Diver Indicted in 2003 GBR mishap

[Geoff_H]

If a cop is unsatisfied with his job, he is welcome to find a new one.

So you feel it is ok to be unhelpful to the police, because they're just doing their job? Is it ok to be unhelpful to doctors, nurses, fireman, teachers, judges, shop assistants and everyone else in the world too? After all - using your logic - they can always find another job.

Don't know - don't care. If looking out for my own interests makes me selfish, then so be it.

Yep, putting your own interests before those of society as a whole is pretty much a textbook definition of selfishness.

Maybe - maybe not. Doesn't matter to me in the face of my personal risk.

OK - you see your wife/girlfriend/daughter murdered in the street. Do you talk to the police then, and tell them what you saw? Or do you tell them "Screw you, you're policeman and you can always get another job - I ain't saying a word"?

How about seeing someone elses wife/girlfriend/daughter murdered in the street?

Can you really say your argument is logically consistent? Or would you actually keep your mouth shut in both the situations above?

 

[Tricia]

If I could just drag us back on topic...

Whether you trust the police or not: whenever you are involved in a death (whether it's a clear accident or an accident that could be a murder), you will be obliged to make a statement to the police at least once, which Gabe did. And most people at that point don't have a lawyer present - it usually happens right after the incident.

It's the fact that Gabe went back a SECOND time and started giving "more info" that is a little weird. And then - in that second interview - he told things that were later proved to be lies (ex: about the "strong current" - but then the police found out he had gone out after the accident and bought a book about the site that warned of strong currents).

As an American lawyer, I would have participated in the first interview without counsel. But when I decided I needed to go back and "clear things up", I would have asked a lawyer for advice first and probably taken him/her with me to the interview. Sure, I think that way because I'm a lawyer. But in fact nowadays - due to all the crime shows on American TV - the average American knows not to talk to the police without an attorney present.

So this means Gabe was either very stupid or very arrogant. And I suspect it's the latter. Why? (Oh, I hesitate here, thinking of the flaming I'm going to get from my fellow Americans...) After 17 years living outside the U.S., the arrogance of Americans abroad continues to amaze me. So many think that the governments/police of other countries are completely incompetent, compared to the U.S. (And I confess, I've thought that myself on some occasions.) This is not the first time an American has thought this way and ended up in a bad situation.

So yeah, I think that Gabe was arrogant enough to think he could convince the Queensland police that it was merely a sad accident. And then he tripped himself up with his conflicting statements and the alarm bells (rightly) went off.

Does this make him guilty? No. But it did open the door to the police investigation, where they found even more bizarre inconsistencies that - when put all together - suggest this is more than an accident. (If you don't know what I mean, you should read slowly and at one sitting K_Girl's excellent summary of the case on the other thread.)

Frankly, once you read her summary, you realise that the police in ANY country would be very suspicious of his story. Where it will go from here, we'll see.

Just my 2 cents.

Trish

 

[NudeDiver]

I am trying to be open minded here and not defensive of "my country". We are talking about Australia, not Iraq, Britain, Spain, Italy or the US.

I fully realize the laws are different down there

So you feel it is ok to be unhelpful to the police, because they're just doing their job?

No, I feel it is OK to protect my own interests at all times. If the result is that I am unhelpful to the police, then so be it.

Is it ok to be unhelpful to doctors, nurses, fireman, teachers, judges, shop assistants and everyone else in the world too? After all - using your logic - they can always find another job.

Um...non sequitur.

Yep, putting your own interests before those of society as a whole is pretty much a textbook definition of selfishness.

If even I am not willing to look out for my own interests, it does not seem reasonable to expect anyone else to.

OK - you see your wife/girlfriend/daughter murdered in the street. Do you talk to the police then, and tell them what you saw?

Maybe - after I secure representation.

How about seeing someone elses wife/girlfriend/daughter murdered in the street?

Can you really say your argument is logically consistent? Or would you actually keep your mouth shut in both the situations above?

I'm going to do my best to keep my mouth shut until I have secured representation and I am adequately represented.

In any case - given that society is so lax with murderers anyway - we let them out of prison all the time (if we send them to prison at all), I don't think it matters much whether one cooperates with the police or not. The way I see it, even if a murderer walks into the police station, pulls a bloody head out of a burlap sack, swings it around a few times and then plops it on the sergeant's desk, and says, "hey, guess what, I did it!" - the odds are very strong they are not going to get what the deserve anyway - so why bother with it at all? I certainly see no reason to put MYSELF at risk so that this farce we call "justice" can be perpetuated.

