COP LINKED TO DRUGS, PROSTITUTES AND ILLEGAL SEARCHES

Vancouver Officer Faces Hearing Over Role In U.S. Murder
Case

A veteran Vancouver police officer is on medical leave and facing an
internal disciplinary hearing over his behaviour while helping to
bring a fugitive in Vancouver to justice after the brutal murder of a
jewellery-store owner in California.

Detective Constable Murray Phillips is accused in court documents
filed recently in the U.S. of witholding crucial information
from a judge in Vancouver when seeking a search warrant, of executing
an expired search warrant on a B.C. telephone company, of falling
asleep during a search of a suspect's apartment and of having sex with
a prostitute in a local karaoke bar to celebrate his pivotal role in
helping to crack the high-profile U.S. murder.

The two suspects in the case, David Valladares and James Jordan Priel,
are now in custody in the U.S. awaiting trial on the murder charges.
Priel had an apartment in Vancouver.

Phillips is portrayed in the documents as an experienced police
officer who wasn't strong on paperwork or legal niceties, knew his way
around shady places, cavorted with criminals and had insiders
everywhere, even in the telephone company. He had an immediate
supervisor on the Vancouver force who didn't think much of his
off-hour drinking and dalliances. And he had a sweet karaoke voice.

Two U.S. sheriff-detectives, Mark Simon and Ken Hoffman, with whom
Phillips was working, are accused of having carried on with Phillips
in their off-hours in an unseemly fashion and of violating an
international treaty that restricted them to observer status as the
long arm of the law reached to Priel in Vancouver.

At one point, Sergeant Bruce Ingram, who is Phillips' supervisor in
the Vancouver police department, became so concerned that Phillips was
leading the U.S. officers astray, he warned the pair to have nothing
to do with Phillips after 4 p.m. or he "would drive them down to the
border and boot their backsides across the border."

The actions of Phillips, Simon and Hoffman have been placed under a
microscope by defence lawyers in the high-stakes U.S. case that could
mean the death penalty if the two suspects are convicted.

Detective Scott Driemel, who speaks for the Vancouver police
department, would say little about the case because it involves an
internal investigation and a matter before the U.S. courts. He said it
is important to note, however, that Phillips was investigated for
possible criminal offences and Crown counsel issued a report
recommending that no charges be laid.

The case goes back to the summer of 1998, when jewelry-store owner
Nancy Sleiman was shot dead after buzzing two men through the security
doors of her Jewel Gardens family store in Lake Forest, Calif., a city
of about 77,000 about an hour southeast of Los Angeles.

As the men robbed the store, they also shot Sleiman's husband in the
head, seriously wounding him.

Within two weeks of the murder, the CrimeStoppers program in
Vancouver, which receives anonymous tips to help police solve crimes,
received a call indicating that crucial evidence and possibly one of
the murderers were in Vancouver.

Simon and Hoffman quickly flew to Vancouver from Orange County near
Los Angeles, where the crime occurred, and were hooked up with
Phillips, who acted as their liaison.

For 19 frenzied days in Vancouver, Simon, Hoffman and Phillips worked
and partied to the point of exhaustion, leaving a trail of questions
about their professionalism and off-duty behaviour that were raised in
documents filed by defence lawyers in August in the court house in
Santa Ana, Calif.

Allegations that they behaved unprofessionally were made by a senior
Crown counsel in Vancouver, Teresa Mitchell-Banks, who helped the
officers swear affidavits and prepare search warrants here.

She was surprised at their shoddy paperwork and their behaviour. "They
were like cowboys, all three of them," she said in court documents.

"It was a very macho beating, beating pecs, high testosterone, high
excitement kind of events in here," the documents quote her as saying.

"They were just almost bouncing and they, they worked off one another
and I was concerned about judgment in perspective and there was a lot
of discussion in here about whether or not they would be seeking the
death penalty and they were going to fry this guy, which I found
personally offensive," she said in the documents. "I remember being
quite adamant at that point because I was so concerned, and that there
would be, they wanted the death penalty."

