The Naked Mountie: The Naked Mountie e6656

THE NAKED MOUNTIE

A Diary Of His Service With The Royal Canadian Mounted Police

DAVID A. KIFT

Copyright © 2012 by David A. Kift.

ISBN: Softcover 978-1-4797-2889-3 Ebook 978-1-4797-2890-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Table of Contents

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

ing the Force

ing

Barracks

Drill

Graduation

Posting

CHAPTER TWO

Chilliwack

Escapee

Foster

Rosedale Accidents

Nathan Murder

Pearl

Shoot Out

River Suicide

Smash & Grab

Liquor Store

Threats

CHAPTER THREE

Boston Bar

Dive Team

Jones Drowning

Tranter Suicide

North Bend

Alcohol Bob

Hells Gate

CHAPTER FOUR

Agassiz

Olson Murders

Transvestite

Skeleton

# 7 Accidents

LIETZ

Bear

Prison Riots

CHAPTER FIVE

Prince Rupert

Airplane Crash

Teslin Lake

Mannequin

Moby Dick Inn

CHAPTER SIX

Victoria

Interesting

Raglan Fatal

Arthur Accident

Sooke Fatal

Kilby

N.O.K.

Assault

Justice

CHAPTER SEVEN

Discharge

Discharge

CHAPTER EIGHT

Civil suit

Civil Suit

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this book to my loving wife Marion and my two daughters Tiffany and Shannon who stood behind me during difficult times and Gloria YOUNNIE of Chilliwack British Columbia who inspired me to write this book.

About the Author

I was born in Oshawa, Ontario in 1957 to a family including two brothers and a sister. I graduated from Eastdale High School in Oshawa Ontario in 1977. I was sworn into the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at the Toronto, Ontario “O Division” Headquarters on the 28th of December, 1978 at age 20. I then graduated from the R.C.M.P. Training academy on July 3, 1979.

Postings and Transfers . . .

• Transferred to general duties in Chilliwack, British Columbia until October 1981

• Posted to Boston Bar, British Columbia from October 1981 until May 1983

• Posted to Agassiz, British Columbia until May 1983

• Posted to Prince Rupert, British Columbia from May 1985 until August 1989

• Posted to Victoria, British Columbia August 1989 and released from the force on January 3, 1996

• Relocated to Oshawa, Ontario August 1996

Chapter One ing the Force

ing

In the spring of 1977 I graduated from Eastdale high school in the city of Oshawa, Ontario; a city located 40 kilometers east of Toronto. I was raised in a middle class neighborhood with two brothers and a sister. As a youngster I had a vision of being a policeman as many of my father’s friends were. A close friend of the family, John Wilson, was the Corporal in charge of the Calendar Detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police. We used to go to visit his family often. One Easter while visiting, there was a shortage of beds in his home, which was attached to the Police station. This resulted in my brother John and me sleeping in one of the jail cells. John Wilson’s son Ray was the first of my friends to the Force. Ray became my mentor and at that point I became determined to the Federal Police Force of Canada. I applied to the force in the city of Oshawa as they had a detachment located in the city hall. After applying, it took about two years to complete the examinations and obtain an opening in Regina Saskatchewan. This is where the training academy for the R.C.M.P is located. I was sworn into the force on the 28th of December, 1978 at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Headquarters office in Toronto, Ontario. The recruiting Constable provided me with an allowance to travel to Regina, Saskatchewan, and away I went. After a few days of traveling through foul weather I finally arrived in Regina. The weather was terrible as I drove into the Parade Square at Depot. I observed a recruit running across the Parade Square with his fur hat pulled over his head and the snow blowing violently. I rolled the window down and asked where I should report in. The recruit, whom I later befriended, was named Peter Draper. Peter pointed to the guardhouse and told me to turn around and get the hell out while I could. I proceeded to the guardhouse where a commissioner gave me a blanket, sheet and a pillow. He directed me to one of the large buildings, called a dormitory.

Barracks

The barracks at the RCMP training academy consist of three stories. C and D blocks are L shaped with six dormitories in each building. A single dormitory has sixteen beds on each side, and each section has an area between two beds called a pit. You shared this area with another recruit. The area has a built-in desk with drawers and a security locker. The beds consisted of a single mattress on a metal frame. You are issued two sets of linen and one blanket. Each day when you rise at about 6 am. All the beds had to be prepared in the same manner. The inspecting officer looked down the line of sheets; every bed sheet had to be lined up. The sheets had to be ironed with a grey black blanket on top, rolled down, and pulled tight so it did not show any wrinkles. This could be performed with a coat hanger. Your Sam Brown (otherwise known as a holster) had to be stripped and laid in a specific order on the bed in a mirror image to your pit partners. Your drawers were only allowed to contain issue clothing, which had to be too rolled in a specific way. The closet had to contain issue clothing on the right with hangers turned in and civilian clothing on the left with hangers turned out. Your hats were to be positioned on the top shelf in a specific manner. Your security locker had to be locked at all times. This is where you stored your service revolver and valuables. A key was issued and you wore it around your neck at all times. It was worth your life if you lost it. Each and every day the pit area was to be vacuumed and your area, along with the washrooms, were inspected by the Corps Sergeant Major. You had to stand at attention for inspection at 7:00 a.m. Monday to Friday. Each Troop would collect a donation upon arrival and we would rent a television to put in a small room. This room would also serve as the ironing and polishing room.

Drill

When we first arrived in Regina, Saskatchewan for training, we soon learned to fear the Drill Instructor. These men were the most disciplined instructors we were most likely to encounter during our six-month tour of Depot Division. They were people who represented the uniform well, with a good physique, usually a clean cut and waxed moustache, and when they spoke it sent shivers down your spine. The Non-Commissioned Officer in charge of the section was Sergeant Shawn Rich. He was God’s representative; he thrived on discipline and represented the force immaculately. He was also a seasoned instructor who previously conducted two three-year tours as a Corporal and as a Constable drill instructor. In Depot they arranged your training schedule so that you would have a physical course followed by an academic course. This would involve showering after your physical, marching together to your academic course in another building and being on time. It took about six weeks to get your marching orders which could be identified by you being in uniform till then you had to run everywhere. The first day we had drill we were late. I think it was arranged it this way. We ran to the drill hall in what was attempted as a troop formation and were met by the one and only Sergeant S. Rich. How could we be so lucky? He was on the front steps of this massive drill hall yelling in a deep rough voice calling us every foul word one could imagine. We went into the drill hall and lined up with him hot on our tracks. The man looked sharp. His uniform was flawless, and you could see yourself in his boots. One morning Sergeant Rich walked down the first of two rows of our troop, inspecting the troops. When he stopped in front of a fellow recruit by the name of Dave Quack Rich had a clipboard under one arm and a walking staff under the other. He looked at Quack and said to him, “Where are you from”? Quack replies, “Vancouver, Corporal”. When Rich finished with him after calling him a Corporal, not Sergeant, I felt sorry for Quack. Rich then says, “I don’t mean Vancouver. I mean where you from are?” Quack replies, “My parents are from

Taiwan”. Lewis threw his clipboard across the drill hall, turned around and said, “Now, we’re sending Mounties out with ‘Made in Taiwan’ on them?” As time went on, he rode several of us. One day Rich told us to touch all four walls of the large drill hall. At his command we would have to run and touch all four drill hall walls and get back into the same formation. God help you if you were the last to shuffle into place. Quack was running as fast as he could and when he looked up there was the wall. He went through the drywall leaving a big hole. Boy was Rich pissed off. If you screwed up, Rich would have you put Mickey Mouse ears on your head and stand in a polished garbage can meeting the tourists, telling each one that came in you were an asshole. When we graduated we were, in my opinion, one of the most disciplined troops that ever graduated.

Graduation

On July 3, 1979 I graduated from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at Regina, Saskatchewan known as Depot Division. The North West Mounted Police established the depot as a post in 1873. Located in central Canada, it was a prime location to continue the heritage of the force. Training was, for a short time, out of Alberta and varied in length of time from nine months to a year. In the early seventies it was shortened to six months because equestrian training had been eliminated. Contrary to popular belief, horses are no longer used in the training of RCMP . The only horse I saw in Depot was stuffed in the museum. It seemed that our whole tour in Regina was set around the day of graduation. Drill definitely appeared that way but it was also to discipline you I guess. The force seems to (opinion not fact) brainwashes its . For this reason they like them young, because it is very easy to mould a young innocent man or woman and get them to think their way. They drill into you “there is the right way”, “the wrong way”, and “the RCMP way.” The day was broken into different demonstrations, which involved Self Defense, Firearms, Swimming, Drill and finally receiving your pocket badge. It was a very busy day filled with incredibly disciplined moves. It is open to the public and if you ever get a chance to see a troop graduation it’s worth the free ission price.

