MORE (OLD) WATERLOO REGION POLICE CORRUPTION?

The information for this posting comes from a two year old newspaper clipping from the Kitchener-Waterloo Record. Dated January 21, 2010 via The Canadian Press the title is "Former Waterloo police officer wins right to sue two judges". Now this is interesting. A Justice Joseph Henderson of Superior Court has ruled that the former Waterloo Region police officer can sue two current judges for malicious prosecution which allegedly occurred while they were both prosecuting attorneys. Kevin Hawkins was charged in 1988 with corruption charges alleging he was selling tips to an outlaw biker gang and conspiring to obstruct justice. Notice in particular that last charge. Well Mr. Hawkins was eventually acquitted after it came out that the O.P.P. investigating officer was sleeping with the prosecution's star witness against Mr. Hawkins. This possibly salacious information while known to the two prosecuters was not shared with the defence counsel, contrary to disclosure rules among others. Not surprisingly Mr. Hawkins law suit was launched in 1998 and only two years ago got the go ahead. The two defendants, Justice Brian Trafford and Justice William Wolski are joined by the attorney general for Ontario, the Waterloo Regional police board and the three police officers who handled the investigation.

I am aware that there have been other civil suits against the Waterloo Regional Police. Suits against sitting judges I would expect are rare and even rarer is for them to advance. Regarding our local Police I would expect that all Settlement offers would include confidentiality clauses. A skeptic would term these clauses as financial bribes, paid for by the taxpayers, specifically to keep these very same taxpayers in the dark. I wonder how much of our annual Police budget is paying for either settlements or insurance premiums for future settlements. This is the lack of transparency that allows bad police behaviour to continue without accountability.

MOUNTIES APOLOGIZE

An apology is a start. I may accept it, the public may accept it, but it will take much more for the families of the murder victims in British Columbia. Apologizing for the inadequate and systemic investigative failures of the R.C.M.P. is an important first step. As a friend has often said to me you can't solve a problem until you admit the problem exists. The Mounties have now publicly admitted that. What is now necessary is an overhaul of attitudes and behaviour at the top. No less will suffice. Yesterday's K-W Record has this story namely : "Mounties apologize for Pickton failures".

MORE LOCAL POLICE IN TROUBLE WITH THE LAW

Yesterday's Kitchener-Waterloo Record has the following story on page B4: "Drug case adjourned for officer facing charges". Back on January 13/12 I posted a story here in the Advocate regarding an Officer Jennifer Falsetto and her Police Act charges dealing with her use of marijuana. Yesterday's article is about Constables Andrew Robson and Jeremy Borda who were charged criminally in regards to drugs. Constable Borda was initially charged with trafficking marijuana but it was reduced to possession. "He was given a conditional discharge, fined $100 and ordered to perform 50 hours of community service." Constable Robson appears to be in the most trouble as he is charged with both possession and theft. The theft is alleged to be from drugs not being properly turned in after an investigation.

The number of Waterloo Region Police Officers who have been caught in either criminal or discreditable behaviour is very disconcerting. An optimist might point to the apparent openness and transparency as a good thing. Diane Wood the Record reporter who wrote this story has been covering court cases for many years and certainly is correct in believing that Waterloo Region residents both have a right and a need to know when their Police officers go astray.

JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS

So you might think that Judges are the cream of the crop so to speak. The best and the brightest lawyers who rise to the top of their profession. Well huh maybe. I've been going through my files again and so I'm going to reproduce the following short newspaper article in its' entirety. You the reader be the judge.

Kitchener-Waterloo Record May 4, 2007:

"Study finds political contributions linked to judicial appointments

Guelph

A University of Guelph study of judicial appointments appears to confirm what many critics have long argued-politics does have an influence.
A study of 978 judicial appointments between 1988 and 2003 found at least 30 per cent of judges appointed during the Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien years made donations to the political party in power.
Political scientist Troy Riddell says that's quite high considering less than one per cent of Canadians donate to federal political parties.
Riddell says while people with political ties may make fine judges, it raises concerns that weaker candidates are receiving plum positions because of patronage.
Riddell says the federal government tried to change the process in response to accusations of partisan influence in 1988 by setting up screening committees to objectively evaluate the applications and make recommendations to the justice minister.
But it's a process he says "obviously hasn't happened to a satisfactory degree."

Canadian Press "


O.K. so I've got a couple of thoughts and questions. Firstly it's too bad this study (or another) hasn't simply looked at how many former lawyers who were appointed judges were members of the governing political party: with or without party donations. Secondly this study occurred after "reform" had been introduced in 1988. I wonder what the percentage was of appointed judges before 1988, who made political party donations.

JUSTICE IS BLIND

Some wits may have added to the above title "DEAF AND DUMB". Perhaps the truth lies somewhere inbetween. Justice is a mass production factory system. Look at the numbers of crimes, arrests, charges and convictions. There are thousands of cases per year for every single courthouse in Canada. Mass production factory systems make errors. When they are big enough they get recalled and or fixed.

I've been perusing some old newspaper files I've collected over the years. In the Kitchener-Waterloo Record on April 24, 2007 they carried an Associated Press story titled "Exonerated man is 200th U.S. case". This particular gentleman spent twenty-five years in jail for rape. Most of us would have difficulty either feeling sympathy for him or calling him a gentleman. The problem is that he was the 200th case "...in the United States in which a convicted person was exonerated based on DNA evidence." This was a result of the Innocence Project whose spokesperson is the well known "hurricane" Rubin Carter. Here in Canada we have the Association for the Defence of the Wrongly Convicted led by Mr. James Lockyer. This 200th case occurred nearly five years ago. How many more exonerations have there been since and just as importantly how many more wrongful convictions have there been since then?