She said she got the impression the men had been partying heavily and
had become very good friends.

At one point, she said, she was concerned about applying for an
extension to a search warrant partly because she feared, given the
officers' excited state, a possible shoot-out at Priel's apartment
with Priel's sisters inside. She said that when she raised concerns
about that with the officers, "Murray patted his gun and said, 'well,
I have a little something for him,' and the officers all laughed."

But Robert MacLeod, general manager of the Association of Orange
County Deputy Sheriffs, said in an interview with The Sun that one
crucial fact must never be overlooked: As a result of the work done by
the three officers in Vancouver, two dangerous criminals are now
behind bars in the U.S.

He said many of the allegations in the court documents arise from a
report from an internal probe in the Orange County sheriffs'
department that was preliminary and written before the investigators
were interviewed.

He also questioned how much Mitchell-Banks wanted to help the
investigators, given her staunch opposition to the death penalty.

"It's much ado about nothing," he said. "The charges were all
ridiculous."

Defence lawyers, he said, "are trying to come up with anything and
everything they can to discredit these officers and try to mitigate
the value of their testimony."

During their almost three-week investigation here, the trio received
search warrants which they executed on Priel's apartment, on the home
of a man with criminal connections and on the telephone company.

As a result of their work, they collected several key pieces of
evidence, including a diary discussing the homicide and identifying
one of the suspects, a leather jacket with a bullet hole that police
believe Priel wore during the homicide and telephone records. While
staking out Priel's apartment here, they were also able to direct
Orange County police officers to arrest Priel, who by that time, had
returned to California.

They also managed to get themselves into plenty of hot water. Here is
what the trio of officers are accused of in court documents:

- - The two U.S. officers executed search warrants with Phillips in
Vancouver, despite being told by a sergeant with the Vancouver police
and Mitchell-Banks that they had no right to do so.

- - They were poorly prepared and unprofessional in their dealings with
Mitchell-Banks.

- - Phillips is suspected of having given false information or of having
wit Rating 2 eld information from a judge while seeking a search
warrant on the home of a criminal who had a diary that discussed the
homicide and identified one of the two suspects.

Vancouver authorities suspect that Phillips had seen the diary before
executing the search warrant and that he knew the criminal, as well as
the CrimeStoppers tipster, prior to the search, possibly by being
acquainted with them, and that he failed to disclose these facts to
the judge. The criminal and the tipster have denied that Phillips saw
the diary in advance or that he was an acquaintance of theirs.

- - Phillips is suspected of having executed an expired search warrant
of a B.C. telephone company's records seeking billing statements,
telephone service records and subscriber information for Priel. A
security officer at the company said Phillips definitely came in Aug.
28, 1998, a day after the warrant expired, while Phillips and another
employee appeared confused, claiming initially that it was executed
Aug. 28, then changing their tune to insist it was actually Aug. 27. A
supervisor expressed the belief that Phillips improperly obtained the
records even before a search warrant was issued through an employee
who happened to be his friend.

- - While searching Priel's apartment, Phillips, and possibly Hoffman
and Simon, fell asleep for about 20 or 30 minutes. The officers told
Priel's sisters, who were present, that they couldn't leave until
their brother had been arrested in Orange County. To calm them while
they waited, the investigators bought them pizza and videos.

While the trio was searching Priel's apartment, an emergency-response
team from the Vancouver police department was camped out several
blocks away, waiting to make what it anticipated would be a high-risk
entry. Before it could strike, the team learned the trio of officers
had pre-empted it and was already in the apartment.

- - To celebrate their success after Priel's arrest, Phillips, Hoffman
and Simon went to a karaoke bar that was under Vancouver police
surveillance for prostitution, links to organized crime and alcohol
violations.

According to statements made by Tracy Singer, described in court
documents as a Coquitlam nanny with a criminal record, a
cocaine-addicted boyfriend and aspirations of being a big-name singer,
the police officers met a number of prostitutes at the bar.

She claims to have seen Phillips in a side room with a prostitute,
where they appeared to be having sex.

