POLICE CHIEFS' PROBES LOOK LIKE COVERUPS

A report on a police fiasco in Abbotsford highlights a key problem with the
police complaints system: Lack of a civilian voice.

The report on the Abbotsford police fiasco highlights the main problem with
the current police complaints procedure: It looks like local chiefs are
making excuses for each other.

In this case, New Westminster Police Chief Peter Young substantially
dismissed complaints against his brother chief Barry Daniel's department,
whose SWAT-team raided a home during a crowded kids' birthday party and
killed the family dog.

West Vancouver Police Chief Grant Churchill was the discipline authority and
he endorsed Young's findings and the offered excuse: The surveillance
officer didn't know there were children in the house, but he's promised to
do better next time.

As for the allegations that a couple of the adults in the home were
assaulted, Young was hampered since the victims couldn't identify their
anonymous SWAT-team tormentors. The balaclava-clad Ninja-wannabes bore no
identifying marks on their outfits.

So Young could report only his concern that excessive use of force "may have
occurred."

Give me a break.

Short of killing one of the 14 kids in the house I wonder what would these
clowns have to have done to be disciplined? And for what? The two
drug-related charges laid by these testosterone-charged cops were stayed.

Which highlights the horrible optics of police officers investigating police
officers, doctors investigating doctors, or the military investigating the
military: It looks fixed.

What's more, Young himself runs a department that's still under
investigation by the complaints commission for its putative bully-boy
stunts. In his case, he's being investigated by Delta Police Chief Jim
Cessford over tactics he endorsed last fall to deal with pervasive street crime.

A nine-page letter to B.C. Police Complaint Commissioner Don Morrison from
the B.C. Civil Liberties Association identified six areas of concern with
the Royal City force, everything from the use of controversial trachea-holds
to using "breach of the peace" authority to load suspected drug traffickers
into police wagons to drive them out of town.

We're still waiting nine months later for the report by Cessford, who by the
way was castigated in 1995 for his own behaviour before he left the Edmonton
police department to become chief in Delta. (Alberta's Law Enforcement
Review Board described a 1991 interrogation of two distraught children and
their mother in which Cessford participated as "threatening, abusive and
excessive.")

Cessford says he probably won't be finished his New Westminster
investigation until October, almost a year after the complaint was lodged.
And I'm told it's not because of foot-dragging on his part: Some of the
officers involved apparently wanted legal advice before cooperating.

When the province adopted the new police complaints procedure a year ago, it
hoped to renew faith that allegations against B.C.'s 12 municipal police
forces would be handled fairly. The new process was sold on the promise of
thorough and timely investigations into the conduct of civic law-enforcement
officers accused of wrong-doing.

It hasn't delivered.

Civilian oversight through the complaints commissioner isn't enough to
dispel the appearance of a stacked deck, and having to wait a year for the
results of an investigation into such serious charges is no more acceptable
now than it was before the new act was proclaimed.

I think Attorney-General Ujjal Dosanjh must address the timeliness problem
and separate serving police officers from the investigation of complaints.

Civilians should probe allegations of police screw-ups, not fellow cops.
They work for us, not each other.

You may reach Ian Mulgrew at imulgrew@pacpress.southam.ca or at (604) 605-2195.