Posting

It was not until the last week of our training that you found out where in Canada you were to be posted. I requested Newfoundland or Nova Scotia only because I would be closer to my home in Ontario. At that period of time it was impossible to be transferred to your own province. We were all summoned to the dormitory one night where our troop councilor, a big man by the name of Chuck Leman, met us. You were on pins and needles, especially when he was reading out the who were going to Saskatchewan. Well, Nova Scotia came and went; Newfoundland did also, and then came British Columbia. Ye Hah, I guess? Where in B.C.? We had to wait a few days so the Commanding Officer of the division you were posted to could determine where he would like to put you. I found out I was going to Chilliwack. Great, I’m so happy, where is Chilliwack? At this time Regina held the Canadian Police Combat Shoots and I met a competitor named Lorne Chaplin from Chilliwack. He described the area to me one evening. As soon as I acquired as much information as possible, I was on the phone to my then fiancée in Ontario ing on information about our new home to her. Of course her first question was, “Where is Chilliwack?”

Chapter Two Chilliwack

Escapee

One summer day in the late seventies an inmate escaped from Mountain Institution, a Medium Security Prison in Agassiz, British Columbia. An inmate had walked away. The last sighting of the inmate was at the base of mount Woodside, about a kilometer from the institution. The dog master for the Chilliwack detachment of the R.C.M.P. was dispatched to the area. The dog master was Corporal Larry Butler and his dog was Major. Larry was an experienced dog handler and was called quite often to track people who escaped from the prisons. On this particular occasion the escapee happened to be in top physical condition when he escaped. When Major, got the inmate’s scent, Larry and Major went in hot pursuit. They ended up chasing the inmate through the wooded slopes to the top of the mountain. The inmate was located and confronted by Major, who had been released from his lead on the way up the mountain because of the thick bush. Larry was a short distance behind when the inmate pulled out a sharpened dinner knife and stabbed Major in the neck, cutting the artery in the dog’s neck. When Larry finally approached the inmate, he made a sudden threatening movement towards Larry. Larry discharged his service revolver and the bullet struck the escapee’s knee, traveling right through and then hitting the rocks underneath. It then ricocheted and traveled back through the other knee. Larry then called on his radio for a helicopter to fly the injured inmate and dog off the mountain. When the helicopter arrived, rry gently loaded his injured partner and friend Major onto the helicopter and immediately had him flown to the veterinarian hospital in Chilliwack, leaving the inmate, whose injury was not life threatening, on Mount Woodside. The dog was attended to by the Veterinarian and Barter then returned to the mountain. The inmate has recovered and Major’s life was saved. The vet indicated to Larry that Major would never again be operational. The force usually puts its dogs down after eight years of service; therefore Major would be headed for retirement. Larry pleaded to be allowed to continue with Major and his request was granted. Major turned out to be one of the forces most

valuable K9s for several years to follow. However, Larry’s problems were not over. Chilliwack’s subdivision section, noncommission officer, Staff Sergeant George Falan, felt that the incident, which had occurred on the mountain, was not as Larry described. Staff Sergeant Falan took it upon himself to obtain the evidence he felt was the truth. He attempted to have Corporal Larry Butler discharged over the incident. Although Staff Sergeant Falan was never able to prove Larry’s story to be untrue, Larry’s promotions in the force ended that day. Terry is still serving the Kootney area R.C.M.P as a Corporal.

Foster

When recruits first arrive at a detachment from recruit field training, they were usually pretty naive, eager and willing to participate. Unknown to them, their fellow were ready to play a practical joke when the opportunity arose. Donna Foster, a young single female full of energy, was no exception. In the downtown core we had a street person by the name of Selma Packrat. She was a middle-aged woman who was down in her luck and in the wee hours of the morning she would search the dumpsters in hopes of finding a meal. Donna had returned to the office to do some paperwork early one morning and our practical joker Rick Harper went to work. Earlier in the evening Rick had gone to one of the tow truck company compounds and filled a box with broken auto glass. While Donna was in the office, he got the spare set of keys and went to her car, which was in the parking lot outside the detachment. He rolled down the window and stuck broken glass around the window edges. He then threw some glass on the seat and onto the ground. Afterwards he removed the portable radio and briefcase from the police car. We then sat back and watched. Donna returned to her car later that morning. Her reaction was enough to satisfy any practical joker. She ran back into the office very upset. We convinced her that Selma had done the damage and Donna took off on foot looking for her. Thank god she didn’t locate her before we went back to the car, replaced her radio and briefcase the way it had been, and cleaned up the glass. We then rolled up the window, which confused the hell out of Donna. The last I heard, Donna was promoted to a Sergeant in Regina, Saskatchewan.

Rosedale Accidents

On a clear, dry, warm, summer Saturday night I was working an evening shift in Chilliwack, B.C. At the beginning of the shift the watch commander asked if I would periodically check on a dance that was taking place at the Rosedale Community Hall because we had had problems there the last time the event was held. About 9 p.m., I drove out to the community of Rosedale, which was about ten kilometers to the east of Chilliwack. Upon my arrival I noted a rowdy crowd outside the hall. When the crowd noticed my police car parked across the road they started throwing beer bottles at the car and yelling obscene remarks. It was a busy night and manpower was limited so I parked the police car a few kilometers down the road and stopped the people coming or going to the dance. By doing this I managed to seize some of the illegal liquor minors were taking with them to the dance. A short time later I received a call from Chilliwack telecom reporting a fight involving several people and that one of the suspects was threatening the manager with a baseball bat at the Sportsman Motor Inn located several kilometers down the road. I attended the call and the manager of the Inn indicated that two young men had been threatening him with a bat. They left in a car westbound just before my arrival. I was about to leave to try to catch the suspects when I heard a crash up the road in the direction I had just come. I advised the Inn manager that I had better check it out as it sounded like a serious automobile collision. I drove a kilometer down the road when I came across a single vehicle accident. The dust was settling and what I saw was terrible. A Pontiac Lemans hit a big old oak tree on the right side of the road. When it hit the tree, the car had exploded. The vehicle was ripped in half at the firewall and the body of the car came off the frame behind it. A young female teenager was walking around in a circle crying and in shock. I saw two other people curled up motionless against the window behind the rear seat. One other person in the front enger seat was seriously injured and unconscious. The legs of another person were sticking out from under the firewall on the road with the body of the car on top of him. A sixth person was found a short time later by our dog master in a farmer’s field

unconscious. She had been ejected out of the car. Don Robertson, my friend and co-worker, arrived shortly after I did. He was on his way to back me up on the assault complaint. We requested the two ambulances from Chilliwack, the Fire Department, and the Department of National Defense’s ambulance from the Armed Forces base in Vedder Crossing to be dispatched. I felt that we had a multiple fatality on our hands. By this time motorists were stopping to provide assistance to us. We parked our police car to protect the scene the best we could. While we were trying to determine what had transpired and trying the save the accident victim’s lives, we heard the squealing of tires heading towards the accident scene. I looked up to see Don jumping on the hood of his police car to avoid being struck by a car sliding into the accident scene. I choose to jump into my police car to avoid being hit. The driver was a seventeen-year-old girl who was extremely intoxicated. She slid into the accident scene, hitting the wrecked body of the car and skidding over the legs of the male teenager under the car. She was told to get out of her car and wait on the shoulder for us. Unfortunately, every member we had this evening was busy with the accident and no one could process the young teenager for impaired driving. I noticed that the legs of the person under the car moved after they were ran over. Don recruited the people at the scene to help us lift the car off the trapped person. Don pulled him out and he was still alive. All six teenagers survived the accident. One girl was paralyzed, and the other physical wounds healed. The driver pleaded guilty to impaired driving and the girl who slid into the accident scene was given a traffic ticket for driving without due care and attention. All seven of the youths had been at the dance in Rosedale.