Simon, she said, danced around the bar wearing nothing but boxer
shorts, socks and a feather boa.

She said Phillips obviously knew the owner, who kept bringing them
free drinks.

Singer said everyone present got drunk, and Phillips and Simon were
also using cocaine. Although she didn't actually see them taking it,
she said she knew by the tell-tale look in their eyes and the way they
ground their teeth. She said she knew because her boyfriend was a
cocaine addict.

A member of the police surveillance team spotted Phillips outside the
club with a woman sent over by an escort agency. He saw the pair going
into the club.

According to Singer, after hours of drunken partying, the officers and
several of the women left the club and raced in two cars down the
highway. With Phillips as a passenger, Singer drove one car even
though she felt she was too drunk. "Murray was telling me to take his
badge. If you get stopped, just say whatever," she recounted.

Simon, according to Singer, later had sex with one of the women from
the karaoke bar. On a subsequent occasion, he told Singer that he sent
the girl a couple of hundred dollars after he returned to the U.S.

During the rest of their stay in Vancouver, Phillips and Simon partied
every night and called Singer from strip bars "just ripped out of
their mind," she said.

She also said that later, when she visited Simon in the U.S. at his
invitation, he indecently exposed himself to her.

In separate interviews conducted by internal affairs investigators who
were in Vancouver probing Hoffman's and Simon's actions, Phillips'
superior officer Ingram told them he recalled seeing Phillips coming
into work exhibiting symptoms of a hangover on several occasions.

On Sept. 1, 1998, the day that the two officers flew back to the U.S.,
the Vancouver police department began an in-depth criminal
investigation into Phillips' actions. The following May, he went on
administrative leave. He hasn't returned and is currently on medical
leave. The Vancouver Sun tried unsuccessfully through Driemel to
contact Phillips' lawyer.

An Orange County sheriff's department report issued after a
preliminary internal probe of allegations against its two officers
concluded criminal charges were not warranted. It said:

- - There was no evidence to support an allegation of criminal
wrongdoing pertaining to the way the two U.S. officers obtained
search warrants that would affect the admissibility of the jacket and
the diary as evidence.

- - There was insufficient evidence to show investigators had served an
invalid and late search warrant on the B.C. telephone company.

- - Accusations of indecent exposure and sexual battery levelled against
Simon were unfounded because of too many inconsistencies.

However, investigators in the internal probe found Simon and Hoffman
were guilty of the following:

- - Unprofessional behaviour during their contact with
Mitchell-Banks.

- - Violation of the international treaty when they participated in the
search of the Green and Priel residences.

- - Poor judgment in entering the Priel residence without the police
emergency response team or strike-force personnel.

- - Unsafe and unprofessional behaviour by falling asleep during the
search of the Priel residence.

- - Poor judgment while off-duty by spending several hours inside a
karaoke bar that was actively under investigation by Vancouver police
for organized crime connections and prostitution activity.

- - Poor judgment by Simon while off duty by associating with known
criminal offenders.

Both men are still working as sheriff-detectives in Orange
County.

In the interview, MacLeod categorically denied the two U.S. officers
behaved in the karaoke bar as described in court documents, although
he admitted they were there. "They had some drinks, they partied, they
sang songs. They didn't do anything illegal." He also denied they
fell asleep in Priel's apartment.

The two sheriff detectives are "outraged" by the accusations, as are
others in the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, said MacLeod.

Jim Amormino, an Orange County sheriff's department spokesman, told
The Sun he could not speak about the case because of the U.S.
policeman's bill of rights. He could only say that the allegations
were thoroughly investigated two years ago and reviewed by county
counsel and human resources.

Mitchell-Banks, through her lawyer, has declined comment.

Sheriffs' officials concluded the case against Valladares and Priel
was not affected by the investigators' conduct.

But the defence lawyers for the murder suspects say the "sloppy" and
"shameful" work done by investigators in Canada led to a false arrest.

A trial-setting conference in the case has been scheduled for today in
Orange County Superior Court.