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<\/p>\nThe officer told the hearing he had been trained to regard excited delirium as a medical emergency, not a crime.<\/p>\n
\t<\/p>\n
No charges have been laid over Gray\u2019s death, which a 2023 coroner\u2019s inquest ruled was a homicide, a term that does not assign legal blame.<\/p>\n
A pathologist told the earlier coroners\u2019 inquest that it had been thought \u201cso-called excited delirium syndrome\u201d could result independently in death, but analysis of the published data suggests that\u2019s \u201cquite unlikely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spencer\u2019s lawyer, Claire Hatcher, said in introductory remarks at the public hearing that during a lucid moment by Gray, the officer told him he would be OK, and he was \u201creassured by a professional police officer who was concerned about his well-being.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said Spencer\u2019s role in the arrest had to be \u201cconsidered distinctly\u201d from those of other officers, since he arrived \u201cafter the fight had been ongoing for several minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hatcher said Spencer \u201cdelivered three or four closed fist strikes, punches\u201d to the shoulder of Gray to get his arm behind his back so he could be handcuffed during the arrest on a lawn.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expect Const. Spencer will testify that he and (other) officers then moved Mr. Gray further out from the tree to an open area on the lawn,\u201d she said. \u201cThe adjudicator will hear that this is the whole of the force Const. Spencer used.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also addressed allegations that Spencer might have neglected his duties by not making notes immediately after the incident.<\/p>\n
Hatcher said the hearing would be told that officers in the arrest had gathered at Vancouver police headquarters for a meeting after Gray\u2019s death, where a \u201cunion representative or representatives instructed the members, Constable Spencer in particular, not to take any notes, and not to write anything on a computer while the IIO (independent Investigations Office) investigation was underway.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spencer\u2019s testimony at the hearing in Vancouver on Thursday came after that of Const. Eric Birzneck, who said he did not agree he had given a \u201clopsided\u201d account of the altercation by likening Gray to \u201cthe Hulk\u201d or a \u201ccharging bull.\u201d <\/p>\n
Birzneck also denied trying to hide the fact that another officer had punched Gray as they tried to subdue him when the counsel for the commission, Brock Martland, asked him if he was trying to \u201cprotect a fellow officer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martland asked Birzneck about his account of the attempt to arrest Gray, questioning whether his evidence omitted certain facts or minimized things to avoid creating problems for the others involved in the confrontation. <\/p>\n
Birzneck disagreed and told the hearing his memories had been jogged over time with \u201cpieces of the puzzle\u201d coming together afterward. <\/p>\n
He told the hearing earlier this week that Gray displayed incredible strength and appeared \u201cimpervious to pain\u201d as police tried to subdue him near the boundary between Burnaby and Vancouver on Aug. 13, 2015. <\/p>\n
Birzneck said Thursday that he believed Gray was \u201carrestable\u201d at the time, with no lawful right to repel officers\u2019 use of force against him.<\/p>\n
The seven officers involved in the fatal altercation with Gray are named as respondents in the public hearing, called under the Police Act. <\/p>\n
The commissioner\u2019s notice of public hearing said an earlier disciplinary process had dismissed misconduct allegations, but the discipline authority found the process \u201cstrangely lopsided\u201d and had to decide the case despite \u201cdiscrepancies and inconsistencies in statements made by (Vancouver Police Department) members.\u201d <\/p>\n
The earlier inquest heard Gray was left with injuries that included a fractured eye socket, crushed voice box and ruptured testicles, while a paramedic said Gray\u2019s bruising was so severe, he initially thought Gray was not a white man.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 15, 2026. <\/p>\n
Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The officer told the hearing he had been trained to regard excited delirium as a medical emergency, not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":934724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55],"class_list":["post-934723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=934723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/934724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=934723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=934723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=934723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}