Nathan Murder

When I was posted in Chilliwack I worked zone one, which was the busiest of four zones the Chilliwack area was divided into. Zone one consisted of patrolling the downtown core, the community of Sardis, Vedder Crossing and Yarrow, BC. We consisted of a Sergeant, Corporal, and nine Constables serving sixty thousand people. At about 8 p.m. I was on my way to pick up Ken Burns, one of our Auxiliary Constables, when I received a call of an intoxicated male ed out behind the Empress Hotel. I picked up Ken and proceeded to the complaint. When we pulled into the alley, I noticed a group of people at the end. I said to Ken, “It looks like a fight”. When we pulled up, I saw a man lying in a pool of blood. My first thought was that he had been run over by an automobile and that I should have responded before I picked up Ken. When I got out of the car and approached the person lying on the road, one of the people standing over the body said, “He’s not breathing; he’s dead!” I was trying to determine what had occurred, when the owner of the Empress Hotel, which we were behind, started screaming, “Come quick. A guy’s got a knife on a woman. He’s going to kill her! Briefly told dispatch over the radio what had occurred? I requested help and asked Ken, who was unarmed, to protect the accident scene. I ran into the Empress Hotel with the manager, Albert Taggart, with my revolver drawn. The Empress is a rough watering hole and you normally do not enter alone but in this case I did not have much choice. Upon entering the rear entrance I was confronted by a nineteen year old native Indian by the name of Leonard Nathan. You see, Leonard Nathan is a failure as a criminal. We first met when Woolworth’s caught him shoplifting and he was charged with theft. Then he attempted an armed robbery at Woolworth’s department store and was caught and charged with robbery. Then, if that were not enough, he finally broke into Woolworth’s and was trying to load a 22 rifle with a high-powered rifle cartridge in the sporting goods department when the found him and arrested him. Among other daring crimes he’s now a real-life murderer. Nathan was behind the bar, covered in blood and holding a hunting knife in his hand. I pointed my revolver at him and told him to drop the knife. Good thing

for him that he did. The bartender picked up the knife and I handcuffed Nathan. I read him his rights, and was escorting him to the rear door of the hotel when my co-worker Randy Fisk ran in to assist me. The patrons were silent during the ordeal and began to cheer when I walked Nathan out. I then returned to the crime scene where I took charge of the body for continuity. This involved going to the morgue with the body and obtaining evidence from it at the autopsy. The investigation revealed that Nathan was intoxicated and high on drugs. He had killed John Duncan Grey who was fifty-four years old, for his wallet, which contained two dollars. This was recovered down the pants of Leonard Nathan at the Police Station. John Duncan Gray was stabbed eleven times, twice in the head, five times in the back, and four times in the chest. A few months following the murder I was called into the office where Sergeant Bill Woodworth and Crown Council prosecutor confronted me. They asked what my thoughts were in taking a plea of manslaughter from Nathan. I disagreed strongly and pushed for a second-degree murder charge. Guess what? Nathan pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received a three-year jail term. He served eighteen months before being released on parole.

Pearl

This story in itself is not overly exciting or long, it’s just to bring to your attention how unjust our criminal justice system has become. A sixteen-year-old girl named Pearl Fredrick’s from Chilliwack lived a very promiscuous lifestyle. What I would like to call her would be rude, so use your imagination. She gave birth shortly before the incident I will tell you about. One evening Pearl and an older man were drinking wine beside an alley beside the Orange hall in Chilliwack. After the two had consumed liquor all evening, the male she was with attempted to sexually assault her. Pearl took a rock and beat him on the head, knocking him unconscious. Apparently this was not enough because she continued to beat him beyond recognition. She left the scene for an undetermined location. The next morning the body of the man was found and an investigation was launched. Pearl was arrested and was charged with murder and then brought before a judge to be remanded. Her lawyer joked with the and bet that he could get her released. Not only that, but he bet he could get her released on a hundred dollar surety. The judge bought the reason for release and released her with the conditions that she could not consume liquor, had a curfew of nine o’clock, and must report into the police station on a regular basis. On three separate occasions she was arrested for intoxication and being out past her curfew, and three times she was released. The fourth time she was held for the same offences and held in custody. She pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received an eighteen-month probationary term. Ironically, she was the girlfriend of Leonard Nathan who was sentenced to three years in jail for stabbing John Duncan Grey to death.

Shoot Out

One evening while on duty in Chilliwack, British Columbia, a co-worker queried the license plate of a Florida car which had been parked in the lot of the Beresford Hotel. It came back as having been stolen from Nevada, USA. The car was a late model Oldsmobile 442 Cutlass. Inquiries were made and it was ascertained that the vehicle was being operated by two Americans staying at the hotel. It was felt by the watch commander, Sergeant Dave Billings that we should monitor the activities of the two subjects to determine their reasons for being in town. It was speculated that they might have been responsible for an armed robbery in a neighboring detachments area. A couple of hours after the vehicle was identified, the two suspects, along with a woman who was identified as the mother of the manager of the hotel, left in the car. It was first speculated that they might be going to conduct an armed robbery at the Husky Gas Bar a few kilometers down the road. This proved not to be the case, since they pulled onto the Trans Canada Highway prior to reaching the gas bar. The vehicle traveled east on the highway for several kilometers when it suddenly turned around in the grass median and began heading west. My guess was they were startled when they ed seven marked and one unmarked police car which turned around in the median to follow them. Let me tell you, the chase was on with speeds in excess of 180 kilometers per hour. The occupants led us all through out the Chilliwack area. After about twenty minutes, Bruce Farmer and Donna Brown were the first behind them in an unmarked brown Dodge Diplomat when a large flash blew out of the back window of the suspect’s vehicle. Brown got on the radio screaming that they shot at us. They opened up on us with what was later determined a 30-30 rifle, a sixteen gauge shotgun, and two 357 magnum handguns. Our Sergeant, Dave Billings, would not allow us to return fire because it was felt that the woman who was between the suspects in the front seat might be a hostage and there was a chance that she could be hit. Sergeant Dave Billings and Corporal Ian Carney were in a marked Plymouth Voltaire and they were next in line in the chase after Farmer’s car seized as the radiator was full of bullet holes. Ayres tried ramming the Cutlass, hitting it in the rear end with the front of his car. This action resulted in Ayres and Carney

spinning out into the ditch with an in-operational police car. Next in line was John Allan. He chased them up Mount Woodside, where the suspects lost control of their car and went into the side of the mountain. The two males jumped over the embankment into the woods and we arrested the woman on the road. It was determined that the two men were escapes from the Nevada State Prison and that the woman had been reloading the guns for the two escapees. A manhunt was conducted. One suspect was spotted by helicopter the next day and arrested in a wooded lot not far from the accident. The second suspect walked down the railway line to the community of Mission where he attended the hospital for injuries sustained in the crash. The hospital called advising us that a man had shown up with unexplainable injuries. A member from Mission Detachment attended and the man was questioned and released. The member didn’t think it was our man. The man was later arrested in Vancouver. The woman was not charged for her actions. The charges were reduced on the men because the courts felt they weren’t shooting to injure the Police but to decommission the police cars.

River Suicide

During my duties I witnessed some odd things. I often wonder about this one. Upon attending work one day a friend and co-worker Don Bartlett, who worked the city traffic unit, advised me that his neighbor had noticed a truck parked on the side of the Chilliwack River road. Don’s neighbor was concerned about the well being of a dog, which was locked in the cab of the truck. She indicated that the truck had been there for about three days without anybody around. She stated that she would take the dog if the owner didn’t claim it. The Chilliwack River road paralleled the river, and the water was extremely high due to heavy rains. The license plate on the truck was queried and it was determined that the owner lived in Surrey, BC. of the Surrey detachment attended the owner’s house and were unable to locate anyone. I had the dog master search the area for any evidence that would lead us to the whereabouts of the missing owner. When I searched the truck, I found it contained dozens of women’s and men’s shoes and boots. Surprisingly enough there were no pairs. We had no idea where this person had gone, until about a month later when we received a call from Mission Detachment advising us that they had recovered a body of a male in the Fraser River approximately thirty-five kilometers downstream. The identity of the body was determined by identification found in the body’s wallet. It identified him as the owner of the recovered pickup. An autopsy was scheduled to be performed at the Chilliwack hospital where I attended with a new recruit. We met the pathologist at the morgue. He advised me that we did not have to witness the examination because it was an ugly sight. I objected until I entered the morgue and the odor was so bad I turned around and agreed with the pathologist. He told me he would call if he found anything unusual. A short time later he called to advise me that he had found a running shoe down the front of the body’s pants. If that wasn’t weird enough, he was wearing panty hose. It is believed he had a foot fetish and was masturbating in the running shoe when he fell into the river and drowned. The question I still wonder about is where is his other shoe?

