West Van cop should be demoted
after 2009 assault on delivery man:
Report
Staff reporter, Vancouver Province, Feb. 5, 2010
Firoz Khan was beaten in downtown Vancouver January 21, 2009. West Van police officer
Griffin Gillan pleaded guilty to assault and has been demoted by the police force.
Photo: Arlen Redekop file, PNG.
Griffin Gillan has been demoted to probationary constable
in the West Van police force. Photo: Handout, WVPD.
A West Vancouver police officer who pleaded guilty to assaulting a newspaper-delivery man a year ago should be demoted to a probationary constable, suspended without pay for 120 hours and ordered to undergo alcohol counselling, according to a report from Abbotsford police Chief Bob Rich.
The West Vancouver Police Department issued a statement Thursday outlining the recommended disciplinary measures against Const. Griffin Gillan. Rich stopped short of recommending Gillan’s dismissal. The action comes more than a year after the brutal assault of delivery man Firoz Khan at Burrard and Georgia streets downtown Vancouver on Jan. 21, 2009.
West Van police say the demotion would cost Gillan about $120,000 in gross salary.
Before the assault, Gillan was drinking heavily at bars in West Vancouver and on Granville Street with Jeffrey Klassen — a 38-year-old New Westminster police officer who is scheduled to go to trial for the assault in spring — and a Delta officer who was not charged in the incident.
Gillan became separated from his friends at around 2:30 a.m and, after hitching a ride with Aubrey Simon, a now-deceased witness who said Gillan appeared irritated and “very intoxicated,” he ended up outside the Hyatt where he asked Khan for directions.
Khan, a 47-year-old father of three, told Gillan to “give me a second.”
That’s when Gillan had “an unexplained violent outburst,” said the Crown. “You f---ing come here right now,” he told Khan.
Crown counsel Ralph Keefer told court Gillan punched or kneed Khan in the stomach, and brought him to the pavement.
After being dragged to his feet, Khan asked Gillan why he was being hit. The officer replied, “You’re under arrest,” and pushed him back down. That’s when Gillan called for “backup,” alerting Klassen and the Delta officer.
A 911 call played in court showed how the assault mimicked police-arrest techniques, said Keefer. “Cross your feet. Get your hands up,” an unspecified male voice says.
Eyewitness accounts describe Khan being punched in the back of the head, having his head pulled back and being kicked in the ribs and stomach. One witness heard Khan yelling, “Call the police.” Klassen allegedly replied: “We are the police.”
Khan also said he heard a racist remark but could not say who uttered it. No witnesses reported hearing it.
Upon his arrest, Gillan was unco-operative, denied the assault and spat on a police car.
The report’s recommendations must be accepted by the B.C. Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner.
West Vancouver Police grant Griffin Gillan a job for life
— luckily for him, because the vicious punk
probably couldn’t work anywhere else
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