“Justice for Alvin.”
That’s what more than 100 of Alvin Wright’s friends and family called for as they rallied outside the RCMP headquarters in Vancouver yesterday afternoon.
The 22-year-old father was shot in his upstairs bedroom after three Mounties responded to a 911 domestic-dispute call at his Langley home in August 2010.
Vancouver police investigated the Langley RCMP shooting and announced last week that the veteran officer involved would not be charged.
Al Wright, Alvin’s father, said he still has a lot of questions.
“There’s no answers as to what happened,” Wright said. “The police keep you out of the loop. They don’t involve you in the investigation. You almost feel like a suspect.”
But Wright said the decision of the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner (OPCC) to take a second look at the VPD’s investigation is “a step in the right direction.”
Rob Getz, Alvin’s foster brother, said there ought to be changes in the RCMP contract, should it be renewed, to make sure no one else has to face what they’ve endured.
“There needs to be some changes … to have them held accountable, to have a different way of policing them and investigating situations like this,” Getz said. “(Alvin) was a great father, a great person. This is the kind of person that this thing should never have happened to.”
David Eby of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association said the province is “simply not moving fast enough” in ending the system of police investigating themselves.
“We need the province to act in a far more expeditious manner than they have been in reforming police death investigations,” Eby said. “In particular, bringing in a new independent (civilian-led) investigation office that they said will be in place at the end of this year, but for which they have yet to hire a head for this new organization.”
A coroner’s inquest into Wright’s death has been scheduled for March 2012.
Local news from metronews.ca/vancouver
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