Smash & Grab

I attended in response to a call from an elderly lady one evening who reported that her ground level apartment had been broken into. When I attended the lady was in shock. She took me through the apartment and described all the items that were missing. These included all her figurines, jewellery, small appliances, barbecue, etc. I felt sorry for the lady, especially when she found her deceased husband’s gold railway pocket watch was also stolen. She started to cry and at that time the case took on a special interest for me. I assured her that I would find the person responsible for the break-in and recover the pocket watch. A few nights later, an alarm was received from a TV and appliance store not far from where the lady lived. Upon attendance, I found that the front display window had been broken. Missing were an undetermined number of stereos and TVs. A patrol of the area revealed no suspects. The shift supervisor, Corporal Ian Carney met me and we discussed the theft, awaiting the arrival of the owner of the store. I ed that some heroin addicts by the names of Patty and Terence Harvey and Pat Sparrow lived in the area. I said to Ian, “I wonder if they could have done the smash and grab”, since they lived within running distance from the appliance store. I suggested to Ian that I should go to their house and discuss with them their knowledge of the theft. Ian discouraged this, as he knew their attitude towards the police since he had dealt with them often while on drug squad. I took it upon myself to attend their residence and ask them some questions. Hell, I had nothing to loose. I wandered down the sidewalk when a neighboring resident approached me. He indicated to me that a couple of people had run by their house, in the direction of the Harvey house, with something in their arms. This made my suspicions stronger. I knew full well that there was little likelihood that they would cooperate. I knocked on the door and Pat Harvey answered. I told him of the smash and grab down the street and asked him if he had seen anybody run by. He said no, and I inquired if anyone had just arrived. He indicated “no” and to prove this he invited me into the house. Once inside he took me through to show me nobody else was in the house. Terence and Patty Harvey were watching TV and everything was quit. Upon leaving I noticed a box by the back door, which had a

Torcan fan inside. The label on it was from a local store. Then I ed that the elderly woman had just purchased a Torcan fan a few days previously and that it had been stolen. Then on the way out I saw the figurines on the end tables along with other items reported stolen. I could not get out of there fast enough to obtain a search warrant and recover the stolen property. When I left the house I immediately went back to the office and completed search warrant information. Afterwards I visited Judge Mergers residence and had it sworn. Ian and I went back to Garvey’s residence where the warrant was served. When we were recovering the items, Ian was looking for drugs. Found in the babies’ dresser drawer were used syringes. Ian took them and bent the needles. We looked in the pull-out couch and it was almost as if we had found gold. Inside was the TV and stereo equipment that had been stolen earlier that night with the price tags still on the items. We were able to solve two thefts that night and I was proud to be able to return the stolen property to the old lady, especially the pocket watch belonging to her late husband.

Liquor Store

In many communities the most frequent after hour targets for smash and grabs are local liquor stores. In the common occurrence, a person would break the window or door glass out and run into the store. They would grab as much liquor as they could carry and take off before the police could respond to the alarm. This was quite popular on Friday and Saturday nights. On this one occasion Don Donaldson and I responded to an alarm at the liquor store. We knew the alarm was authentic because it was Saturday morning at 2 a.m. When attendance was made, sure enough, it was a smash and grab. Our response was to secure the area until the dog handler arrived to try and pick up a scent. I stayed at the liquor store and Don patrolled the area. A block away he found a mid-twenties male going through a garbage dumpster. Don stopped him and inquired as to his actions. The male was identified by Don and was given this lame story as to why he was rooting around. He was allowed to continue on his way. The dog handler, Claude Leonard, arrived from the neighboring detachment in Mission, thirty kilometers to the northwest, twenty minutes later. His dog immediately picked up the scent of the suspect and led him to the dumpster where Don checked the aforementioned male. In the bushes beside the bin were five bottles of rye whisky. Don got the name of the person he checked and the search was on to locate the person. I was in the Royal Hotel when Claude radioed us advising that he was in pursuit of the suspect who was running in my direction. Claude’s dog was on a twenty foot lead chasing the man when a car drove over the leash and it got caught in the undercarriage. The suspect was running down the road and Claude was trying to unhook the dog, which was on two back legs trying to chase the man. Claude released the dog and untangled the lead. The dog was wide open after this guy with Claude a far distance behind. I ran out of the hotel almost into the suspect. He turned right into an alley with me behind him. The dog brushed my leg and ran past me. Don then drove past me in the police car and cranked the car, pinning the suspect between the fender of the car and the wall. Don put the front tire on the suspect’s foot. He managed to free himself and back into the corner. Then came Claude’s dog, all

teeth. The dog started biting the guy’s leg and he was yelling, “get this dog off me.” Don and I looked at each other and told him were’re not touching him. Claude finally arrived, out of breath, and secured the dog.

Threats

One evening my friend, Lou Donaldson, got off shift early and asked me for a ride home. On route to his house was ed the cottage park. He told me that he had received a threat from a person named Brian Raven. Raven threatened to kill Lou and Lou was advising me to be aware of the man. Don showed me on the way home where the man lived for future reference. After dropping Lou off, I drove back to the cottage park where Raven was living. I saw that they were unloading their car into their house. I drove up and began talking to Raven, his girl friend and another man. He ignored me and I could sense that something was not right. While Raven and his friend were taking some items into the house, I told the girl friend that these guys are in a great deal of trouble and to tell me everything she knows. I no sooner said this when she told me that she knew they were going to get caught and that she tried to get them to stop. I tried to get her to tell me what they had done before they returned to find out his girlfriend confessed to me. Then she said it, “All the auto parts they have were stolen from car lots, including the parts they were packing into the house, and those which were on the car.” Apparently they had been engaging in this type of theft for quite some time. When Brian came out I arrested him for possession of stolen property. When we were going back to the office I asked him to tell me everything on his car that was stolen. He refused to say anything so I told him I would strip his car of anything I felt was stolen and leave it in a tangled piece of metal. The investigation continued and a major auto parts theft ring was quashed. In court the lawyer tried to discredit me by asking me if I lied to his client. I proudly said “yes”. He asked me if I told his client that I would pull his car apart and leave it a tangled piece of metal. I proudly said “yes”. I proudly walked out of the courthouse with a conviction against Mr. Raven. He never threatened Lou again.

Chapter Three Boston Bar

Dive Team

In 1980, I was accepted into the Forces Diving Team. I attended an induction course at Pender Harbor on the Sunshine Coast north of Vancouver for two weeks. During our training, we were taught how to search for evidence and bodies, mostly in zero visibility conditions. I was one of five qualified by the Force to conduct recoveries in the lower mainland of British Columbia. My first dive was at a lake in the Agassiz area. A teenage boy had been consuming liquor at a grad party in a remote logging area. He left the party and struck a parked car with his father’s white Chrysler New Yorker. He was trying to flee the area at a high rate of speed when he went off the road and traveled over a two hundred meter embankment into Chehalis Lake. The vehicle hit the mountainside several times on its descent, hitting Chehalis Lake three meters off shore. The investigator, Kevin Kindler, three divers, Al Black, Phil Stead and I, traveled ten kilometers down the lake to the accident area. The debris left behind on the mountainside and the oil surfacing from the wreck could determine this accident area. The depth of the water indicated was thirty meters deep. Normally we would not dive deeper than this but the water clarity was excellent so we decided to descend to this depth. Phil Stead and I descended to approximately twenty meters when we could see the wreck. I thought to myself that the car appeared to have been put in a crusher. When Phil and I reached the bottom we were in disbelief. There was no way we were going to recover the body from this wreckage. I peered over my shoulder and saw the deceased lying on a rock side three meters away. The young man was ejected from the car on impact. Phil and I both took an arm and ascended to the surface. On a sunny afternoon I was patrolling the Chilliwack area when I received a call reporting a drowning at Cultus Lake—a beautiful mountain lake enjoyed by Vancouver residents. A McDonald’s restaurant had rented the group campsite B at the Provincial Park. Three young staff were in a canoe paddling meters from shore. Two youths had not been wearing a life jacket and one youth was. A powerboat went by them and the wake capsized the canoe with the

