MOUNTIE WAS TO BE BODYGUARD FOR CHRETIEN

Tantallon Officer Faces Charge Of Trafficking Pot

A Tantallon RCMP officer charged with drug trafficking was headed to Ottawa
to become a bodyguard for the prime minister before he was arrested, a TV
news program reported Tuesday night.

Const. Joseph Daniel Ryan was being transferred to the RCMP's elite unit
that supplies bodyguards for Prime Minister Jean Chretien and other
dignitaries, the CBC program Canada Now said.

The transfer was cancelled when Const. Ryan, who goes by Danny, was
arrested last Wednesday. He was arraigned Thursday on one count of selling
marijuana.

RCMP spokesman Sgt. Wayne Noonan wouldn't confirm that Const. Ryan was
slated to join the elite unit.

"Transfers are a personnel issue and we don't comment specifically on where
our members are going for security reasons," Sgt. Noonan said.

But he did say that Const. Ryan's transfer was put on hold while he was
being investigated and then cancelled when he was arrested.

"Once the allegations surfaced, everything in his life was in a
standstill," Sgt. Noonan said. "His life as a member of the RCMP ended."
Const. Ryan has spent his entire six-year career with the 40-member
Tantallon RCMP detachment outside Halifax. For most of that time, he has
been with the street team, a two-man plainclothes unit that concentrates on
busting street-level drug dealers and growers.

With Const. Ryan as a guiding force, the street team has made hundreds of
busts, everything from a raid on a $1.3-million indoor growing operation at
a Hammonds Plains Road home to the arrest of an alleged small-time drug
dealer at the Otter Lake landfill.

In 2000, the team seized 1,668 marijuana plants with an estimated street
value of $2.8 million, 10 kilograms of processed marijuana worth about
$220,000, three kilograms of hashish worth about $62,000, $76,000 worth of
growing equipment, and an assortment of other drugs like crack cocaine and
ecstasy worth about $10,000.

Those numbers were racked up in 50 raids that resulted in 125 drug charges
and 120 other criminal charges.

In 1999, the street team seized more than $2.13 million in drugs, stolen
vehicles and cash.

Const. Ryan would have had to pass a physical and mental examination before
becoming a bodyguard. But he was living in a Halifax hotel and preparing to
move at the time of his arrest. His fellow Tantallon officers were planning
a going-away party for him.

Const. Ryan is suspended with pay, pending the outcome of his case.