Johnny 'Bingo' Dawson Died for your Sins ...
and at the hands of the Vancouver Police Department and the United Church of Canada
by Kevin Annett
Bingo Dawson (right) with the author, shortly before his murder
My friend Johnny ‘Bingo’ Dawson was beaten to death by three Vancouver policemen fifteen years ago this Monday, December 9. His murder was not just another random cop-killing of an Indian.
Three days before his death, Bingo had led our occupation of St. Andrew’s Wesley United Church during its December 6 Sunday service along with other survivors of its ‘residential school’ death camps. Its outraged minister, Gary Paterson – a notorious member of the child-trafficking Twelve Mile Club – physically assaulted Bingo, ripping up his placard and screaming at him,
“That’s the last bullshit stunt you’ll ever pull!”.
Echoing Paterson, a police sergeant confronted us as we left St. Andrew’s church. Thrusting his fist into Bingo’s face, he yelled,
“Keep it up, asshole! Troublemakers like you go missing!”
Ricky Lavallee was an eyewitness to Bingo’s murder three days later, on December 9, 2009.
"There were three cops in the alley off Main Street and they had Johnny Bingo against a wall and were using their clubs on him. They kept kicking and hitting him even when he was on the ground passed out. They just left him lying there.”
Provincial Coroner Matt Brown did a quick and blatant whitewash of Bingo’s murder. Brown ruled that Bingo had died of ‘Presumed Alcohol Withdrawal’, contradicting the toxicology report that showed that there was no alcohol in Bingo’s blood: “No alcohol, prescribed medications or illicit drugs are detected”. (British Columbia Coroner Case No. 2009-00280-0149, Autopsy No. 09-2463, Provincial Toxicology Centre No. 2009-1652)
Brown also falsified the date of Bingo’s death to four days before it happened and a day before the St. Andrew’s church occupation.
The sole eyewitness to Bingo’s deadly beating, Ricky Lavallee, ended up getting beaten to death as well. But before he died, Ricky told me in a video recording that he’d been threatened by two Vancouver cops early in 2010.
“They wanted to know what I knew about Johnny Bingo’s death and I told them nothin’. Then one of them said I’d better not say anything about what I saw. They also asked if I knew where you were and what other protests you were planning at the churches.”
I never saw Bingo happier than the day a throng of us seized St. James Anglican church (above picture). As the two terrified priests ran out the back door, Bingo seized the pulpit and yelled,
“Now you hear my prayer! Get the hell off our land, you fucking child killers!”
The way we honor the dead is by not forgetting how they died and bringing to justice those responsible.
B.C. Coroner Matt Brown, United Church minister Gary Paterson, and others are convicted co-conspirators in the death of Johnny Bingo Dawson and others in our movement. Read the evidence at Summary Judgement of the West Coast Common Law Court of Justice, November 20, 2023 – Murder by Decree - and join our new year recommencement of the international campaign to banish and reclaim genocidal churches from our nations!
