I came across an op ed piece by someone named Leo Knight in one of Vancouver’s free tabloids, in which he, as presumably a lifelong recipient of taxpayers’ money, harps about the families of the murdered women allegedly wasting public funds at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry.  The great thing about a democracy is that all of us are free to express our opinions, however inane they might be.  Mr. Knight’s ill-considered remarks are certainly amusing.

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The police are people who do difficult and sometimes dangerous work that most of the rest of us couldn’t or wouldn’t be willing to take on ourselves.  Most of the women and men who choose the law enforcement profession as a career are dedicated to public service and perform their duties conscientiously.  Some aren’t so dedicated or conscientous and some make mistakes.  All of us are human, and mistakes made in good faith can always be forgiven.

What I find unforgiveable are those cases where police use the taxpayers’ money to investigate their own mistakes and try to minimize them by manipulating public opinion in their favour.  It certainly doesn’t happen all the time, but it has occurred in so may serious cases I have handled that I get frustrated and discouraged when I see the police use my tax dollars to engage in the same predictable ham-handed cover ups and whitewashes.

Here are three of the most egregious examples of police cover ups I have encountered:

The 1998 “Riot at the Hyatt”:  It wasn’t a riot at all, but Vancouver police waded into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators and beat many of them with wooden nightsticks.  Several young people were seriously injured.  The Vancouver police investigated the matter for over a year and issued a voluminous report concluding that the victims’ complaints of excessive force were unsubstantiated.  The investigators failed to identify any of the police officers present and neglected to interview them.  The police used taxpayer money to stymie a public hearing and to defend my clients’ lawsuit until the day before trial, when they settled.

The 2000 beating death of Jeffrey Berg: Vancouver police constable David Bruce-Thomas beat and kicked Berg to death in the presence of two of his VPD colleagues.  The internal investigation was handled by Bruce-Thomas’ VPD  friend and car racing teammate Rob Rothwell, who cleared Bruce-Thomas of any wrongdoing without interviewing any of the three police officers who were at the scene.  Instead, self-serving and exculpatory written statements of the three VPD constables were prepared and delivered by the lawyer all three visited some time later.  It took Crown Counsel years to decide not to charge Bruce-Thomas with a criminal offence in respect of the homicide.   At the subsequent coroner’s inquest, Bruce-Thomas confirmed that Berg, who had no criminal record but was a suspect in a break and enter, was unarmed and did not touch or threaten any of the police officers.  Bruce-Thomas claimed that he couldn’t remember inflicting many of the blows that were responsible for over a dozen separate bruises found on Berg’s body.  The retired judge who later presided over a public hearing into the Berg family’s complaint himself had a major amnesiac incident requiring hospitalization during the hearing.  The family’s complaint was ultimately deemed to be unsubstantiated.

The 2004 fatal shooting of Kevin St. Arnaud:  The RCMP investigated the incident wherein RCMP Cst. Ryan Sheremetta shot and killed Kevin St. Arnaud, an unarmed break and enter suspect, after chasing him across a snow-covered soccer field in Vanderhoof.  Although Sheremetta’s testimony at the coroner’s inquest was so incredible that he was subjected to a year long investigation for perjury by the RCMP (which ultimately cleared him), no charges were laid in respect of the homicide.  The RCMP investigation was so inadequate that they failed to canvass the neighborhood for eyewitnesses.  The eyewitnesses who testified at the coroner’s inquest, including Sheremetta’s own RCMP partner, disputed his account and confirmed the forensic evidence disclosing that the two men were facing each other about 5 metres apart when Sheremetta pumped three bullets into St. Arnaud’s chest. 

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So, do police cover up and whitewash their mistakes in serious cases?  In my opinion, absolutely.  Does the criminal justice system work in those cases?  Absolutely not.

Have the police covered up or whitewashed their actions in the missing women investigations?  At this point, it sure looks like it to me.

We receive too many emails to respond to every one, but we are grateful to all who have forwarded information to us to assist the families of Picktons’ murder victims with their efforts to uncover the true story.  Please keep those tips coming, especially those about the seamy underworld of Piggy’s Palace as described in Stevie Cameron’s book, “On the Farm”.

The Commission appears disinclined to call civilian witnesses to testify about the police investigations into the Pickton brothers’ shady dealings-our application to have Bill Hiscox, Dave Pickton, Bev Hyacinthe and others testify has not yet been decided-but the information we receive will nonetheless be useful at a later date.

It seems that I may have ruffled a few feathers with my statement the other day that “I’m afraid that this Commission may be enabling a cover up”.  It also seems that people are interested.  I just received a copy of the following email from a member of the public to the Commission:

“I have been following the news on the inquiry, and at first I thought Mr. Ward was bit of a dramatist, referring to a cover-up, and suggesting the inquiry was enabling it, but the more I read, the more it appears he is more than correct.  It stinks, and missing notes, missing files, excluded witnesses, evasive answers by police, and overall lack of disclosure are just the tip of the iceberg.  This is going to be a political disaster, and completely undermine the credibility of, and trust in, our judicial system and current liberal government–remember HST?  Unless the entire record pertaining to the investigation of police, politician [sic] and any other professionals involved is disclosed, this with [sic] be a bigger disaster than HST and the BC Rail combined.  You cannot allow a coverup, or even the appearance of one–the fallout from the public will be far worse for a coverup, than the ugly truth of this fiasco seeing the light of day, or the money and time it takes to thoroughly investigate. 

