TWO FIRED CONSTABLES BACKED BY TEAM LEADER

Two Vancouver police officers fired last year for their part in illegal
beatings at Stanley Park would be welcomed back to the force if it was up
to their former team leader.

Sgt. Curtis Robinson told a public hearing into the firings of former
constables Duncan Gemmell and Gabriel Kojima yesterday he never would have
let the officers take the trio to Stanley Park to release them. Instead, he
said, they should have been dropped off at Main and Hastings, away from
their Granville hangout.

Robinson said he wrote a letter to Chief Jamie Graham, who fired the two
officers in January 2004, describing Gemmell as "a loyal, dedicated, proud
man who has a great deal to offer the community."

The hearing marks the first time since the new Police Act came into force
in 1998 that a B.C. police officer fired by a police chief has requested a
public hearing.

Gemmell, Kojima and four other officers pleaded guilty to assaulting the
three men, who between them had over 100 convictions for such crimes as
drug trafficking, assault and theft.

A seventh VPD recruit, Troy Peters, now a constable, witnessed the assaults
and blew the whistle.

The six pleaded guilty to assault in January 2004. Their sentences varied,
with Gemmell and Kojima receiving the harshest punishment -- 60-day and
30-day conditional sentences.

Dana Urban, counsel for the police complaints commissioner, said none of
the evidence to be presented at the hearing came out in court. If
adjudicator Donald Clancy rules the firings were too severe, Chief Graham
could reverse his decision, he said.

Outside the hearing, Vancouver Police Union president Tom Stamatakis said
Gemmell and Kojima "shouldn't have been dismissed. Nobody's saying they
acted appropriately, but I think there are reasons for what happened."