Cameraman Kirk Duncan kept rolling, even as he was assaulted by an angry tent city resident.
It was the afternoon of May 27, 2016. Duncan was filming background shots for a CTV news story that the B.C. government was heading back to court to try to evict residents of a homeless camp at the Victoria courthouse.
A fire inspection had found that the tent city posed a risk to life and safety: There were flammable tarpaulins, combustibles stored throughout the camp and items blocking exit paths.
Tent city resident John McEachern caught sight of CHEK News cameraman Steve Grebanier first. Then he saw Duncan and started screaming and swearing at him to stop filming. The video of their interaction was a key piece of evidence at McEachern’s trial in Victoria provincial court on Tuesday (warning: video contains coarse language).
After hearing evidence from a police officer, Grebanier, Duncan and McEachern, Judge Sue Wishart found McEachern guilty of assaulting the veteran cameraman.
Wishart ordered a presentence report to help when she sentences the 55-year-old, who suffers from schizophrenia, early in the new year.
“He came at me,” Duncan testified. “He was yelling at me to stop taking his picture. He lunged at me and grabbed the camera. He was punching and kicking me. I held onto the camera and kept rolling, using it as a defence mechanism.”
Duncan kept backing up and kept the camera rolling, he testified.
He fell backward over debris, went down and kept rolling.
In the video, Chrissie Brett, an advocate considered to be an unofficial spokeswoman for the tent city, can be seen trying to calm McEachern down. Then he lunges at Duncan a second time.
“Enough,” Brett says. “We can’t have this.”
Duncan wanted to get away from McEachern and headed to his car. He was followed by Brett and McEachern.
“They were trying to apologize for what happened,” Duncan said. “Chrissie was doing most of the talking. I was trying to ignore them.”
McEachern, who now lives in social housing at 844 Johnson St., said Brett had “registered” him as a member of an internal tent city residents’ security force, known as the peacekeepers.
He testified that was one of 13 men and four women who were breaking up fights and sorting out squabbles every 15 minutes. His job as a peacekeeper was to make sure people in tent city felt safe.
“That day I was doing security and two girls told me a newsman stuck cameras in their tent,” McEachern said.
Despite the video evidence, McEachern denied being angry, assaulting Duncan or touching the TV camera.
The judge accepted Duncan’s evidence that McEachern tried to grab at his camera and tried to kick him. McEachern’s evidence did not raise any reasonable doubt, Wishart said.
“Even if he was acting in his role as peacekeeper for the residents of tent city, it did not allow him to act in the manner that he did. It was a public space and media crews were allowed to be there,” she said.
