Third party to investigate events leading up to Edmonton Chinatown homicides | CBC News
The Edmonton Police Commission says it is seeking out an independent third party to review the events leading up to the Chinatown homicides two months ago.
The Commission didn’t specify who would be doing the review.
On May 18, Hung Trang, 64, and Ban Phuc Hoang, 61, were killed in Edmonton’s Chinatown neighborhood.
Three days before the men were fatally beaten, RCMP officers dropped off Justin Bone, 36, in the city even though bail conditions prohibited him from being in Edmonton unsupervised.
Now, the Commission says it has decided “to seek an external independent third party with a strong legal background to assist in reviewing the circumstances of the individual’s arrival and stay in Edmonton.”
According to the Commission, the third party will be responsible for the following:
- Assess how and when the Edmonton Police Service interacted with the accused person.
- Examine applicable police policies.
- Review publicly available reports or proceedings from other bodies.
- Provide updates to the Commission with respect to knowledge gained through monitoring ongoing processes and proceedings.
- Produce a final report for the Commission once all legal proceedings are concluded or could commence. The report would outline all known information, potential gaps in knowledge, and recommend how the Commission could address knowledge gaps going forward.
This comes after the killings sparked outrage over high rates of crime in Chinatown and prompted calls to halt the release of incarcerated offenders into Edmonton’s core.
In a Twitter thread Monday, Mayor Amarjeet Sohi called the incident “preventable,” expressing his frustrations on the events that led to the deaths.
“I too have questions about how our justice and policing system failed this community,” Sohi wrote in a tweet.
City Council moved quickly to support Chinatown, but it is clear that governance alone cannot prevent something like this from happening again. This event was preventable, and the public must know the details of what led to this tragedy. <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/YEG?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#YEG</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/YEGcc?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#YEGcc</a>
—@AmarjeetSohiYEG
In late May, referencing the homicides, Alberta Justice Minister Tyler Shandro used his power under the Police Act to demand a report from the City of Edmonton on what is being done to get crime in the city’s core under control.
Back in June, Trang’s daughter Christina Trang said she was sickened to learn about Bone’s interactions with police.
She said she can’t fathom why he was dropped off in the city, adding RCMP and police have broken the public trust.
The police commission says the third party report will be released after Bone’s trial.
