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Garth McLennan
Editor in Chief

want to trust the police. I really do,

and when I think about it, I think

that’s the similar thought process of
many Lower Mainland citizens. However,
there are times, and in the last few years
there have been many of them, where the °
police themselves sure as hell don’t make
it easy to trust them.

Take the recent guilty plea entered
by now former constable Peter Hodson
for drug trafficking while he was both
on and off duty. If there was ever an
example of a breach of the public trust
by an officer of the law, I think this one
probably stands out. Now, it’s true that
Hodson was labelled a “rouge” officer by
Vancouver police chief Jim Chu, but the
fact remains that Hodson is hardly alone
when it comes to a number of Lower
Mainland police officers, both municipal
and RCMP, being involved in a score of
highly publicized shenanigans.

It seems like in recent months the
amount of cases regarding officers
engaging in criminal activates themselves
has been on the rise. Yes, the well
established cliché of “it’s just a few bad
apples” is almost certainly correct, but
the fact remains that those bad apples are
still out there and betraying the public, be
it through drunk driving cases (it’s hard
to keep track of how many there have
been of those lately), excessive force
infractions, drug dealing charges or gross
negligence.

I mean, you won’t find a better
illustration of this then the farce that
was the testimony of the four officers
involved in the Braidwood Commission
inquires about the taser death of Robert

 

Sometimes the police don’t make it easy

Dziekanski. By now everyone is aware of
the flagrant lying, there’s no other word
for it, the officers on the stand engaged
in, despite completely contradictory video
evidence.

It doesn’t matter that the Braidwood
Commission wrapped up over a year ago,
or that the incident itself happened over
three years ago. Cases like that, ones that
are so publicized and in the center of the
public eye, betray the trust of the public
and cause average people to lose faith in
the police.

It doesn’t help that cops continue
to investigate one another. Sure, most
departments have moved away from
investigating themselves, but when
Vancouver police go to Maple Ridge or
New Westminster with investigations
against their own, it still doesn’t look
good. It is still police investigating police,
and as a result, whenever the decisions
of those cases fall in favour of the police,
the public once again rolls their collective
eyes and writes it off as yet another
example of the police protecting their
own at the expense of justice.

How do the police regain the public’s
trust? Simple, move to a province wide
civilian oversight board. Obviously there
would have to be qualifications met in
order to serve on the committee, and
yes, it would be a logistical nightmare to
organize and maintain the board with so
many independent police agencies mixed
in with the elephant that is the RCMP, but
it would go a very long way to striking
the conflict of interest allegations that
continually plague just about every law
enforcement organization in British
Columbia.

 

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