SIX OFFICERS PLEAD GUILTY TO ASSAULT

Vancouver Constables Still Face Sentencing, Disciplinary Hearing Before
Chief Decides If They Can Keep Their Jobs

Six Vancouver police officers who roughed-up three suspected drug dealers
in Stanley Park in January each pleaded guilty to three counts of common
assault yesterday.

After running a gauntlet of cameras, the officers looked rattled as they
entered the courthouse.

Only Const. Christopher Cronmiller personally addressed the judge when
asked to enter his plea.

The others, constables Raymond Gardner, Duncan Gemmell, James Kenney,
Gabriel Kojima and Brandon Steele, had their lawyers plead guilty for them.

The plea bargain significantly reduced the severity and lowered the number
of charges initially laid against the six junior officers from 33 to 18.

Special Crown prosecutor Robert Gourlay stayed all charges of assault with
a weapon and attempted obstruction of justice, and agreed to proceed by
summary conviction on the remaining counts of common assault. That means
the maximum sentence the officers face is six months in jail.

The plea bargain effectively disables a civil lawsuit filed by the victims,
said the victims' lawyer, Phil Rankin.

He said there is precedent-setting law suggesting damages suffered by
common assault victims are insufficient to warrant a civil remedy.

He said he was appalled by the terms of the plea bargain.

"It's such a laugh that you can be abducted by the police, taken to Stanley
Park, beaten in a gauntlet, told to 'leave Vancouver or you'll die' or
words to that effect, and they'll take a plea to common assault," he said,
referring to the victims' civil statement of claim.

Rankin called the agreed statement of facts which form the basis of the
guilty plea a "complete and utter whitewash."

"It's pale, light facsimile. You vaguely know they're talking about the
same thing but you really, really have to strain to think it's the same case."

Shortly after the Jan. 14 assaults, Barry Lawrie, one of the victims, told
The Province he and two friends were snatched from Granville Mall, driven
to Stanley Park in a police wagon where they were kicked and beaten with
police batons and left to walk home shoeless.

The facts entered in court relate a far softer version of events.

At 4:30 a.m. the three victims, Lawrie, Jason Desjardins and Grant Wilson,
were arrested in Khan's market after Gemmell and Gardner saw them arguing
over what they suspected was a drug deal.

"Wilson resisted arrest," the court document says. The two arresting
officers were joined by Steele, Cronmiller and Kojima.

Last to arrive were Kenney and Const. Troy Peters, a recruit, who later
confessed the truth about the incident.

The trio were placed in the police wagon and the cadre of officers followed
in a convoy to Third Beach in Stanley Park. One by one, as the victims were
released, they were roughed-up and verbally abused by the gang of officers.

Gemmell poked Lawrie in the chest with his index finger while Steele and
Gardner "berated him." Steele and Kojima gave Lawrie a shove.

Desjardins was next out. Gemmell punched him in the stomach and Gardner
shoved him in the chest a couple of times. "Kojima contacted Desjardins
with his police-issue baton in the vicinity of his knee," the fact sheet
states.

Wilson was last out. He was berated and punched by Steele, shoved by
Gardner and "prodded" by Kojima's boot instep.

Kenney had no physical or verbal contact with any of the victims but
watched from a few metres away.

The officers discussed the incident at the station later that morning. In a
report filed the same day, Gemmell said all three victims had been released
at separate times and locations.

There was no mention of physical contact until more than a week later when
Peters disclosed what he knew to police authorities. He remains working as
a police constable.

The six guilty officers will be sentenced on Dec. 16 and 17 and remain
suspended with pay until their disciplinary hearings in January, said VPD
spokeswoman Const. Anne Drennan.

"An assault conviction doesn't mean you automatically lose your job. After
the [disciplinary] process is complete, the chief constable . . . will make
his decision," she said.

The officers earn about $50,000 a year, which means it has cost Vancouver
taxpayers approximately $300,000 to pay them for not working over the past
year.

John Richardson, executive-director of PIVOT, a legal advocacy group which
has filed 50 complaints about police misconduct on behalf of people in the
Downtown Eastside, said the guilty pleas go some way to validate other
complaints.

"There's no pretending any more there are no problems within the VPD," he said.

Const. Tom Stamatakis, police union president, insisted the incident was an
isolated "mistake."

"These members accepted responsibility for their actions at the start . . .
and now we're at the point where they and the police department can move on."

Stamatakis said he does not believe the department's reputation has been
tarnished. "The information came forward and the police department took
immediate steps to deal with it."

He downplayed suggestions that the officers' inexperience contributed to
their poor judgment. More important, he said, is the stressful working
environment faced by police working in the drug-riddled downtown area.

"We deal with issues that I would suggest aren't faced by any other police
department across the province or even in the country."