 

[MikeFerrara]

I took the course over 4 years ago and this is all from memory. It is very well ingrained because you do all of the water-related individual skills twice, once in the pool and again in open water. Then you put them all together as a full rescue scenario and you do that twice - once in the pool, and then again in open water.

I was an instructor with two different agencies, PADI and IANTD. Niether had a confined water (pool) requirement for the rescue class.

Additionally, not all of the excersizes are required to be repeated with each student acting in each role, therefore, the number of times a student might try or practice an individual skill might more limited than you think.

This is the best course you will ever take and if you haven't done it yet, you should. You will learn a tremendous amount that will stay with you a long, long time. No matter what Gabe Watson says.

I disagree.

 

[InTheDrink]

OK - you see your wife/girlfriend/daughter murdered in the street. Do you talk to the police then, and tell them what you saw? Or do you tell them "Screw you, you're policeman and you can always get another job - I ain't saying a word"?

How about seeing someone elses wife/girlfriend/daughter murdered in the street?

Can you really say your argument is logically consistent? Or would you actually keep your mouth shut in both the situations above?

Perhaps we can close this particular avenue of discussion by clarifying that talking to the police, without representation, in an event where you could possibly be suspected of something is what is a no-no. Talking to them / making a statement to them, about an event in which you are not a suspect is clearly different. I'll close my previous rants with that.

 

[K_girl]

I was an instructor with two different agencies, PADI and IANTD. Niether had a confined water (pool) requirement for the rescue class.

Additionally, not all of the excersizes are required to be repeated with each student acting in each role, therefore, the number of times a student might try or practice an individual skill might more limited than you think.

I disagree.

Wow - really? I know I had to do it in the pool and in open water and everyone had to take turns in the various roles. All the guys got to rescue me and when it was my turn, I had to rescue a guy that was over 200 pounds. It was pretty intense. I hurt my knee in the open water excerise after playing the "victim" multiple times and could not get the certification until my knee healed and I could do the final full rescue scenario and that's why I wound-up with a guy that was over 200 pounds because no one else was available to play "my victim."

Perhaps my instructor wanted to be sure that her students could actually perform the skills before certifying them. She worked with us quite a bit in the pool for the rescue breathing part, making sure we were holding the head correctly, making sure we were protecting the airway and keeping the correct count. I also practiced multiple times, bringing a diver up off the bottom. By the time I had to bring up the 200+ guy up off the bottom in open water, it was challenging, but I was able to do it.

If I were an instructor, which I'm not, I would want to make sure my students could perform all the skills as described in the Rescue Diver book before I certified them. I know my instructor did. We spent 2 4-hour sessions in the pool and another 4-hour session in open water. I would feel that I would be cheated out of my money if I walked away from the class without feeling that I could perform those skills. I didn't do it for the prestige of having a card, I did it to have the skills to be a better diver for myself and those around me. And I would hope that the vast majority of other divers would feel the same way.

 

[almitywife]

i wish people would get over obsessing about this guys "rescue diver" cert

these skills are performed in a controlled environment. when in real life, with real stresses people dont always behave as they should on paper and when added to the fact that the guy was a vaccay diver i give very little merit to the cert card

maybe the husband is just one of those people that fall apart when the **** hits the fan and rather than look her parents in the eye and say i saved myself first he tried to make the story work better than the truth and hes been tripping up over the statements ever since

as far as the cutting the flowers (a scumbag act btw), if you have been hounded and hounded and hounded for years by 2 people wouldnt you be less than chariatable???

personally im still out on this guy, although i think he is a bit of a low act im still undecided if he is guilty or innocent of murder

 

[NudeDiver]

I agree. If you had seen the people in my rescue class, maybe your faith in this magical certification would be a lot less than it seems to be.

Aside from that - class is different from reality. These people who are claiming they know exactly what they will do and how they will act when the caca hits the fan are fooling themselves. For one example, go read this thread.

 

[K_girl]

K_girl, you clearly haven't been in a real rescue situation.

I've been in one, and while everyone involved tried their hardest and we all came together to spontaneously work as a team, nobody got it all right. We all even forgot basic Rescue 101 which was to get the victim out of her gear at the surface. I was fighting a little voice in my head that couldn't deal with the reality and wanted to call a timeout -- which occupied about 75% of my available cycles and made me pretty stupid as a result of that. After it was all over, I compared notes with other divers that were right there and there substantial inconsistencies in everyone's memory of the events (for example, her dive buddy swore she dropped her weights immediately on surfacing just like she had been trained to do, but I know for a fact that I ditched her weightbelts as they were trying to drag her up to the dock with them still on her -- I don't think her buddy was lying about this, though, I think she just released her BCD cumberbund or something like that and in the stress of the situation didn't realize it wasn't her weightbelt).

