Sexual misconduct and rape:
Cops cover up for cops
Where’s Farnworth? Where’s Eby?
Where are the media and SJWs?
February 20, 2023
February 28, 2023 update: The solicitor general finally ordered an inquiry. But he and the rest of B.C.’s cop-friendly establishment know how to manipulate native anger. Read more.
Premier David Eby built his career as a supposed social justice warrior.
But he always shied away from challenging the political and
legal establishment that supports cop cover-ups.
Even the Mounties’ supposed whistleblowers are unreliable. That’s one message, entirely unintended, of Postmedia reporter Ian Mulgrew’s recent series on Prince George RCMP rape allegations. The more important message—also unstated—is that allegations of cop rape or any kind of cop sexual misconduct should be investigated by a civilian agency. Recent news about the Vancouver Police Department’s Jim Fisher disgrace reinforces the Prince George outrage.
British Columbia and, last I heard, Quebec remain the only two provinces that allow cops to investigate other cops for sexual misconduct. That authority was excluded from B.C.’s Independent Investigations Office when the agency was created 12 years ago. The legislation ensured a number of IIO handicaps, strongly suggesting political deference to a powerful police lobby.
The exclusion was a glaring omission, but one easily executed in B.C.’s cozy political, legal, media and “activist” milieu.
It happened with the support of MLAs on both the BC Liberal government of the time and the NDP opposition. Since then a number of all-party legislative committees on police issues (eventually including the Greens) and a new government have continued to ignore the problem. That’s been seen most recently in an April 2022 report that makes confused, vague and inadequate recommendations for a supposedly comprehensive overhaul of B.C.’s Police Act, all the while ignoring the system’s most important problems.
Ever superficial and compliant, B.C.’s media miss this entirely. Mindful of their careers and funding sources, B.C.’s salaried “activists” in the Pivot Legal Society and B.C. Civil Liberties Association won’t speak out.
For all its faults, the IIO remains by far the most credible of B.C.’s three police oversight agencies, which include the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner and a federal agency, the RCMP’s Civilian [sic] Review and Complaints Commission. Yet the IIO’s faults need urgent attention.
Among them are difficulties getting cops to cooperate with investigators, slow access to forensics labs and a staffing shortage that management blames on unnecessarily stringent hiring standards and some former employees blame (very vaguely) on management bullying.
These are serious problems but they can be fixed. Twelve years of IIO history, however, show no concern from B.C.’s legislature and salaried “activists,” and little from the media.
IIO weaknesses manifest themselves in extraordinary delays. The recent decision on the death of Dave Culver (a Prince George native) took nearly six years. The Myles Gray decision (which gets much less attention than it should because the victim was white) took nearly five years. Those are just two examples. Again, no one with a say in public discourse expresses much concern about this.
Back to recently reported info, one of Mulgrew’s stories relates a (partial) sequence showing that Mounties covered up rape allegations against Prince George RCMP. (Unacknowledged and unintended, that story also suggests that RCMP irresponsibility extends to the force’s supposed whistleblowers, Garry Kerr and Lisa Mackenzie. More on that here.)
The main lesson emanating from Mulgrew’s series should be the need for civilian investigation. But, so far anyway, he hasn’t stated this obvious conclusion.
Throughout his career in opposition and government, in legislature
and legislative committees, Mike Farnworth has consistently
thwarted police accountability.
Mulgrew writes that B.C. Solicitor General Mike Farnworth received a damning report on the Prince George non-investigation but passed the buck back to the federal cops. Mulgrew missed an especially good opportunity to ask Farnworth a question almost no one asks outside of this marginalized website: Why doesn’t he get jurisdiction for the IIO over cases of sexual misconduct? The IIO has authority over RCMP in cases involving death and serious injury, so Ottawa would likely (and gladly) relieve itself of this responsibility too.
Currently that responsibility comes under the RCMP’s Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, a dishonest name for a full-Mountie cop-on-cop investigation procedure with a cop-friendly review by a cop-friendly boss.
The problem is hardly limited to federal cops. Jim Fisher was the Vancouver police detective convicted in 2018 for sexual misconduct with the victim of a pimp whom Fisher was investigating. By that time some VPD cops had already become concerned (maybe showing more fortitude than Kerr and Mackenzie) that Fisher might have committed additional, similar crimes that were covered up by his closest colleagues. An investigation begun in 2017 finally came to a Crown decision this month. Nothing further was determined against Fisher. As for two of his buddies on the VPD pimp squad, they escaped criminal prosecution for withholding damaging information about Fisher.
They did withhold damaging information. They just didn’t get charged for it.
