Vancouver officer tells Gray hearing no ‘magic word’ to de-escalate fatal situation

Birzneck, taking questions from hearing counsel Brock Martland, said he concealed his extended baton in his hand before ascending an outdoor staircase with two other responding officers.

Martland’s questioning focused on crisis intervention and de-escalation techniques that police are taught, and Birzneck said de-escalating situations with emotionally disturbed people is “not as easy as you think.”

“I don’t think there’s a magic word or a magic step in there anymore that I could have already done,” he said.

He said there was considerable uncertainty about the situation before he and other officers encountered Gray in response to an urgent call for backup.

Birzneck said he and the other officers were “going into the unknown” before ascending the staircase on a street near the boundary between Burnaby and Vancouver to find Gray.

He said there were attempts to communicate with Gray, but he wasn’t getting “a lot of communication back,” and tried to assure him that he was safe among police.

Birzneck said information relayed over radio after a call can be “completely inaccurate,” and he didn’t know what they were going to be dealing with until they “laid eyes” on the subject of the call.

He said it wasn’t a “forgone conclusion” that there was going to be a fight with the suspect, though he believed Gray could have been placed under arrest based on a call to police about him threatening someone and spraying a woman with water.

A situation could be active or “amped up” when a call was received, but calm by the time officers arrived, Birzneck testified.

“Policing is not linear. You’re going into a situation, you have a certain amount of information. In this case, not a whole ton of information. It’s as you go, the situation changes,” he told the public hearing, which began in January but has been repeatedly delayed.

The officer also discussed a police form he filled out in the aftermath of the incident, telling his lawyer, Greg Cavouras, that he had never been in a more intense struggle in his career.

But he told the hearing he never used force beyond what was required to control Gray and never lost control of his emotions

Birzneck told the hearing that he filled out the “subject behaviour officer response” report to suggest there was no sign Gray would have co-operated with police.

Birzneck, whose testimony began on Tuesday, said Wednesday that he checked boxes on the form to indicate “pre-assault cues” from Gray, including a “thousand-yard stare,” clenched fists, non-compliance and spitting.

He also said Gray displayed “incredible strength” and seemed “impervious to pain.”

A police disciplinary process previously determined none of the seven officers committed misconduct, and no charges have been laid over Gray’s death, which a 2023 coroner’s inquest ruled was a homicide, a term that does not assign legal blame.

The inquest heard that Gray was left with injuries that included a fractured eye socket, a crushed voice box and ruptured testicles, while a paramedic told the inquest that Gray’s bruising was so severe, he initially thought he was not a white man.

At least three of the other officers involved in Gray’s deadly arrest are scheduled to testify, including constables Beau Spencer, Nick Thompson and Josh Wong.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 14, 2026.

Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press

by The Canadian Press

Vancouver officer tells Gray hearing no ‘magic word’ to de-escalate fatal situation

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