FIGHTING THE LAW

It's just after noon on an overcast Wednesday when lawyer Phil Rankin
emerges from the courthouse on Smithe Street to comment on the breaking
news that two cops have been fired.

The crush of journalists on the sidewalk attracts onlookers and the
occasional honk from motorists, as the 51-year-old Rankin launches into his
remarks.

He's just heard that Chief Jamie Graham has axed constables Duncan Gemmell
and Gabriel Kojima for assaulting three of his drug-addicted clients in
Stanley Park in January 2003.

"I never did see this as a rotten group of apples," he says in his familiar
fast-talking style. "I saw it as a culture of being violent when they could
get away with it."

Across town, in his cluttered Gastown office, lawyer John Richardson of the
Pivot Legal Society is also answering questions from journalists. The
Stanley Park affair is familiar territory for Richardson, whose society has
turned over more than 50 complaints to the Office of the Police Complaint
Commissioner alleging police abuse of people like Rankin's clients.

Richardson's take on the dismissals is that it's "a good step," but he
believes Graham should have fired two more of the six cops. Like Rankin's,
his words make the six o'clock news and the morning papers.

A few blocks away, another lawyer, Cameron Ward, is in his 13th floor
office in the Marine Building, digesting the latest police scandal. The
media have left Ward alone on this day, but that doesn't keep him from
posting his criticisms of the Stanley Park affair on his web site.

"Several questions remain to be answered in this disturbing case. Among
them, how much has this sorry episode cost the city's taxpayers?" he
writes, estimating the tab at $600,000.

These days, the mere mention of Rankin, Richardson or Ward makes police
union president Tom Stamatakis bristle. Stamatakis, who speaks on behalf of
the force's 1,200 unionized cops, believes the trio is responsible for much
of the department's negative image. If Rankin isn't calling the cops
bullies, Richardson is accusing officers of torturing Downtown Eastside
residents and Ward is blasting the force for investigating itself.

"These three in particular seem to thrive on being very public and make
many, many comments that are often misleading, often very provocative and
usually very sensational," says Stamatakis, whose office is located across
the street from Rankin's, near the foot of Main Street. "It's very, very
frustrating and tiring."

Though they rarely work or socialize together, the three comprise the
unofficial public relations team for the defiant, poor, addicted and
mistreated-those people whose stories of police abuse are rarely believed
or taken seriously.

It may not be as lucrative a career as corporate law, but all three say the
financial hit is worth it if they can make a difference.

It's a week after the cop dismissals and Rankin is sitting behind his
office desk, reviewing one of his latest lawsuits against the Vancouver police.

His 38-year-old client, Gordon Hunt, was left a paraplegic after police
shot him twice in an incident last August involving a stolen car. Hunt
claims the plainclothes cop who shot him never identified himself.

The police's version of the incident is that Hunt attempted to flee in the
stolen car, knocking one cop over and striking the other with the car's door.

With lawsuits pending in the Hunt incident, the Stanley Park affair and the
Guns 'n Roses riot-where his client Robert Parent had his teeth knocked out
by a cop armed with a baton-Rankin has earned a reputation as a lawyer who
will take on the police.

Dozens of people a day contact his office, wanting him to represent them.
Though Rankin acknowledges that his profile is good for business, he says
he hasn't earned a cent in any of the three cases. "If it was so lucrative,
there'd be dozens of other lawyers pushing me out of the way to get big
settlements for their clients. It's not happening because there's no money
there. I'm doing this because I think it's outrageous what happens to people."

Rankin inherited his dedication to defence law from his father Harry, the
gruff, prickly lawyer and legendary left-wing city councillor who died two
years ago at 83.

As a young boy, Rankin recalls accompanying his father to the
since-demolished Oakalla prison in Burnaby, where the senior Rankin would
meet with clients while Phil would chat with other inmates. "At three or
four years old, I wandered around with the prisoners and thought nothing of
it. They had a farm, a bakery, a welding shop at Oakalla. I'd walk the
grounds, be entertained by the horses-it was part of my childhood."

Rankin also recalls having dinner at the family home on Hull Street, near
Trout Lake, with a prisoner who had just escaped from the former B.C.
Penitentiary in New Westminster.

"I can remember it very clearly-my mother made dinner and my father was on
the phone to the cops saying, 'He's here right now, we're going to have
dinner and we'll turn him in at 10 o'clock,' and we would."

Prisoners weren't the only guests. His California-born mother, Jonnie, who
comes from a long line of social activists, often provided food and
accommodations for the likes of American labour leader Cesar Chavez, former
left-wing Guyana president Cheddi Jagan and folk singer Pete Seeger.

