SUSPECTED CORRUPTION ON WATERFRONT

A series of potentially explosive investigations involving crime,
corruption and the infiltration of organized crime at Canadian ports
was shut down as a result of Ottawa's decision to disband the national
ports police.

The investigations died with the force's controversial dismissal in
1997, The Province has learned.

Many of the intelligence files on the cases are now officially listed
as missing and none of the investigations has ever been passed to
another police force.

"Does it makes sense? No, none," says Gary Fotia, a veteran of 24
years who headed criminal investigations for the Vancouver detachment
of the force.

Scott Newark, director of the Canadian Police Association at the time
of the bitter debate over the future of the ports police force, says:
"There are more questions than answers as to why these investigations
were halted."

Newark, who now works for the Ministry of the Attorney-General in
Ontario, said the similarities in the probes and the fact that they
were brought to an end indicates that the "investigations were an
annoyance to the port authorities."

Crime in the ports has long been a concern. The Criminal Intelligence
Service of Canada, which collects data from more than 370 agencies,
says criminal organizations are entrenched in the infrastructure of
Canada's maritime ports -- a position they use to control the bulk of
contraband entering the country.

"The criminal infiltration of the a port is usually accomplished
through the placement of members, associates, relatives and friends in
legitimate positions at the port," says its 1999 annual report on
organized crime in Canada.

Officials who helped prepare the report say elements of organized
crime are so well connected in the ports that they can monitor law
enforcement activity, and that their knowledge of import and export
procedures is used to help them smuggle guns, drugs, stolen cars,
booze, tobacco and illegal migrants.

In a series of interviews with former ports officers now scattered
across Canada and from intelligence files, transcripts, briefing notes
and internal correspondence, The Province has learned that in the five
years before the police were disbanded:

- - Vancouver ports police were investigating an associate of the Hells
Angels who worked in the office of the then-chairman of the port.
Shortly after the investigation was brought to the port's attention,
the police chief who raised the issue was fired -- but the employee
remains on the job.

- - Vancouver ports police had assembled an intelligence file and issued
a warning to the port about its negotiations with Cosco, a Chinese
shipping company whose vessels had been linked to global weapons
smuggling. Cosco has since moved into the port and the port's chief
executive officer, Norman Stark, says he has no memory of the warning.

- - Vancouver crime units that had begun to assemble intelligence on
waterfront liquor rings, prostitution and questionable activities by
ship suppliers died with the ports force and were not reassigned.
Joint-forces projects on stolen car exports, drug smuggling and
organized crime have all been hampered by the absence of a frontline
police intelligence presence on the docks, police say.

- - In Halifax, files show that a company owned by an associate of the
Hells Angels was given a contract by the port to clean the offices of
the police detachment. When the local chief pursued the matter, the
woman lost her cleaning contract and sued. The chief was dismissed and
the woman was awarded $25,000 in an out-of-court settlement. On the
agreement of Sid Peckford, then director of the national ports police,
the entire file on her was destroyed.

- - Files show that Halifax ports police were investigating suspected
corruption and fraud by at least one senior police official and at
least two port officials. Their intelligence files also show they had
begun to draw suspected links between port officials and associates of
the Hells Angels. All of the investigations died with the disbanding
of the detachment.

In the case of the Hells Angels associate found working in Vancouver
port offices, police had assembled a file that included observations
of repeated visits by the employee to a Lower Mainland crack house --
a "busy drug supermarket," according to one officer. During a road
check, the employee's driver's licence was swiped and showed traces of
cocaine. A swipe of documents the employee handled produced the same
result.

Stark confirmed Friday that the local detachment had approached the
port with its concerns. He says human-resources officials "dealt with
it . . . as employers" and the matter was closed.

Any criminal concerns were the jurisdiction of police, said Stark, who
also confirmed that despite police concerns, the employee continues to
work in port offices.

Mike Toddington is the police chief who raised the issue. Last month,
he successfully concluded a suit for wrongful dismissal with a
settlement he is barred from disclosing. He believes that his part in
the investigation of the port's employee played a role in his firing
in March 1997.

While requesting documents pertaining to his suit, he was informed by
Ottawa that many of the files were missing -- including briefing notes
filed to Peckford in Ottawa.

Four copies of such notes were normally filed in separate locations,
including Vancouver and Ottawa. Virtually all of Toddington's were
missing.

Their disappearance mirrors the fate of many intelligence files in
Halifax, where, for example, Bruce Brine, the chief dismissed after
circumstances that roughly paralleled Toddington's, attempted to track
down documents following his departure, only to be told they were gone.

The disappearance of the files and the collapse of some of the
investigations into operations at the ports still haunts the former
officers contacted by The Province -- and many of those still at work
elsewhere.

Brine, former chief of the Halifax detachment, is still
distressed.

"We're gone, the files are gone, the case is closed," sighed the
veteran of 22 years' police work.

"What goes on now? Draw your own conclusions."