POLICE CORRUPTION CHARGES RING ALARM BELL

The allegations of corruption that rocked B.C.'s Coordinated Law
Enforcement Unit this week were described publicly by police officials as
``serious'' and ``disturbing.''

But privately, a number of officers said the bombshell may be a ``blessing
in disguise'' for police in B.C.

``This will be the alarm bell that will have government take a hard look at
how it deals with organized crime,'' one senior officer said.

The officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said governments and
senior police managers need to reexamine their commitment to fighting
organized crime and take a hard look at how CLEU operates.

The officers, who were contacted independently, told The Vancouver Sun the
absence of high-profile arrests or convictions of organized crime figures
is all the proof anyone needs that B.C. is losing the war against organized
crime.

``This is supposed to be the province's premier organized crime-fighting
agency,'' one officer said. ``It isn't producing results. It isn't putting
guys in jail.''

The Hells Angels, in particular, have been able to exploit the absence of
major arrests for public relations benefit.

Last fall, Vancouver Hells Angel Rick Ciarniello, the club's designated
spokesman, pointed out that none of the more than 90 club members in B.C.
was in prison.

Ironically, one of CLEU's bright spots had been its Asian organized crime
unit, which officers say has been doing good work.

Then, this week, a special constable assigned to the unit was arrested and
charged with leaking confidential police information to organized crime
figures. The officer, Chiu Ping Philip Tsang, had been assigned to the unit
for five years, and senior managers are now reviewing the investigations in
which he was involved.

``CLEU needs a re-think,'' one officer said.

A former RCMP staff sergeant who quit the force earlier this year said
Thursday the agency has not kept track with the realities of modern,
multi-million-dollar crime.

Formed in 1974, CLEU combined the best and brightest of RCMP and municipal
forces at a time when an informant could be paid $10,000 to leak
information that could cripple an organized drug-smuggling ring, said
Gordon Board, a 23-year veteran of the RCMP who now works in security at
the B.C. Lotteries Commission.

``Now they say they want a million dollars, that they have to hide for the
rest of their lives -- although they might be short-lived -- and it takes a
million dollars to do it,'' Board said.

It already takes $11 million a year to operate CLEU. Chris Beresford, a
spokesman for the attorney-general's ministry, said 175 police officers and
provincial employees work for the unit in Vancouver and on Vancouver
Island.

CLEU also has a warehouse full of surveillance equipment, but Board said it
would cost millions more to target modern, sophisticated criminals.

``The governments have to realize that if we're going to have this huge
pool of trained investigators, maybe they're going to have to support them
with a huge amount of money to make it work,'' he said.``We can't catch a
million-dollar crook on a five-dollar budget. It just doesn't happen. If
you want to attack a huge group of people, which might takes years to do,
you're going to have to spend a huge amount of time and money and stay with
that file.''

Board was one of the officers with the RCMP Proceeds of Crime Section who
worked on Operation Eye-Spy, a three-year sting operation that involved
undercover police operating the Pacific Rim Currency Exchange in downtown
Vancouver to nab drug dealers laundering money. More than 40 people were
convicted or pleaded guilty in that admittedly expensive operation.

But he recalls times when the agency had 100 officers but perhaps only 20
cars, meaning ``the guys are going to be sitting with their feet on their
desk. I think things have not materialized because of a lack of budget.''

Attorney-General Ujjal Dosanjh told The Vancouver Sun he is already
considering proposals from several police agencies to improve the way the
province battles organized crime. He has been holding discussions with
Washington state officials about cross-border problems, has taken the issue
of organized crime to heart, and hinted Thursday that more money will
likely be thrown at the problem.

``We are still considering those proposals, we are reviewing them, and we
will be making a decision at some point in the next couple of weeks,'' he
said. ``All I can say is that there was a proposal made to the ministry of
the attorney-general for some funding with respect to enhancing our work
and strengthening this organized crime area.''

But it's not just money woes that plague CLEU.

A provincial commission into policing headed by Supreme Court Justice Wally
Oppal concluded that staffing of the agency ``has not always been given a
high priority'' by police forces. While his research showed that
``occasionally some of the best detectives in the province have been
assigned to CLEU . . . it was readily acknowledged that there have been
times when CLEU was used by both the RCMP and Vancouver police as a
repository for police officers who were nearing the end of their careers,
or who had lost the incentive to excel, or who were difficult to handle.''

That was in 1994. CLEU has repeatedly refused to discuss its operations
with the news media, and no one would comment on the record about whether
that problem has been rectified.

Simon Fraser University criminology professor Rob Gordon said the
complaints about CLEU point to the need for a regional police force to
replace the current system of separate municipal and RCMP jurisdictions.

``It's a huge metropolitan area that should be policed by a single
organization in order to avoid wasteful overlaps and personality conflicts
between people,'' he said.

But it would be up to regional politicians to agree on a regional force,
and Gordon said local politicians are more interested in retaining the
sense of local identity that a local police force reinforces than in
improving the actual calibre of policing. And most senior police managers
are loath to amalgamate, he said, ``because their jobs would go out the
window.''

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)