What do the following names have in common: Marshall (no relative), Morin, Milgaard, Baltovich, Mullins, Driskell, Truscott, Dalton, Dumont ? These are the names I came up with from fifteen minutes of digging into old files. The name Sophonow comes to my mind and my own memory is telling me I've read of many more. These are the names of people wrongly convicted for murder here in Canada. If our system can prove these people "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" ,in the most serious criminal cases, then how pathetic are the standards for lesser criminal cases such as assaults, robberies, break-ins and thefts? How many mothers, fathers and baby sitters have been convicted of negligence or manslaughter in Canada or Ontario because of "junk science"? I'm referring to SBS or Shaken Baby Syndrome which I posted here in the Advocate last week . How many other unaccountable pathologists are there out there besides finally disgraced Dr. Charles Smith? How many other "professionals" knew that Dr. Smith was a quack and didn't blow the whistle for fear of hurting their careers?

Here in Waterloo Region we are currently in the process of building a new larger, fancier Courthouse in downtown Kitchener. Does anyone really believe that our Justice system will be the better for it? I don't. Our current Justice System is too comfortable, too well off, too arrogant and far too unaccountable. Our Judges are part of a political patronage system which rewards politically active lawyers with Judicial appointments. Our lawyers have far too many financial incentives to keep civil cases before the courts far longer than necessary. Our Crowns and Prosecuters while less inclined than their U.S. cousins to run up high conviction percentages to get themselves reelected; nevertheless have pressures and incentives to get convictions and occasionally fail to share appropriate information and evidence with the Defence. The system is broken and it's not the broken that bricks and mortar can fix.

THE WORLD'S LARGEST STREET GANG

I've seen T-shirts with the above logo on them. It refers to our municipal police forces and it's a disgrace. Not the T-shirts, the police forces. Similar to political jokes, it wouldn't be funny if there wasn't some truth to it. Yesterday's Kitchener-Waterloo Record carrys the following story: ""Discreditable" police conduct in G20 arrest". Five officers arrested and beat a man by the name of Adam nobody at the provincial legislature in June 2010. They did it because they are bullies and because they could. "The report by the Office of the Independent Police review Director names Babak Andalib-Goortani, Michael Adams, Geoffrey Fardell, David Donaldson and Oliver Simpson." Incredibly Michael Adams was already under investigation in the death of an eighteen year old man who died from "positional asphyxia" seven weeks earlier. Positional asphyxia relates to a person usually handcuffed , restrained and held immobile often face down on the ground. The non politically correct term for positional asphyxia might even include the word murder. How the hell do trained police officers "restrain" a human being to the point of asphyxiation? Five police officers beat up Adam Nobody to the point he needed reconstructive nose surgery and he had a broken cheekbone.

For the record the Special Investigations Unit (S.I.U.) as usual after investigating were unable to determine the names of any of the five police officers involved in the Nobody case. In their defence they have repeatedly and publicly stated that routinely they are denied cooperation and evidence by senior police management during their investigations. Keep in mind there was videotape of the Mr. Nobody arrest and beating.

I don't know which is more disgraceful and reprehensible: the behaviour of the individual officers involved or the coverup by senior levels of police. This behaviour reflects on and shames the entire members of a police force but it shouldn't. Perpetraters should be criminally charged and removed from duty if found guilty. Serious discipline not pretend discipline and coverups should be the order of the day. Any politicians or persons in authority at any and all levels should be removed if found promoting or condoning coverups of police misconduct. I and every citizen of this country have a right to receive professional, honest and transparent behaviour from our Police Officers and their supervisers and management. What we have is an undisciplined street gang sanctioned by our own authorities. It reeks at all levels.

POLICE CORRUPTION

There have been two stories in the K-W Record the last few days discussing police corruption in Toronto and Montreal. On January 17, 2012 the Record had the following story "Police corruption trial told officers beat drug dealers". On January 19/12 (yesterday) the Record published this story " Ex-officer with alleged Mob links kills himself: reports". The January 17 story is about an ongoing trial in Toronto involving five former Toronto drug squad officers. They are accused of "...violent shakedowns," beating up drug dealers, stealing their money and then lying to cover their tracks...". This case has been a $14 million investigation into members of the Toronto drug squad. Initial charges were laid in 2004 and it is just now getting to trial. You know we all watch television shows showing us dirty and corrupt cops and we want to believe that it doesn't exist. This ongoing case isn't the first and most likely not the last. Truth is stranger than fiction and many human beings in positions of authority tend to behave very badly.

The second story dated January 19 concerns a retired Montreal Police Officer who worked in the intelligence unit of the Montreal force. La Presse newspaper named him as an alleged mole the same day that his body was found in a hotel room. Suicide is suspected. This was also one day after the Montreal Police Chief publicly pledged to get to the bottom of allegations that there was a mole in his department allegedly selling informants names to the Mob. The Police Chief indicated that the retired officer did have access to the names of confidential informants. I guess my only surprise is that there are not more allegations across Canada of more minor Police misconduct. Human beings are weak and power without accountability and transparency corrupts. Apparently it is standard operating practice for Municipalities not to properly supervise and oversee their regional and municipal police forces. The shame in this is not just those who are immediately victimized but those good police officers who are stigmatized by the dirty ones.