children. The first youth was a young girl with the life jacket who began to swim to shore. The two remaining young ladies began to panic; one left the capsized canoe and began to swim for shore. The other people on the shore witnessed this. They jumped in the lake and began to swim to the frantic victims. To their disbelief, a young man reached the first victim at which time she grabbed him and they disappeared under the water, never to surface again. The other young lady stayed with the canoe, fighting to keep it from rolling over and finally deciding to leave it. She swam approximately twenty meters and she also drowned. Upon my arrival I was meet by the witnesses and was taken to the area where they indicated the victims were last seen. I dropped a marker in the water and later returned with my diving equipment. Paul Gaffe from Burnaby detachment met me. We descended on the shot line and found the first body a few meters away in twenty-eight meters of water. I tied the shot line around the waist of the young lady and began to search for the other two victims. A few minutes later Paul and I located the other two victims together. One had her running shoes still on. We each took hold of a body and surfaced from the twenty meter depth. The Chilliwack Detachment received a call of a drowning victim on the Vedder River, east of the community of Vedder Crossing, B.C. The Vedder River is fast flowing with crystal clear water. The river is very popular with people kayaking and traveling downstream in old tire inner tubes. The river has lots of rapids and curves. The problem people encounter is at the turns in the river where logs and debris form thus creating log jams. There has to be caution when approaching these areas due to current usually flowing underneath the logs. When a person approached these areas they would have to paddle to the opposite shore line to prevent them from being sucked in to the logjam and being pulled underneath it. On one particular occasion two local men were inner tubing down the river. They both were forced into the logjam by the current and pulled under. One man bounced through the maze of logs and surfaced on the other side. His friend was not as fortunate. He was caught in the debris and did not reappear. When I arrived I attempted to look through the logs in an effort to pinpoint the whereabouts of the missing person. I was unsuccessful, and it was felt that there was no choice other than to pull the debris off the log jam and try to dislodge the drowned man. This normally would not create too much of a problem. It was possible to get a skidder, which is a heavy duty, all terrain vehicle used to pull

logs out of the woods in the logging industry, into the area. The problem was that we would disrupt the natural course of the river, which fish inhabit. In order to do this, permission would have to be obtained from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Provincial Fish and Wildlife branch. In order to receive their permission a biologist had to do an environmental impact study. In the meantime the victim could not be recovered. When the time came, the plan was put into effect. Phil Stead and I were located downstream and if the body were dislodged we would jump in and recover the man. A short time later the body came bouncing down and Phil and I jumped in, grabbed the body, and swam to shore with him. On another occasion Constable Phil Stead, Corporal Bruce Harper and myself responded to another drowning victim; this time in Harrison Hot Springs. A seventeen-year-old boy had been swimming in a man-made lagoon out in front of the village. The tourist town had dredged the lakefront, constructing a fortyhectare swimming area. They did this because the lake is normally too cold to swim in. When they made this area they created a meandering ditch through the lagoon produced by the machine sucking up the sand, making the banks around it. This caused the four or five foot lagoon to have some areas ten or twelve feet deep. The teenager was playing on a log with some friends when he fell off. He tried to touch bottom and could not. As a result of his not being able to swim, he drowned. When we arrived, several hundred people were swimming in the lagoon. This caused the water to be stirred up which made the visibility to be zero. We searched the area as best we could with negative results. Phil and I returned at six thirty the next day. We discussed the dive. We felt that because there was only the two of us, we should free dive for an hour in hopes of coming across the boy. We left the shore; we could see only about eighteen inches in front of us. Within minutes I spotted the boy’s foot. By sheer luck we had found the boy. We swam to shore where an Agassiz Detachment member met us. He was flanked by the mother of the drowning victim and his family. When I came out of the water the mother of the boy began to pound on my chest with her fist. She was blaming me for the death of her son. I began to cry, as I

could not understand why she was upset with me. I was also upset with the loss of her son. Of course, I slipped behind the police car so nobody would see the tears in my eyes. The Bunsen Hydro Dam is located in the Mission Detachment area. Above the dam lies a large body of water where people frequently canoe. The dam has six spill gates; on this particular day three gates were opened, allowing water through. A young man and woman launched their canoe in the area immediately above the dam. This area has logs chained together to protect the dams from clogging up with debris. Unknown to the couple this is extremely dangerous and illegal. They began to paddle their canoe in front of the spillway when they were sucked up against it by the force of the water moving beneath them. They tried to dislodge themselves but were unsuccessful. They began to panic and attempted to climb up onto the dam. If they had stayed where they were and waited for help, they probably would have been all right. When they climbed up the edge, the canoe caught the fast flowing water flipping it over and sucking the two of them over the dam. They both were killed in the accident. We searched the area and located the man the next day. The force of the water was so great it stripped him of all his clothing. The woman was found downstream a week later. We attended another drowning on a remote beach on Harrison Lake. A report had been received that the night before a group of young adults had been partying on the shore. Late in the night, two intoxicated men went out in a canoe and were paddling off shore when the canoe overturned. One man was able to make it to shore but the other was missing and was presumed drowned. When Constable Phil Stead, Corporal Al Black and myself attended we found a group of hung over party animals. It was ascertained that the survivor was in his tent sleeping. Some friends tried to wake him but were unsuccessful. I told him to get out of bed and he complied unwillingly. I asked him where he last saw his friend and he directed the police boat three hundred meters off shore before he told us to stop. We felt that there was no way he could have swam intoxicated in the middle of the night, so we brought the boat in from shore forty meters and dropped anchor. Phil and I geared up went down the anchor line and found the missing man beside the anchor. It was the shortest dive I had ever done.

The last dive I was involved in was in the city of Coquitlam. Two teenagers were partying in a wooded public park. The two teenagers were intoxicated and were trying to find their way out of the park when they both walked down the trail into a small lake, several of which were in the area. One of the partygoers managed to pull himself out of the lake. The other boy was not as fortunate. When the survivor managed to summon help, he was unable to tell the rescue personnel where his friend had disappeared. Three dive team were called upon the next day—Corporals Al Black, Tim Pain and Paul Gibson. The three searched the areas for three days with no results. Seven and a half weeks later the dive team was called upon again in the effort to locate the missing man. This was done primarily because of the media coverage and pressure from the family to recover their son’s body. Upon arrival, we were briefed and given a map of the area the previous had searched. The dive team leader wanted us to search the area at the end of the bog. This did not make sense to us, because of the thick cover and lack of trails leading to it. In any event, I jumped into the weedy snake turtle and blood sucker infested bog with no visibility looking for a guy who had been missing for almost two months in hot summer weather. I inhaled air like crazy trying to use all my air, so I could get the hell out of the water. When I surfaced with an empty tank, Phil Stead had a full one waiting for me. I just about died. I told him it was his turn and the argument began; he did not want to go down either. I got into the inflatable boat and said “this is crap”. There was no way anyone would be in the area we were looking. I pointed to an area and said, “That’s the most likely area he would be in.” I was advised that the map Corporal Pain drew showed that they had already searched that area. I convinced them to search it again and away we went. Corporal Bruce Hartwell searched the shoreline of the bog and had finished, when we were going down to the other spot. He also yelled at us, telling us that area had already been searched. He was driving golf balls down the bog while he was telling us this. I suited up and began doing arc searches. A person on shore letting out a bit of line each time you complete an arc from one edge of the shore to the other does this. After about ten minutes, I was about four meters off shore wading through the fine silt in three meters of water with zero visibility wondering what on earth I am doing here. Every time I grabbed a stick my heart raced. I did not know what I would do if I found him and the body came up in pieces.

All of a sudden I grabbed the missing person by the leg. I panicked and surfaced. I told Phil and he told me to get the body. Sure, he doesn’t want to go down there. I got myself sorted out, deflated my suit, and sank to the bottom. All I could think of was the possibility of landing on him. It took about five more minutes to find him again. I grabbed him by the leg again, inflated my suit, and surfaced. When I opened my eyes there was a foot and a running shoe on it. Phil and the Coquitlam member pulled me to shore. In total I was involved with the successful recovery of fifteen drowning victims. I quit the RCMP dive team after the final recovery. My wife says that after each recovery I got more warped. We had no debriefing or counseling after these recoveries; we were told that our reward was overtime.

