Spray paint vandal admits to ‘foolish and immature’ protest By: Dean Pritchard Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Monday, Jun. 28, 2021

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/06/2021 (1278 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg man arrested for defacing a monument to fallen RCMP officers and spray painting graffiti on the Canadian Museum for Human Rights says his actions set back the very cause he was trying to support.

“This is a very big issue I really believe in, but I don’t think my actions furthered the movement at all,” Carter Grycko told provincial court Judge Kael McKenzie at a sentencing hearing Friday.

“They really hurt the movement and they hurt others, obviously, too,” Grycko said by phone, calling court from a tent in northern B.C., where he is working for the summer as a tree planter. “It was very foolish and immature to (protest) that way.”

Grycko, 20, pleaded guilty to two counts of mischief to property for the Feb. 25, 2020, incidents, which came one day after Ontario Provincial Police arrested 10 protesters at a rail blockade near Belleville, Ont. That protest was in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs in B.C. opposing the construction of the Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline.

Court heard Grycko, who is not Indigenous, and three still unidentified co-accused arrived at RCMP headquarters on Portage Avenue shortly after 10 p.m. A red symbol was spray painted on the memorial statue for fallen officers, and messages including “F— RCMP,” “Shut down KKKanada” and “Land back,” were painted on an adjacent memorial, sidewalk and walls of the building.

Shortly after midnight, the group arrived at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, leaving the same messages and more in red spray paint, including “Is this the future you want” and “F— KKKanada.”

That same night, the constituency office of St. Boniface MP Dan Vandal was also vandalized. Grycko did not enter pleas in connection to that incident, and there was no mention of it in court.

Security video from the museum, as well as a witness cellphone video, captured the licence plate of the car Grycko was driving, which police traced back to the home he shared with his parents.

Grycko turned himself in to police two days later, red spray paint still visible on his sneakers and jacket, Crown attorney Ari Milo told court.

The vandalism was publicly condemned at the time by Indigenous leaders, including Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Arlen Dumas and Manitoba Metis Federation president David Chartrand, and Ricky Strongquill, son of slain RCMP Const. Dennis Strongquill.

“That statue, you know, it means a lot to the families of fallen police officers, and one of those police officers happens to be an Aboriginal police officer and has an Aboriginal family. So it’s absolutely disgraceful,” Strongquill told the CBC at the time.

Both the Crown and defence lawyer Karl Gowenlock recommended McKenzie sentence Grycko to one year of probation, but disagreed whether he should be granted a conditional discharge, which would spare him a criminal record.

“Both of the targets of the vandalism are ones that are deserving of protection,” Milo said, arguing a conditional discharge would not be in the public interest. “The reprehensible and crude defacement of the RCMP monument constitutes an egregious act of vandalism akin to the desecration of a cemetery.”

Grycko wanted to “call attention to what he saw as a great injustice,” Gowenlock said, but has since come to realize how harmful his actions were, adding the parents of some of Grycko’s closest friends are police officers.

“The amount of judgment and shame he has received from these families, as well as education, has caused him to really reconsider (his actions) and other perspectives,” the lawyer said. “But for this incident, he is an extremely responsible, promising young man.”

The Crown and defence both recommended Grycko perform an unspecified amount of community service work and repay the nearly $4,000 it cost to remove the graffiti.

McKenzie reserved his decision and will sentence Grycko at a later date.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca

Dean Pritchard
Courts reporter

Someone once said a journalist is just a reporter in a good suit. Dean Pritchard doesn’t own a good suit. But he knows a good lawsuit.

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