Why does it appear that Pickton was protected for years from investigation, from the kind of surveillance that would have caught him?  There were competent officers who knew he was beyond a strong suspect, and there is no doubt that the investigation was bungled.  But was it bungled because of a police and legal system who just didn’t care, and who thought the lives of these vulnerable women mattered so little that they couldn’t be bothered, or was there a connection with Pickton specifically that those some people in charge were trying to cover up.   There have been rumours for years that high level police and political figures were connected to the Pickton [sic]  (maybe attended his parties?), it would be very nice to put an end to the speculation with an open and honest investigation and allow all materials in.”

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I don’t use words like “cover up” and “whitewash” lightly, but I do try to call a spade a spade.  I recognise police cover ups when I see them, and I see them frequently, especially in the most serious cases.  The police are masterful at seizing control of an issue and deciding what is available for public consumption.  They do this by first investigating the matter themselves and making sure the documentary record is sanitized.  Those documents they decide to release for third party scrutiny are jumbled into a disorganized mess and dumped on their adversaries, in the hope that by the time they are reorganised, it’s too late to force the delivery of the critical missing information.

I hope to publish a book on this subject one day, outlining the attempted investigative cover ups of the 1998 “Riot at the Hyatt”, David Bruce-Thomas’ savage fatal beating of Jeffrey Berg, Russ Sherematta’s fatal shooting of Kevin St. Arnaud…and others.

Before that day comes, I’ll keep trying my best to ensure that this is a bona fide public inquiry.

Commissions of inquiry can benefit the public by stripping away coats of institutionally applied whitewash and exposing a scandal to public scrutiny, so that appropriate steps can be taken to ensure something similar is never repeated.  However, a government can cynically manipulate a commission by restricting its operation so severely that a cover up is actually perpetuated.

That, according to Commissioner Peter Desbarats, is exactly what happened in the Somalia Inquiry, a public inquiry established to investigate the 1993 death of sixteen year old Shidane Arone at the hands of members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment.  In his compelling book, “Somalia Cover-Up: A Commissioner’s Journal”, Mr. Desbarats chronicles the way his commission was shut down as it attempted to pursue the truth.

“Significant information was made available to [the Commission] only after lengthy delays.  Clear evidence emerged that documents were being tampered with.  Conflicting testimony from different sources made it obvious that some of the witnesses were telling lies”, is the way the dust jacket summarizes Mr. Desbarats’ account.

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In the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, the institutional participants have reached into their bag of tricks to pull out tactics we have seen over and over again in at least fifteen previous administrative tribunal hearings.  They’ve tried to achieve control of the story by internally investigating the matter themselves and divulging their results preemptively.  They’ve deluged the tribunal with a disorganized jumble of documents in the hope that under-resourced and overworked lawyers spend so much time sorting through the mess that they don’t realize that critical records have been withheld from them until its too late.  They’ve “lawyered up” to try tilt the already slanted playing field even more dramatically in their favour.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Shirley Bond has imposed such a restrictive time frame on the Commissioner, former Attorney General Wally Oppal, that it is apparent that there will be inadequate time to hear from many important witnesses.

Those witnesses who do attend the hearings are being asked to recall events from 10 – 15 years ago.  In such circumstances, documents created back then play a crucial role in ferreting out the truth.  The following are just a few examples of records that are still missing from the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry:

• Crown Counsel’s files relating to the charges of attempted murder, forcible confinement, assault with a weapon and aggravated assault arising from Robert Willy Pickton’s March 23, 1997 attack of a Vancouver women at the Port Coquitlam property he shared with his brother, charges that were stayed in 1998;
• The book written by lead VPD investigator Lori Shenher about the investigation, which was apparently submitted to McClelland & Stewart for publication in 2003;
• Shenher’s own investigative file, delivered to the RCMP-controlled Project Evenhanded in 2001 and then apparently withheld from her and from the Commission ever since;
• Police emails about the investigations;
• Records of a meeting held April 9, 1999 attended by Shenher, then Attorney General Ujjal Dosanjh, two other cabinet ministers, their aides and senior managers of the VPD and RCMP at a time when Shenher considered Pickton to likely be responsible for the disappearancesand murders of the missing women;
• Police officers’ notes of a “brainstorming session” held at VPD headquarters a little over a month later, May 13, 1999, when, according to Shenher’s testimony, Pickton’s likely role as perpetrator of the crimes was discussed “at length” by the 18 police officers in attendance.  One of those was VPD Deputy Chief Doug LePard, who wrote the VPD’s internal internal investigative report.

These missing documents, and others, are vitally important to our clients, the families of 25 murdered women, who are trying to determine why the Crown, the VPD and the RCMP failed to stop Pickton’s five year long murder spree.

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The last two sentences of Peter Desbarats’ book, Somalia Cover-Up, gives us cause for optimism:

“The truth will eventually emerge.  It almost always does.”

The recent B.C. Supreme Court decision quashing a public hearing the complaint of Yao Wei Wu that two Vancouver police officers used excessive force against him in a case of mistaken identity proves, yet again, that any police complaint system that depends on police investigating the actions of police is irredeemably flawed.  When the Independent Investigation Office is finally established, cases like Mr. Wu’s would be investigated by civilians.

Mr. Wu, one of our clients, was seriously injured when Vancouver police investigating a domestic violence complaint went to the wrong address and awakened him.  Mr. Wu and his wife have a civil claim pending in B.C. Supreme Court, file no. S101576, Vancouver Registry.