The Rankins' activism was so legendary that on a trip to San Francisco in
1953 to protest the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg-the first
civilians in American history to be executed for espionage-Harry and Jonnie
were tailed by the FBI, says Phil, who has the documents to prove it.

"My parents were always involved in something. I can't remember when I
wasn't going to some kind of meeting about peace or nuclear war or Vietnam.
I've been doing political things all my life."

His family background had Rankin considering a career as a labour
historian, but his father urged him to do something in the "real world." So
he went to law school at the University of Victoria, and later began
practising law in 1979 out of the Ford Building at Main and Hastings.

Rankin quickly developed an interest in immigration law, although his first
case didn't go so well. In fighting the deportation of an Egyptian army
deserter, Rankin lost the case and his client killed himself in a jail cell.

Though his current police cases are high profile, Rankin estimates his
workload is split evenly between immigration and criminal files. His work
has attracted the television industry-actor Nicholas Campbell consulted
Rankin for his role as an immigration lawyer in the recent CBC miniseries
Human Cargo. Campbell also plays coroner Dominic Da Vinci in the CBC drama
Da Vinci's Inquest. In an episode broadcast last fall, Da Vinci meets with
a lawyer named Phil Rozen, who defends drug addicts and has an office on
Alexander Street.

With his popularity, it would only seem natural the longtime COPE party
member would seek public office. After all, his father was a key figure in
the creation of COPE, which now dominates city council, parks board and
school board.

In fact, Rankin did serve as a school trustee for about eight years in the
1980s, until he and his fellow trustees were fired by the then governing
Socreds for refusing to pass a restraint budget. "I've been asked a couple
of times to run again, but quite frankly, I hate the party politics. I'm a
bit prickly in my social skills, and I find the worst aspect of running is
making peace with everybody in the riding."

Besides, he says, he's beginning to see his work as a lawyer making a
difference. He believes publicity surrounding in the Stanley Park affair
forced the chief to take a tougher stance in disciplining the six cops.

Still, he believes B.C. has to implement a separate body to investigate
allegations against police officers, modeled after a similar independent
team of police officers in Ontario.

As for accusations that he, Ward and Richardson are responsible for much of
the Vancouver police's negative image, Rankin argues the police are
responsible for their own problems. "All we've done is what people should
have been doing a long time ago-and that's asking the police to be
accountable. The cops may not believe it, but I like them better than they
like me."

The 46-year-old Ward doesn't hate cops, either, but he's unapologetic about
taking on the department, arguing the cards are stacked against those who
file complaints against police.

The department has a public relations team, the ability to hire high-priced
lawyers to defend cops and the power to investigate its own officers
accused of wrongdoing, he says.

"You stack the average Joe up against the Vancouver police department, and
they don't have a chance in terms of the public relations battle. So if it
takes lawyers, who deal with this on a day-to-day basis to get an issue
into the public consciousness, then I think that's necessary."

Stamatakis, however, accuses Ward and his colleagues of dwelling on the
same four or five cases, leaving the impression the department has a
systemic problem with excessive use of force. There's the Stanley Park
affair, the Guns 'n Roses riot, the deaths of Jeff Berg and Frank Paul-who
died after being arrested in separate incidents-and the Pivot affidavits,
which Ward calls the "tip of the iceberg."

Stamatakis says he'd like to see evidence of the so-called widespread
problem. Without it, he says, the "tip of the iceberg" statement is
reckless, irresponsible and offensive.

"It would be like me saying to Cameron Ward, 'I think you're a crappy
lawyer.' Well, why? Well, you had that one bad case last year where you
lost, and your client is mad because you lost the case, and I think that's
just the tip of the iceberg."

Ward says he used to take complaints of police abuse with a grain of salt.
But when police arrested him in Chinatown in August 2002 for allegedly
conspiring to throw a pie at then-prime minister Jean Chretien, Ward says
he learned firsthand what complainants were talking about.

In his statement of claim against the Vancouver police, he says he was
handcuffed, strip-searched and confined to a cell for about four hours
before being released without charges. The police named in the suit called
for Ward's court action to be quashed, saying they were within their rights
under the Police Act.

But B.C. Supreme Court Justice Selwyn Romilly dismissed the application,
writing that Ward's arrest, at a minimum, amounted to gross negligence and
more likely malicious or willful misconduct.

Since the incident, Ward has gathered names of people strip-searched in the
Vancouver jail and launched a class action lawsuit against the city and
province.

He's currently representing the family of Jeff Berg, the 38-year-old man
who died after police arrested him for his alleged involvement in a plan to
rip off a marijuana growing operation. In the course of the arrest, Berg
collapsed and stopped breathing. The cause of death was later found to be
an aneurysm triggered by a blow to the neck.

