MEET THE NEW BOSS

Bob Wasylyshen Talks About Corruption, Drugs And Gun Control

Bob Wasylyshen rarely closes the door to his fourth-floor office. The
29-year veteran of the Edmonton Police Service wants to stay as connected
as possible with the 1,100 officers under his command. It's precisely that
hands-on style that assured his confirmation last month, from interim to
permanent chief of police.

The Yorkton, Sask. native, who's known affectionately as 'Woz' by the
rank-and-file, has the unenviable task of restoring the force's morale
after two years of intense, humiliating scrutiny over allegations that some
EPS members were too cosy with gangland criminals and that the previous
chief, John Lindsay, had sat idly by while it happened. Since the
allegations were made, three separate investigations have been conducted,
the final one by Wasylyshen himself, immediately after he replaced Lindsay
last January. All have cleared the department of any corruption allegations
and Lindsay of any wrongdoing.

Wasylyshen presented his report to the Edmonton Police Commission last
month, just weeks after his confirmation as chief. That presentation will
likely set the tone for his tenure as the city's highest-ranking cop. He
pointedly told reporters the case is closed and it's time to refocus on the
job of policing the city. Since then, he has steadfastly refused to
publicly release his report, saying the public will have to trust him and
the appointed police commission and that with exception of one lingering
criminal investigation, the matter has been resolved.

SEE Magazine caught up with Wasylyshen a week after he closed the books on
one of the EPS's darkest chapters.

SEE: On Oct. 18 you explained at great length why you couldn't release the
report, but surely there are parts of it that could help clear up any doubt
- an executive summary, for example.

BW: The presentation that I made to the police commission represents an
executive summary. That was given to the media and is still available to
the public. The reason that we did not release the report, first of all, is
because there's a tremendous amount of third-party information where a
number of people were accused of things that ended up being unfounded. It
certainly would be unfair to their privacy rights to go ahead and allow the
public sift through issues that the people in question were subsequently
found to have done nothing wrong.

The second thing is through our very extensive investigations we dealt with
sources of information and investigations that are going on in other areas
of our organization and other police organizations which would be
jeopardized if that information was to be made public, even if you were to
take out the information such as names and so on. From the position of
having a good conscience, I couldn't do that. Nor do I believe it's
necessary to do that.

Under the provisions of the Police Act the legislators of Alberta have said
that we have these oversight bodies called police commissions, which are a
representation of the community. Let's let the system work. One would ask
themself the question, if the police commission is not able to fulfil their
function by being that oversight body, and by the way I think they fulfil
it very well, then what is the purpose of having a police commission if the
things that the police do are thrown to complete public scrutiny all the time?

SEE: So they're the public's representatives.

BW: Absolutely. And I want to reiterate that those who are suspect of the
report have not read it, yet those who have read the report, the police
commission, who represent all of those people, are saying we're not suspect
about it at all. We have read it, we're aware of what the contents are and
we're satisfied that it's been done right. Meanwhile those who aren't are
saying we don't think it's right. Well how do you arrive at that? You
should talk to your police commission and have that discussion to reach
that comfort level that you need to have.

SEE: But you can see the catch-22 . . .

BW: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Certainly, when people are expressing their
thoughts that there should be a public inquiry, there always in my view has
to be basis to that, (there's) some substance to it. It's not enough to
say, I think we should clear the air and have a public inquiry. Do you know
what a public inquiry means? It's extremely expensive and it would
jeopardize the safety of other individuals.

SEE: When the allegations were first made, it was national news for months.
It must have been a serious blow to morale.

BW: This has caused an extremely difficult time for the police service.
You're looking at a police service that has enjoyed an international
reputation for years. These allegations and the ensuing investigations and
the public debate certainly have caused us to suffer a blow to our
reputation, right or wrong. The years of bad publicity that we got from all
of this certainly had a detrimental effect on morale. It was certainly hard
on the chief of the day, in all fairness to John Lindsay; it was extremely
hard on him and, in my view, he was undeserving of some of the things that
came his way.

SEE: There is a growing movement toward relaxing drug laws. Does the EPS,
or do you, have a particular stand on drug legalization?

BW: Yes I do. I don't favour drug legalization. The movement toward the
legalization of drugs is, I believe, largely motivated by frustration.
People think we're spinning our wheels, wasting taxpayers' money and the
courts are not providing the kinds of penalties we want, so what are we
doing? Let's legalize it and get it over with. Is that a reasonable
position? It may be, but I suggest the issue is much deeper than that. I'm
certainly open to discussion on it but if we're going to legalize drugs
because we're frustrated, then that's not a good reason.

Secondly, we need to understand that perhaps legalization could be
extremely detrimental to the entire country. Imagine if drugs were legal
here how that might invite people to come from other countries who are
interested in drug use. What will that do to us as a nation? Would it put
pressure on our social network? How would it affect families? All those
complex questions would need to be answered.

No matter how many suppliers we bust there's always another coming up to
replace them. Why is that so? Because there's a demand. That's the other
half of it that nobody ever talks about. It's like everything's OK on the
demand side. Let me tell you something. The people who use the drugs and
the people who supply the drugs are equally responsible for the problem.

SEE: When you're talking about attacking the demand side, you're talking
education.

BW: Absolutely. Enforcement always needs to be there, but if enforcement is
not accompanied by a process that's equally as hard driven on the education
side, it won't work. Do we need to plug this education into the schooling
system? Is it more important to learn the alignment of the planets or is it
more important to learn about the wiles of drug use?

SEE: In regard to Bill C-68, the new Firearms Act and the gun registry,
some chiefs across the country are opposed to this. How do you feel about it?

BW: First of all, police services around the country have long been put in
a situation where government will make police assume additional
responsibilities without any corresponding support. And as these additional
responsibilities are placed on us there comes a time when you say there's
too much. That was what happened with Bill C-68. The federal justice
minister of the time was Allan Rock. He secured the support of the police
community by making a promise. He promised that the Firearms Act would not
take one single police officer off the street and based on that promise,
the police community generally supported him. We found later on that was
not going to be possible.

The registration part of Bill C-68 seems to be the problem. We simply do
not know how many firearms there are in Canada. That's very difficult when
you set out with a registration system because what's your goal? Obviously
your goal is to register all firearms, but there's a moving target. The
whole system depends on every firearm being registered, but how will we
ever know for sure? So we're really in no different position than before
there was a registry. I can only imagine if we had poured $400 or $500
million into fighting organized crime, we might have made some really big
inroads. There might have been better ways, but it's not for me to say.