VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – As of Monday, the province’s new Independent Investigations Office will be responsible for investigating cases that involve the police and civilian fatalities and injuries.

A private swearing-in ceremony was already held on Friday in Surrey, and some key figures were invited.

One guest was Zofia Cisowski, the mother of Robert Dziekanski, and another was her lawyer Walter Kosteckyi. It was the inquiry into the Polish immigrant’s death that led to the creation of the office.

Thomas Braidwood, who oversaw the Dziekanski inquiry, and William Davies, who headed the Frank Paul inquiry, were also at the ceremony.

Kosteckyi says a big mistake on the part of police investigators in the Tasering death of Dziekanski was releasing sensitive information that eventually was proved untrue. He says because police announced shortly after the incident that only two Taser shots were fired, witnesses may have not been compelled to come forward with their own account of what happened. A video reveals several Taser shots were fired.

“Now you have an independent agency that can make the determination on what needs to be released to the public, how the investigation is being conducted,  whether police officers have to be warned and reinterviewed,” he says.

Kosteckyi is confident in the head of the office and his personnel.

“I think the police should be happy about this, because it relieves them of the burden of having to investigate themselves and the criticisms that it opens them up to,” he insists.

A man whose daughter could have been saved from gunshot wounds if a police officer had done more investigating is welcoming the new police watchdog.

But Mark Surakka points out the office will still have to rely on cooperation by the police.

“It’s still a problem, I think, because first of all, if there’s an incident of a certain magnitude, they have to report it themselves,” he says.

Surakka began advocating for more independent police investigations after his daughter was discovered dying four days following a 911 call about gunfire in the neighbourhood.

It was later learned the dispatched police officer didn’t get out of his car to investigate the call.