A real rescue is nowhere as close to theory as you think it is, and taking a single Rescue course I would argue is totally inadequate, especially for something difficult like recovering another diver. I've had that skill done in Rescue, in my Nitrox course (additional skills dive added by the instructor), in rec triox, in tech1, in cave1 and done a half dozen practice sessions doing recovery over the course of ~4 years, and I still don't feel like I've got that skill down well enough.

I've been in a few sticky situations where I had to make some quick decisions that involved another diver. So here they are:

One dealt with a panicked diver on a night dive on the surface who I pushed from behind back towards the boat as he was flailing about not listening to me or others on the boat trying to get him to come back to the boat.

One dealt with my buddy who panicked in a very strong 2.5 knot current after struggling to get to 80 feet. She started up and I went with her, holding onto her, making sure it was a slow ascent. I signaled her to continue the ascent at 15 feet and skip the safety stop as I saw we did not have too much nitrogen loading. Since it was a very strong current and only one skiff to retrieve more than 15 divers, none of whom could fight the current, I felt it was a better decision.

The other was my dive buddy was on the surface with loss of reg and entanglement in the tag line in another extreme current situation. It was like we were body surfing holding onto the tag line. She was also fighting sinking because (as we found out later) after maintenance of her BC, the inflator hose was not screwed on all the way. I got to her and grabbed her Air-2 and stuck it in her mouth and helped her hold onto the line, which she had already let go of once and I had to yell to her to kick back to the line. The whole time I've got this big camera bound to my BC.

One buddy came up to me with just over 400 pounds of air at 50 feet, but we had been much deeper. I grabbed her hand and led her back to the boat, performing the safety stop along the way. She became very bouyant at about 20 feet and I had to keep her down for the safety stop. She got extremely tired and stopped trying to stay down - I had to do all the work, but got her back to the boat with just over 100 pounds.

I have never been in a full-board rescue operation with a lost diver. So you're right - I don't have the experience you do and I do hope that the woman involved in the situation you mentioned came out OK. But I do know that you are right about one thing - people's perception of the incident can be different, most especially when it comes to underwater communication.

But really - you make the point I have been talking about in this case which is NOT whether or not someone does actually follow protocol in an emergency. So, would you say that in "Basic Rescue 101" - like you said - that you were ever taught how to "get someone" in an emergency? Would you ever say, like Gabe Watson did, that you were never taught to bring up a diver from the bottom? I keep making this point over and over again - it is getting boring.

 

[K_girl]

In any case - given that society is so lax with murderers anyway - we let them out of prison all the time (if we send them to prison at all), I don't think it matters much whether one cooperates with the police or not. The way I see it, even if a murderer walks into the police station, pulls a bloody head out of a burlap sack, swings it around a few times and then plops it on the sergeant's desk, and says, "hey, guess what, I did it!" - the odds are very strong they are not going to get what the deserve anyway - so why bother with it at all? I certainly see no reason to put MYSELF at risk so that this farce we call "justice" can be perpetuated.

This is contradictory. You apparently think we should be able to provide justice, but you'll be damned if you are going to participate to get there.

As far as the videos you asked me to watch. I started, but haven't finished yet because they are lengthy, but I don't believe those principles apply to this case. This is because they are talking investigation of a "crime" and they start right out with the scenario of several people who were obviously murdered by being shot. Whereas, as scuba-related death will be treated as an "accident." When the investigators arrived on the scene - to them Tina's death started as an "accident." Remember, "accidents" are also investigated by the police. There would be no reason for anyone not to cooperate under an "accident" scenario. It would have been to Gabe's benefit for them to continue to investigate it as an "accident." For him to immediately refuse to speak to them without representation would send an indication that Gabe would have classified this as a "crime" in his own mind - which would automatically raise suspicion that maybe it is a crime. Gabe really had no choice but to cooperate, most especially if he was guilty because he needed it to look like an "accident."

However, I do intend to watch the videos, as it may be beneficial to my work in the criminal defense field and it may be useful to provide that information to others I work with. I don't disagree with the basics of what you are saying as we have seen plenty of instances of unjust pressure applied to both our clients and our witnesses. So, thank you, and thank you for playing the defense devil's advocate. Much appreciated.