Jones Drowning

In 1982, I was posted in the community of Boston Bar, British Columbia. The community received its name from the early gold rush era. It is located in the Fraser Canyon 200 kilometers northeast of Vancouver on the most treacherous section of the Trans Canada Highway. Boston Bar had a population of approximately 750 people, including the village of North Bend, which was on the other side of the Fraser River. The towns were separated by an aerial ferry, which transported a single vehicle across the river at a height of 100 feet. The Fraser River is known for its dangerous waters; approximately fifteen kilometers down stream is the famous Hells Gate. Hells Gate was created when a portion of the mountain collapsed when the Canadian Pacific Railway were laying their line and the blast from explosives gave way to the unstable mountainside narrowing the width of the river. In the summer of 1982 a young native woman by the name of Barbara Jones was returning home to North Bend. She had two small children, eighteen months and four years of age. She pulled up to the line waiting to cross the river on the aerial ferry and turned her late model Ford off. She left her car to talk to her mother a couple of cars ahead of her, leaving the children unattended in the vehicle. While speaking to her mother, the children put the vehicle’s transmission into neutral, causing the vehicle to back down the roadway. The vehicle accelerated very quickly. Before Barbara could react the vehicle swerved left down the embankment into the river, which engulfed the two children. I received the call and arrived within minutes to find the witnesses and mother in shock. Immediately people were combing the riverbanks in hopes of locating the children. It was determined that the window in the car was open and the children were not wearing their seat belts. It was hoped the children might have escaped when the vehicle hit the water. At this time I was still a member of the forces dive team with several body recoveries under my belt. The thought crossed my mind to go home and get my diving equipment but I would have to make the dive myself and this would not only be against policy but it would be very dangerous, as the waters were very turbulent and there was zero visibility. The nearest other dive team member was

hours away in Vancouver. The next day we dove and recovered the vehicle; unfortunately the children were not inside. Approximately three weeks later the body of the four-year-old was located on a gravel bar in Hope approximately 75 kilometers downstream. The pathologist examined the four-year-old and found he had been severely buggered and called our office to investigate. What we learned through the investigation was startling. It was believed the grandfather of the children was also their father. A year prior to the accident, Barbara had made a complaint to our office indicating that he had sexually assaulted her. When the trial was about to begin, Barbara refused to testify and the charge against her father was withdrawn her father was the chief of the Bothered Indian Band. There was no doubt she was threatened not to give evidence against him. All leads were investigated and the person responsible was never brought to trial. The body of the youngest child was never located.

Tranter Suicide

Our duties involving complaints in Boston Bar were relatively few, compared to other detachments in the lower mainland. However, with seven and a large area we had our moments. Our detachment consisted of a Sergeant who was the detachment commander, a Corporal who supervised four highway patrol , and two general duties constables, which included me. A majority of our investigations involved motor vehicle accidents, thefts from the rail cars, and sportsman accidents. Boston Bar is an area that services the Canadian Pacific Railway, Canadian National Railway, and the logging industry. There are no facilities whatsoever for the youth. I had to go to Hope to get my pay cheque cashed. Sometime the owners of the Esso gas station, Bill and Ella Regan, would cash them for the . It wasn’t long before you met the problem youths. The worst was an eighteenyear-old native by the name of Jackie Tranter. He was rock hard and was the prime suspect in the majority of our complaints. Jackie and I were at loggerheads continuously. He was a constant pain in the ass and was no doubt my worst enemy. When I look back, I wish I could have helped him. He was raised in a family with no guidance and he had low self esteem, which combined resulted in a bad youth. I was a young policeman who wanted to make the world a better place to live. My wife, daughter, and I lived in a trailer park a short distance down the road from the reserve where Jackie lived. I went home one day for my meal break when Chilliwack Telecom, which dispatched our complaints, called and advised me that they had received a call stated there was a suicide at the Tranter residence. Very few details were obtained from the caller. Upon arrival the trailer where Jackie occasionally lived was very quiet. I knocked on the door and was met by Jackie’s father, a hard man who depended very heavily on the bottle, a man you’re careful about turning your back on. At first I thought I had attended the wrong location. When I asked if he had reported a suicide he calmly replied “yep”. Mr. Tranter took me down the hall to a bedroom on the left hand side of the trailer. He opened the door and lying beside the bed in a pool of thick red

blood was my most valued criminal Jackie. His father was frying a steak on the stove and a musty odor of the meat lingered in the air. Every time I have a barbecue it reminds me of poor old Jackie. He had taken a 30-30 rifle, put it under his chin, and pulled the trigger. The bullet exited through the top of his head into the ceiling of the trailer where bone and pieces of hair were lodged. I looked behind me and Jackie’s father was gone. He had returned to the living room to eat his meal. I was shocked but it didn’t seem to bother him too much. I wrote the file up as a suicide and when the Sergeant read the file he sent me back the next day to recover the bullet. Upon arrival, Jackie’s brother was on the roof filling the exit hole with tar. Jackie’s father wanted the rifle returned.

North Bend

In the fall of 1982, Cliff Hunter who operated the aerial ferry for the department of highways in Boston Bar, his son Terry, and I were successful in moose hunting in Prince George, BC. We hung our moose in the beer cooler of the Charles Hotel for a week before we took it to North Bend to butcher it. I had to work on that evening and I would drop in occasionally to check on their process. I returned to the office and while there, Cliff called me from North Bend. Cliff asked me to bring the quarter of moose I had taken, back so they could butcher it. I was confused to what he was referring to at first until we determined someone had taken it. I returned to Cliff’s residence and we tried to figure out how our moose meat had gone missing. Cliff, Terry, and I searched the area with out any idea as to how it had disappeared. I was sitting on the tailgate of the pickup truck shining my flashlight around. There were no street lights in North Bend, and I noticed some drag marks in the dirt on the road. To my amazement, the marks led us down the road around the corner to the front entrance of a house occupied by an undesirable by the name of Tussah. We went around the house trying to find a curtain open to look inside. We found the drapes pulled shut but there was a small gap, which allowed us to look into the kitchen area. In the kitchen were Tussah and his friend sawing our moose hindquarter in half on the table? I told Cliff to cover the front door and Terry and I went to the rear entrance and knocked on the door. Tussah looked out and said “Oh shit, it’s the cops”. He opened the door and I arrested him for possession of stolen property. He pled guilty to the charge several months later in Hope Provincial Court.

Alcohol Bob

The first day I arrived for duty in Boston Bar, I was enthusiastic and keen. The first person I met was Sergeant Bob Cummings. Bob was a thin man in his mid forties and appeared to have been ridden hard and put away wet. After we were introduced, it was learned that Bob had spent the last fourteen years in an auto theft section in charge of the unit in Vancouver. I wondered at this point what he had done to end up in Boston Bar, British Columbia. I always said if the good Lord was to do an enema on the world Boston Bar is where he would stick the hose. It did not take long to figure it out that Bob was an alcoholic. Headquarters posted him to Boston Bar to get him out of their hair. They are great for transferring the problem instead of dealing with it. As time went on, Bob would consume a forty of Rye a day. With no one to keep him in check it was only a matter of time before he destroyed himself. His wife had divorced him prior to his transfer to Boston Bar, and I think it was self-inflicted suicide. In order for Bob to cover his drinking, he did not supervise the and even I knew, being the junior member, the hammer would eventually fall from Sub Division. Things were going fine until one Sunday afternoon I was preparing to go to a two week Breathalyzer course in Vancouver. There was a knock at the door, and low and behold, there was Bob drunk as a skunk, driving a marked police car. Bob told me that I was to drive him to Vancouver and drop him off. I was to use the police car so he would not have to pay me private car mileage. So as a young stupid Constable eager to serve his leader I did as he asked. Bob needed a drink so he had me stop in Delta, a suburb of Vancouver, so he could get a drink from a friend of his who owned a bar. When we finally left several hours later Bob was in fine form. We arrived in Vancouver at Fairmount training centre. Bob refused to stay and left to see a hooker friend of his. The next morning I was called out of class to answer a phone call. When I picked up the receiver it was the Section Non Commissioned Officer Staff Sergeant George Albright from Chilliwack Sub Division. Before I could say a word, he started screaming at me, telling me he wanted to know where Irvine was, and furthermore he wanted the missing police car returned. Of course, when I told him I had no idea where

Irvine was, he called me a liar. I was then ordered to call Staff Sergeant Albright if I heard from Irvine. Staff Sergeant Albright continued to call morning and afternoon until Wednesday when Irvine finally rolled into Boston Bar. It appeared Bob and his hooker girlfriend went to Seattle, Washington on a bender. Well I was reprimanded for driving to a bar in a marked police car. I do not know what discipline Bob received. Bob Cummings was then transferred to Mission Detachment and died a few years later from liver damage as a result of liquor abuse.