That applies to some other VPD cops too: “All of the subject officers and indeed some officers who were not suspects failed to fully disclose information relevant to the investigation,” stated the B.C. Prosecution Service. “While the officers may have had what the special prosecutor regarded as a moral or social duty to be more forthcoming in the investigation, there was no legal duty that would support a criminal prosecution.”
When it comes to interpreting law, the choice between principle and expediency can be a prerogative of bigshots. Then again, a moral or social duty isn’t necessarily a legal obligation. But what kind of people does the VPD employ? After meeting with investigators one of the cops, according to the Crown report, “boasted to the NCO that she had been an ‘absolute bitch’ during the interview, would not look at the investigators and provided one-word answers to questions.”
These characters worked on the anti-pimp Counter Exploitation Unit. They withheld information to protect an exploiter who was a fellow cop. And they’re still cops, still in good standing.
The case has now gone to B.C.’s Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner, which may order another investigation under the Police Act. That’s another cop-on-cop investigation, with details and results possibly kept secret due to the OPCC’s lack of transparency and accountability. In keeping with OPCC practice, penalties, if any, would likely be lenient.
Through cop cover-up after cop cover-up, B.C. police complaint commissioner
Stan Lowe and his deputy liar Rollie Woods intensified the OPCC’s stench
of corruption. But this agency and the RCMP’s self-serving Civilian [sic]
Review and Complaints Commission hold total control over
cop-on-cop investigations of cop sexual misconduct,
cop sexual assault and cop rape.
Moreover, the OPCC reeks of corruption. Despite the agency’s secrecy and unaccountability, four cover-ups have accidentally come to light: Vancouver police officer Taylor Robinson, New Westminster officer Vinnie Dosanjh, Saanich officer Brent Wray and Victoria police chief Frank Elsner. The Elsner case involved sexual misconduct. The Dosanjh case involved violence against a woman. The Robinson case involved violence against a disabled native woman.
All too obvious once again is the need for independent investigation by a civilian agency. B.C. and maybe Quebec remain the only provinces that allow cops to investigate each other for sexual misconduct. There’s no impetus to change this, from either side of B.C.’s cop-friendly legislature, from the poverty pimp SJWs or the courtier media.
Along with eight other smug MLAs, Doug Routley and Dan Davies
signed off on Police Act recommendations that ignore the
legislation’s most serious problems. As unaccomplished flunkies
they probably didn’t write the recommendations themselves.
But in return for pay, perks and pensions that they could never
earn in a real job, they’d let cops get away with rape.
Long before becoming solicitor general, Farnworth had already been a stalwart supporter of the cop status quo. He’s steadfastly opposed transparency and accountability for the OPCC, supported the obviously corrupt police complaint commissioner Stan Lowe and ignored the IIO’s structural problems. Farnworth likely directed last April’s vague, confused legislative committee report. Like all such reports on policing, it was probably ghost-written in consultation with the ex-cops in the solicitor general’s department.
But any direction on police accountability likely now depends not on retirement-ready Farnworth but on B.C.’s new premier, David Eby. He appears to be the province’s first all-controlling autocrat since Gordon Campbell, and supposedly comes from a social justice background.
B.C. journalists don’t get this, but Eby always was a social justice phoney. That shows especially on the topic of police accountability. When he began his career with two poverty pimp groups, the Pivot Legal Society* and BCCLA, Eby initially discussed individual acts of police misconduct without addressing the system that protects cops even to the point of covering up their actions. Eventually he wouldn’t even discuss police misconduct, instead deflecting media questions by changing the subject to mental illness.
So even in the face of the Prince George allegations, Eby can ignore the problem, tweak it or manipulate it. No one in B.C.’s media, legislature, legal establishment or “activist” groups will call him to account on this issue.
The RCMP report cited by Mulgrew and brushed off by Farnworth referred to “a complete failure by all [B.C. RCMP] management personnel.” Police accountability in B.C. shows a complete failure by everyone allowed a public voice on the issue.
All this has been said before, but almost exclusively on this website. Nothing changes.
*The Pivot Legal Society colluded in the VPD/OPCC cover-up of Taylor Robinson’s gratuitous assault on a disabled native woman. White American Pivot poverty pimp Scott Bernstein “represented” the victim but stayed silent during the cover-up. White American Pivot poverty pimp Doug King later praised OPCC boss Stan Lowe’s handling of the case, knowing full well that Lowe and his cronies took part in the six-week cover-up before media publicized Robinson’s actions.
Pivot’s refusal to acknowledge this taints everyone associated with the opportunist group, including Eby, his general counsel Craig Jones and B.C. human rights commissioner Kasari Govender.
Related:
RCMP cover up rape allegations against Prince George Mounties
The supposed whistleblowers are part of the problem.
So are the media, not to mention B.C.’s legislature,
legal establishment and SJWs
Read more about B.C.’s Independent Investigations Office
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