SENSATIONAL STORY WASN'T TRUE

Stellarton Police Chief, Newspaper Offer Very Different Accounts Of
How Front-Page Story Originated

When the story of an 11-year-old girl acting as a mule for Stellarton
drug pushers appeared in The New Glasgow Evening News last March, it
touched off a storm of controversy. The Stellarton police commission
cited it in a demand for more government money to hire a drug
investigator. Other media picked up the story. And a cop used it to
try to bring down the chief of the Stellarton police.

The most salient fact about the story turns out to be this: it is not
true.

It came in as a tip. The newspaper's assignment editor, Dave Glenen,
had heard that Stellarton police had found a lot of drugs on a kid.

At the time, the town was battling a surge in drug use among its
youth. The pain-killer Dilaudid had become so popular that some
drugstores stopped stocking it after a string of break-ins.

Glenen assigned reporter Kevin Adshade to check out the tip. During a
45-minute interview in the chief's office, Adshade says Amby Heighton
told him that his force had seized 140 tablets of Dilaudid from an
11-year-old girl. Heighton, he says, feared pushers were using kids
too young to be charged to carry their drugs.

"We've seized drugs off other kids who were 10 and 11 years of age,"
Heighton is quoted in the front-page story that ran March 5, 2001,
under the headline: Big City Drugs and Our Kids.

In a handful of cases where officers found drugs on kids younger than
12, "the kids say they found them, (but) we certainly don't believe
that," Heighton told the newspaper.

A week later, local police commission chairman Ansel Campbell told
council that his commission was planning to seek government funding to
hire another officer whose duties would be solely drug-related.

But the story was already starting to unravel. Const. Dave Kingsbury,
a longtime officer, had doubts about it. When the story broke, he was
on suspension for leaving the town unguarded for an hour. He had also
been demoted to constable from corporal.

Kingsbury checked police records and asked his nine fellow officers if
they remembered the incident with the 11-year-old girl. Then he heard
that Heighton was calling the newspaper account inaccurate when asked
about it by the Stellarton RCMP and the chief of a neighbouring force.

Kingsbury was already upset with Heighton for talking to the media
about his suspension. Now, he thought he had caught his boss in a lie.

He made 10 allegations against Heighton to the Nova Scotia Police
Commission.

The commission appointed investigator A.D. Squires. When he asked
Heighton about the newspaper article, the chief said it was an
inaccurate account of a phone interview with a reporter. He denied
that he told Adshade that officers had seized drugs from a handful of
kids younger than 12 and that he feared kids may be carrying drugs for
dealers.

He produced an October 2000 police report that appears to be the real
story. The report says a kid found a bottle of Dilaudid in the
neighbourhood of a drug dealer and gave it to police. Under the
offence category, it says "found property."

Heighton said he discussed asking the newspaper to run a correction
with Campbell and another police commissioner.

"It was decided to do nothing, since they did in fact have a drug
problem at the time," writes Squires, summarizing the meeting in his
investigation report, dated Oct. 2, 2001.

Campbell told Squires that he did not ask Heighton about the accuracy
of the story, nor did Heighton bring it up. He said Heighton never
used the story to try to get another officer hired.

When Heighton talked to Stellarton Mayor Art Fitt about the story,
Fitt suggested he seek a correction. Heighton said he had, but the
paper "did not appear very interested in printing" one.

Without checking with the Evening News, Squires concluded the
newspaper got the story wrong and that Heighton had not deliberately
misled the public. He cleared Heighton of all allegations.

But the public still didn't get the real story, because the Stellarton
police commission refused to release Squires's report.

The Evening News asked for a copy under the freedom of information
act. The commission refused and the newspaper appealed. In December,
while awaiting a decision, someone leaked a copy to the paper.

"We were pretty upset. The whole thing about Squires's report that got
us was that it automatically assumed the chief's side," says Glenen.

On Dec. 10, the paper published the report's findings and complained
to the attorney general about the quality of the investigation.

"Heighton says that he contacted media and they weren't interested in
correcting the story. Well, we were the principal ones to carry the
story first. He never, ever contacted us," says Doyle MacKinnon, the
newspaper's managing editor.

Reached last night, Heighton refused comment.

MacKinnon says it raises doubt about the quality of other police
commission investigations into police wrongdoing, the details of which
are seldom made public.

"We're supposed to have trust in the police commission and the
investigations they do. But in light of this, it does bring into
question the way they carry out the investigations."