Hells Gate

In Boston Bar, we did not have too many resources. One of those we lacked was a doctor’s office. Once a month, the public health nurse from Hope would come to see to the community’s health needs. My daughter Tiffany required her twoyear booster shots so we went to a building in town and met the public health nurse. Her name was Joan McLain and her husband was the Staff Sergeant in charge of Hope detachment. She introduced herself and showed interest in my wife Marion and me since we had something in common. Joan indicated that she had not wanted to attend that day due to the poor weather conditions. She was driving a Ford Fairmount which belonged to the province health unit. She indicated it was not very good in the snow. She had had to travel forty-two miles to reach us and since it had snowed during the night the roads were slippery. After we had finished we went to the Alpine Restaurant for lunch. Joan was a pretty woman in her forties and full of vigor. When lunch was complete, she left Boston Bar on route to Hope. A half hour later I received a call about a serious motor vehicle accident near the Hells Gate tunnel south of town. When I arrived I noted a small green car in the ditch. A flat deck tractor-trailer was jack knifed on the roadway. In the middle of the road was a brown Ford Fairmount with the crest of British Columbia on the door. The roof had been completely sheared off and behind the driver’s wheel was a person I could not recognize. What had transpired is the small car was heading north through the tunnel. When they reached the other side the driver lost control on the compacted snow, sliding out of control and into the ditch. A tractor with the flat deck transporting a crane boom came through the tunnel and tried to avoid the car. The driver swerved to miss the car and jack-knifed the trailer he was pulling. He did not see Joan McLain heading towards him until it was too late. The trailer wheels ran over the car, shearing off the roof. Joan was disfigured and I felt that there was no way she could have survived the accident. Joan McLain did survive the accident but was in a coma for several months. When she regained consciousness she did not have any memories of the past. Dave McLain was transferred to Chilliwack where Dave became the Officer

Commanding Chilliwack Sub Division.

Chapter Four Agassiz

Olson Murders

During the time that I was stationed in Agassiz, BC performing highway patrol duties, we were advised that a serial killer was conducting his deadly perverted acts of violence in the lower mainland of British Columbia. This criminally insane person picked up young boys and girls and promised them a good time. Then he eventually drugged them into a state of unconsciousness. He would then sexually molest them, finally killing them, usually with a carpenter’s tool of some description. He disposed of their bodies in wooded areas where we patrolled. One evening, a Corporal Darrel Kettle, while on patrol attended a motor vehicle accident in Agassiz area near the number seven highway. Upon arrival, he found a car rolled over in the ditch. The driver was identified as Clifford Olson. Olson had two youths in the car who were high on drugs and Olson was also intoxicated. Corporal Kettle found that the circumstances were in fact the same as some of the youths who had been previously murdered and whose bodies had been recovered. Corporal Kettle processed Olson for impaired driving. He also obtained all the evidence he could on Olson at the time. He sent a IC (Canadian Police Information Centre) information message to Vancouver headquarters advising them of Olson’s behavior and the details of the accident and the youth’s state of intoxication. The Serious Crime Unit, who was tasked to investigate the murders of the two youths found at a remote area of Weaver Lake in Agassiz’s area, thanked Corporal Kettle for his input but indicated they would look after it. They never investigated the information, because they had another suspect, at a much later date after several more youths were killed. They then shifted their investigation towards Olson. Being a young Constable I was involved in the underwater recovery team. I was involved in searching Weaver Lake, the area where the bodies of the first two youths were found. On the first day of the search, I was being pulled along the bottom on a plywood sled with Phil Reid. Bob Feather was operating the small aluminum boat when I found a fly rod and a tackle box with fishing net inside. When I released the sled and surfaced, I tried to put the tackle box in the boat. Bob Feather took the fishing gear from me and threw it over the other side of the

boat into the lake, all the while giving me hell, telling me we were not on a scavenger mission. I guess he didn’t think to call it an exhibit or found property. The next day we were under a logjam and found a garden snake swimming about a meter under the water. I had never seen a snake swimming under the water. While I was watching the snake my other dive partner Bruce Haynes grabbed it. The snake wrapped around his arm. When Bruce turned he saw me backing up. He knew that I was scared of snakes and so he swam towards me. I finally outswam him after covering half the lake and he let the snake go. We did not find any evidence in Weaver Lake. Our next task was to dive the Chilliwack River to look for a hammer with which Olson had killed one of his victims. When Olson was arrested, the investigators flew him around in the force helicopter and Olson showed them some of the places where he had killed his victims. While talking to the investigators, Olson insisted on smoking expensive cigars while he bossed the investigators around as though he were the supervisor in charge of the investigation. It was only their extreme professionalism which kept the investigators from killing Olson themselves. A friend of mine named Rod Walker, who worked as a self employed logger in the Chilliwack area, approached me advising me that a co-worker and himself were having their lunch break in the Chilliwack River area. During this time they had found a piece of hair that appeared to be attached to a piece of scalp a few weeks earlier. After looking at it they discarded it in the woods. When they were returning home a few days later, they saw some policemen searching the woods a few miles from where they were having lunch days previously. He stopped and asked what they were looking for, but they would not provide him with any details of why they were there. He felt ignored and he left afraid to say anything about his findings. A few days later Rod clued in and asked if they were looking for body parts. This got their attention. He took them up the logging road where they recovered the remains from one of the victims Olson had murdered. My last involvement in the Olson case was looking for a screwdriver that was used to kill a girl in Bridal Falls. I never did find the weapon in a heavily wooded area of Bridal Falls. Clifford Olson was convicted of murdering eleven youths in 1985. It is believed that he is responsible for many unsolved deaths. He is serving life in prison.

Corporal Kettle, who notified the Serious Crime Unit of Olson, was given a transfer of his choice. He opted to go to the Combined Law Enforcement Unit in Vancouver (CLUE) even though he had only been in Agassiz less than a year.

Transvestite

North of Vancouver, 120 kilometers along the Trans Canada Highway, lies the hamlet of Bridal Falls. One morning, a dog handler by the name of Corporal Terry Barter was exercising his dog on a dead end road. His dog made a gruesome discovery, the remains of a human. It was determined that the body had been shot eleven times with a 22 caliber firearm and had been lying among the berry bushes for several days. Ironically, the body was discovered a short distance from where the child serial killer Clifford Olson killed one of his victims. The body was that of a transvestite named Crystal. The investigation revealed that a man in Calgary killed her over a love triangle. The killer stripped the body of her jewellery to make it look like a robbery. The murderer threw the jewellery away before he got back into his car five hundred meters down the road at the Trans Canada highway. He then traveled to Hope and threw the sawed off 22 caliber rifle off the bridge that spanned the Fraser River. Corporal Barter’s dog found the purse and a watch belonging to the victim beside the road. The victim’s relatives indicated that two diamond rings and a gold necklace were missing. I was given the task of finding the lost jewellery in the bush, the firearm in the Fraser River, and the shell casings from the 22 rifles. I started looking for the jewellery with help from a new member named Colin Brown. I was shown where Corporal Barter had found the purse and the watch. I began by cutting and checking every berry cane that was on the bush. After checking each cane, I placed it behind us. Before long we found the necklace on one of the canes. Colin and I cleared the area of all the brush and stopped to have our lunch. I was looking into the area we had cleared, trying to determine how far the rings would travel in comparison to the watch when I saw a glitter on the ground. I walked over and, lo and behold, there was a diamond ring. Colin found the other one a short time later a few feet away. Locating the shell casings was relatively easy. I combed the area where the body was located with a metal detector and found ten of the eleven buried in the mulch. Phil Reid, Al Grey and I searched for the firearms for five days but it was never recovered. The investigation resulted in a conviction of second-degree

murder.

