, he also caught criminals in the commission of a crime that should be punished.

I would probably find the smugglers guilty, even if the evidence the officer found was thrown out of court. Sentence? I don't know. That would depend on what the normal penalty is for this kind of find. I'd also be inclined to have the officer sent back to the academy for training on search procedures.

Case two: If you use a gun on someone, you accept the likelihood of death. He's admitted guilt, so that's not at stake. Penalty would depend - based on the evidence here, I'd probably say he was due for life imprisonment.

case three: Guilty. Ignorance of other cultures and other languages is no defence for brutality. Even (especially?) in a country like Canada, there should be an expectation that someone who speaks your language will be used. In Australia, there's a 24 hour phone based interpretation service. Something like that should have been used rather than just struggling ahead with a language he doesn't understand.

The penalty? I'd probably be inclined towards leniency here - sacking the officers who fired the extra shots   is enough, because they're clearly inclined to sadism and that's undesirable in a policeman. But the border organisation should be shook up from the top down for general incompetence. What kind of border protection group doesn't have decent access to multilingual services?

quite a coincidence huh?  what's even more surprising is how infrequently cops find themselves in this sorta situation without experiencing an equally compelling "hunch" that continuing such a search without a warrant or probable cause is illegal.   case should be dismissed and the cop should be disciplined.

what happened to the prospective suicide?  the cop saw some known criminals and forgot all about him?  or...another amazing coincidence?  in any event, unless there's some law prohibiting known criminals from sharing a taxi, on what basis did this rcmp officer decide to detain these guys.  unless he observed them violating a specific statute, he illegally detained and attempted to search them.  if the defendant legally possessed a firearm at the time he was doing no more nor less than defending himself against a rogue cop.  if not, he should be charged with firearms violations and manslaughter.

if it can be proven the video was not altered or edited, four rcmp officers should be booted off the force and anyone previously convicted on the basis of their testimony should be retried.    

it just occured to me i'd foolishly overlooked one possibility very relevant to cases 1 & 2. 

if defendants consented to being searched, they're dumbasses and deserve to be convicted.

Case 1

Well, I am not sure on how the laws in Canada are for searching vehicles. It's my understandning that here in the US people are suppose to give the cop permission to search the vehicle. Any denial could give the copy the ability to hold the driver and passengers for questioning. A hunch? That sounds too much like a movie kind of thing; the cop may have recognized the people in the car, may have been pulling them over on a known drug trafficking route and/or the vehicle may have had something (like a broken taillight for example) that made the cop pull them over as oppose to some random pulling over. I think that would be wrong to be honest but that's just me.

Verdict? For possesion they should be found guilty. If the cop seached the car without some kind of permission (as can happen here in the US) then this case would have been dismissed due to incorrect procedure by police such as an illegal search or something regardless if there was evidence to put them in jail for a long time.

Case 2

Hope you don't mind asking but what happened to the suicidal man?

As for Bulatci, 4 bullets does not show attempting to wound someone since 1 bullet could do that and you would actually shoot once and look to see if you hit them (in a sense) before firing more shoots if necessary if wounding was the actual intent. Besides, when someone shoots a gun, one's intent is not ususally to wound when one is not aiming at a specific part of the body we know can wound but not kill the person ( a leg, an arm) but instead shooting at random out of fear. He may not have had premeditated intent to kill, but he did intent to shoot knowing he might kill the officer (especially with 4 bullets that hit, possibly more were shot) and therefor was aware of what he was doing which could translate to first degree even if there was no law making first degree regardless. BTW, the weapon did not belong to the cop meaning the guy most likely had it giving the indication he would have killed if necessary to escape which is what he did.

Verdict? Guilty for murder in first degree.

Case 3

Again, not sure about taser laws in Canada but if the cops overdid it on purpose knowing full well they shouldn't have, they were in the wrong. They guy may have exaggerated his actions but the cops are suppose to stop problems not create more.

Verdict? Guilty for lying and for unsing the taser inappropiately causing the death of a person.

This was a great article Artysim. I am no detective and am not very educated in matters of law but I understand the basics and this is how I see it. As for the sentence I gues it would all depend on the laws and what punishment is meant for them.

Hi everyone, thanks for your responses! It's always good to get another perspective.

In case 1 as most people correctly suspected, it was an illegal search so the case was thrown out. The two drug dealers were released however -minus- the couple million dollars worth of cocaine they were transporting so I'm sure they're not too terribly popular with their cohorts.

Case 2 is one that I'm conflicted with as the fellow who committed the crime is an absolute scumbag. He's a drug dealer with an extensive record before the murder and testimony from several witnesses have stated that after shooting the cop twice in the chest (which was absorbed by his bulletproof vest) he intentionally aimed for the head. No matter  how you cut it, there's absolutely no excuse or reason for a citizen to fire a weapon at an on-duty officer. In this case I hope they lock him up and throw away the key, however he'll probably get 20-25 years and get out. As for the whole responding to a call about a suicide and ending up chasing a drug dealer, that's something I wondered about too. It turns out that the cop had been working the night shift and had gotten off work at 4:30 AM only to be woken up at  home at 5:00 am by the dispatcher for the call-out, so it could be that he wasn't thinking straight at the time -or- that there had been a previous altercation with the same individual earlier in his shift.

Case 3 is another tricky one, what I found most interesting is that if the amateur photographer hadn't taken the video then this case probably wouldn't see the light of day, it would have been an open and shut matter of taking the RCMP's reports that he resisted, they tasered once, then he went into cardiac arrest. I think the RCMP, while they definitely need to be advocates for their officers, at times should be able to admit that their people made a mistake rather than try to use the smokescreen approach.