'I RECOGNIZED I HAD COMMITTED A CRIME'

Officer Says He Never Expected 'Thugs' To Complain About Beating

Const. Ray Gardner spoke like a man thankful to get a load off his chest
when he took the witness stand yesterday at a police complaint hearing into
the assaults of three Granville Street drug dealers in Stanley Park.

He described the anguish he and other members of the Stanley Park Six felt
when they met for the first time after a no-contact order from Vancouver
police Chief Jamie Graham expired in February 2003.

"We were all in shock -- confused about the gravity of the allegations,"
Gardner said at the hearing.

"I needed to talk with the other guys," he said of his bottled-up emotions.

"We had seen all the allegations. . . . They didn't make a lot of sense to us."

The six officers, close friends on and off the job, took three drug dealers
in a paddy wagon to the Third Beach parking lot, where they were to be let
go without charges and forced to make their way home -- a Vancouver Police
Department policy called "breaching."

But instead, five officers assaulted the victims -- they say by shoving
them around a circle and throwing a few punches.

Another officer, Const. Troy Peters, a recruit on his third shift with the
squad on the night of Jan. 13-14, 2003, testified he saw much worse abuse
of the three victims, including sustained punching and kicking by five of
the officers.

Six officers pleaded guilty to three counts each of assault. Two of them --
Gabriel Kojima and Duncan Gemmell -- were fired and are now fighting to be
reinstated through the unprecedented hearing.

Recalling their meeting at the Holiday Inn on Howe Street more than two
years ago, Gardner ran through the initial list of crimes they were alleged
to have committed.

"Kidnapping, unlawful confinement, robbery -- it was off-the-wall stuff,"
Gardner said.

"Seeing all this was shocking."

It was before any of them had seen the report filed by Peters or the
statements given by the three victims, Grant Wilson, Barry Lawrie and Jason
Desjardins.

"We were out in the cold," said Gardner, 33.

Gardner agreed with commission lawyer Dana Urban's suggestion that the
beatings, as described by a media liaison officer at the time, were
"potent" and "repugnant."

"I agree the allegation she was talking about was repugnant, if true," said
Gardner.

"Yes, there was an assault, but not this stuff. . . . A lot of it was a lot
of rubbish."

Gardner said he knew he had messed up at a debriefing after their shift
ended on the morning of the assaults.

"I recognized I had committed a crime," he said. "Now I know it wasn't right."

But challenged by Urban to explain his belief that they would get away with
the assaults because they did not expect Wilson, Lawrie or Desjardins to
complain, Gardner was frank.

"I didn't believe they were going to report a crime," he said. "They
weren't assaulted to the degree that they alleged.

"Wilson is a thug. Lawrie and Desjardins likewise. They're bullies," added
Gardner. "They dish out an awful lot of aggressiveness and violence.

"They wouldn't even have recognized that as being an assault against them."

"You didn't count on Const. Peters at that time," suggested Urban.

"No," replied Gardner, who continues his testimony today.