Ward's police-related work dates back to the 1990s, when he represented
demonstrators who filed complaints against the RCMP over handling of the
1997 APEC protest and against the Vancouver police over the so-called Riot
at the Hyatt.

Ward grew up in Montreal and eastern Ontario, graduating in 1983 from law
school at the University of Ottawa. Called to the bar a year later, he
moved west to article with the Vancouver firm Davis and Company, where he
stayed until 1990, practising corporate law, litigation and some criminal work.

It wasn't until Ward joined a smaller firm in Richmond-Pryke, Lambert,
Leathley, Russell-that his career as a defender of civil rights began in
earnest. In 1991, he defended anti-Gulf War protesters' right to set up a
camp outside the Vancouver Art Gallery. That experience led him to
represent anti-logging protesters at Clayoquot Sound in 1993, the same year
he set up his own practice in the Dominion Building on West Hastings.

Unlike Rankin, Ward has no family link to activism-his father is a retired
investment analyst and his late mother was a realtor.

But as a boy, he witnessed the FLQ crisis in Quebec, and says images of
armed soldiers in the streets are burned into his memory bank. "Maybe in
some sort of subconscious way, any work I do in the area of human rights or
citizen-state or citizen-police conflicts stems from the impact it had on me."

In his office, which has a view of Stanley Park, he keeps two framed
pictures of Robert Kennedy, including a signed black and white. On a shelf
behind him sits a copy of a Martin Luther King biography. He also cites
British folk singer Billy Bragg and American songwriter Steve Earle as
inspirations.

His latest inspiration is not a politician or a musician, however, but a
rookie cop named Troy Peters, who blew the whistle on the six officers in
the Stanley Park affair. "I think Troy Peters is a hero and deserves a
medal. He may have done more for that force than anybody else has in the
last 20 years."

Even so, Ward has no plans to give up criticizing the cops. "If people like
myself, or John Richardson or Phil Rankin point out problems from time to
time, I think and I hope that in the long run, we'll all be better served
by the police officers we empower to enforce the law."

At 33, Richardson has only been practising law for two years, but he's
quickly earning a reputation as a champion of human rights and harsh critic
of the Vancouver police.

On Monday, Richardson and members of Pivot Legal Society were at it again,
releasing a report that calls for an end to criminalization of the sex
trade (see story page 7).

Last year, the society turned over more than 50 allegations of police abuse
to the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner. The RCMP are looking
into the files at the request of Police Complaint Commissioner Dirk
Ryneveld, who agreed with Pivot that the Vancouver Police Department
shouldn't be leading the investigation. Prior to Ryneveld's decision, the
police had filed three complaints with the B.C. Law Society against
Richardson and Pivot for not turning over the names of the complainants,
but the Law Society rejected the police's complaints.

"The chief had made a comment that the complaints were 'innuendo,' and we
said there was bias there and that the chief could not be the person in
charge of this investigation," says Richardson, sitting in a Gastown cafe
near his office. "The commissioner agreed with us."

Unlike Rankin and Ward, who take clients off the street, Richardson's
approach to helping what he calls marginalized people-mainly drug addicts
and sex trade workers-is to build a case based on dozens of similar
complaints. That way, the chance of setting a precedent in law is greater.
"The problem with the other way is you would have to keep helping everybody
who comes through that door until the end of time."

Responding to Stamatakis's charge that he uses inflammatory language such
as "torture" in affidavits, Richardson argues his criticism of the cops is
restrained.

"But when persons in positions of authority use physical force, without due
process, with the purpose of punishing someone for an alleged offence,
that's torture."

Like Ward, Richardson has also been arrested and jailed-during last year's
Woodward's squat-and has since filed suit against the cops, but insists he
respects their work. "We have to have police in society, but we want our
police to treat marginalized people with respect and compassion and
fairness, and if that was what was going on, I'd be all for them, but it's
not. That's why I'm here."

Called to the bar in 2002, Richardson articled with the Sierra Legal
Defence Fund, where he studied environmental law and learned how to choose
cases that would generate the greatest impact in the courts.

That experience led him to found Pivot with Ann Livingston, project
coordinator of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users. "You have all
these abuses that are happening [in the Downtown Eastside], blatant
violations of constitutional rights and it's going unaddressed simply
because these people don't have anybody advocating for them."

Richardson, who was raised in Cranbrook and Penticton, comes by his
commitment to activism honestly. His father, Bill, was a union rep for the
B.C. Government Employees' Union for 23 years, until his recent retirement.
"My dad is very much about integrity and standing up for what you believe
in-and for the little guy."

Richardson knows he could be using his brain power and legal training at a
big corporate firm, but says he always wanted to do something that was
going to "make the world a better place."

"I know it's a clich,, but it's true. Doing what I do certainly makes it
easy for me to work late nights."