Skeleton

One sunny summer morning, while I was posted in Agassiz, the Minister from the United Church walked over to our office and knocked on the detachment door. When I answered it, the Minister began telling me, in an excited tone of voice, that he had found a skeleton in the church basement. My first reaction was that the Minister was off his rocker. I found it difficult to keep from laughing. When I determined a short time later that he was in fact serious, we went to the church to confirm his find. The church is one of the oldest in the area, constructed in the late eighteen hundreds, and the basement looked as if it had not been cleaned since that period. The basement contained all kinds of old furniture and artifacts which would interest any antique collector. The Minister indicated to me that the basement was rented to a men’s social club. I will not mention the organization’s name due to the secrecy they cherish. The Minister pulled a crested blanket belonging to a private club off a homemade plywood box and lifted the lid. Inside the makeshift coffin was a human skeleton. I examined the skeleton and found that the bones were copper-wired together. The skull was cut around the top portion with hinges on it so you could open it and look inside. In my opinion, the skeleton was used for medical education purposes. When I showed little interest in his find, I could feel he was not satisfied with my response. I wrote up a file explaining the investigation to that point and left it open for my supervisor to review on Monday morning, since I was off shift for a few days. On Monday morning I received a call at home from the detachment commander Sergeant Darrel Priceless. Priceless began yelling at me, asking why I did not advise him when the skeleton was found. He indicated that we had discovered human remains and there was policy we had to adhere to when a discovery of this nature was found. He called me incompetent and told me he would handle the investigation personally. When I returned from leave I discovered that Priceless had sent a message to Vancouver headquarters advising them of the find. It appeared that his problems had just begun. Headquarters sent the Chief

Pathologist for the province of British Columbia to Agassiz to examine the bones. The pathologist determined on his examination that the bones were from a female approximately eighteen years of age. He agreed with my findings that the skeleton was used for medical purposes and the skeleton would have been legally obtained years ago. It was understood that a person could be bought with the understanding, that upon their death the remains could be used for medical purposes in some third world countries. Price wanted an answer from headquarters with their request to the disposition of the skeleton. An Officer in Vancouver told Price to disregard the find and to not pursue the investigation. It was my opinion that the Officer was a member of the organization that owned the skeleton and that he did not want the secrecy of the item jeopardized. A few days later the origination caught wind of the investigation. They wanted the Minister charged with tresing since they rented the basement from the church and he had no right to go through their belongings. At this time the minister received instructions from his organization’s head office that a proper burial would have to be provided for the skeleton. When Priceless confronted the minister and the organization’s elders, neither one was content with each other’s request. The battle continued and I slowly sank out of the picture, leaving my fearless leader to deal with the file he had so wished to investigate.

# 7 Accidents

I attended a motor vehicle accident on the number seven highway east of Agassiz, B.C. Upon attending, I determined that two vehicles were involved in the accident. One driver immediately advised me that the driver of the other vehicle had fled south through the woods immediately after the accident happened. Upon receiving this information, I requested the dog handler immediately attend from Chilliwack. It is important to get the dog on the scent as soon as possible as, depending on the terrain; the scent may dissipate within twenty minutes. The investigation revealed that two couples had traveled to Horizon Hot Springs to celebrate their wedding anniversaries by having dinner at the Harrison Hot Springs Hotel. While returning they collided with an oncoming vehicle. I checked the injured parties, and determined that the female enger in the back seat had not survived the crash. What had occurred prior to the accident was depressing. It appeared that the driver of the oncoming vehicle which had struck the vehicle in which the deceased was traveling was intoxicated. He had been drinking wine all the way down the highway from Kelowna B.C. 160 kilometers north of the scene. The suspect driver had no insurance, no driver’s license, and was driving down the highway with no headlights due to his battery being dead. It was pouring rain and he was trying to drive at 100 kilometers per hour with his head stuck out the window. He did not know he was on the wrong side of the road when he hit the other vehicle. The suspect fled on foot. A short time later the dog master arrived and the dog immediately found scent of the suspect driver. He was located a kilometer down the tracks where he was hiding waiting for the dog master whom he could see coming and could not outrun. When the dog man approached the hiding suspect, he jumped out of the bushes and tried to stab the dog master with a hunting knife. Fortunately, due to the suspect’s injuries the dog master was able to overcome him and he arrested him. The deceased was the mother of two youngsters. The driver of the offending vehicle was charged and convicted of impaired driving causing death and

criminal negligence and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

LIETZ

During a patrol through Harrison Hot Springs in the Agassiz area, a call was transmitted on the Police radio. It came from Constable Ida Dietz who was stationed on unit “C” Freeway Patrol in Chilliwack. She indicated that her prisoner had just stolen her police car and was heading east on the Trans Canada Highway toward Hope, B.C. It was ascertained from Ida that she had attended a motor vehicle accident where a male driver had rear-ended a transport truck near Chilliwack. The driver of the vehicle had been sniffing glue prior to the accident. Ida arrested him and put him in the rear of the car so she could put out a fire with her fire extinguisher. The fire had started between the vehicles. While she was putting out the fire, the impaired suspect managed to climb through the silent partner screen into the marked police car driver’s seat and drove off leaving Constable Deitz on the side of the highway. Since the impaired driver in the marked police car was coming my way, I proceeded to an area by Hack Brown Road and waited for him. Constable Andy Bates was able to catch up to the stolen police car prior to reaching my location. The impaired driver had had fun playing with the lights and siren prior to reaching my location. When I saw the lights approaching me, I began to accelerate and got behind the stolen police car. After proceeding down the highway several kilometers Constable Eric Morgan managed to get in front of the stolen police car. Constable Bates rammed the car from the side forcing the car into the grass median while I hit the car from behind. The driver began to flee on foot and was tackled by Constable Bates and me.

Bear

One afternoon in late February, I was approached at the detachment by a hiker. He advised me that he had stumbled across a Chevrolet Cleveite that appeared to have been abandoned for quite some time. The hiker took me to a remote area on Mount Woodside ten kilometers from the detachment. The vehicle was located on the end of an overgrown old logging spur road. The vehicle license number was checked through the police information computer and it was identified as a missing vehicle from Coquitlam, B.C. The owner of the vehicle had been reported missing in February of the previous year. The message indicated that the owner had been diagnosed with a medical condition and had had a difficult time accepting the prognosis. He advised his wife that he was going to think about it, got in his car, and drove away never to be seen again. A search of the area was done but no sign of the missing man was found. The area was covered with very thick under brush which made searching very difficult. I asked for assistance from the local search and rescue team and the following day they took on the task of finding the whereabouts of the missing person. A few hours into the search I received a call on the radio from the search and rescue co-coordinator. He advised me that they had located something that would be of interest and requested my attendance. I was hoping they had recovered the missing person but upon attending I was advised differently. On the hood of their pick up truck was a lump the size of your fist. I took a twig and poked through it; in it I found grey clothing material, white skin, hair and flesh. It appeared that the remains we had located had been consumed by an animal, possibly a bear, and been regurgitated. I took the found item to the crime detection laboratory in Vancouver and requested they analyze the found remains and determine whether or not it was human. A few days later the lab ed me and confirmed that what was located was from a human. The substance contained human body, head and pubic hair, grey corduroy material and human tissue. At this point I knew that we had confirmed that the remains of the missing man were in the area. The search and rescue team was unable to locate any more

signs and discontinued their search. It was believed that even though the found remains were found in the immediate area the missing person and the animal that consumed him may have traveled some distance from the found car. I requested the assistance of Corporal Roger Ram, the Sub-Divisions dog handler. Rodger and his dog searched for two days until they located the remains of the missing person. The area where the man had ed away contained a red jacket leaning against a tree trunk. It appeared that an animal ate the man without disturbing it. There were bones scattered around the area, together with some clothing pieces and the lower jaw. We gathered the few remaining items, took some photographs and left the area allowing the man tranquility in the remote mountain. I believe the man was consumed over the four-month period by a bear. The bear could have gone into semi-hibernation, as they do in that part of the province, and regurgitated the eaten flesh several months later, allowing the snow to preserve it until it was found. The lower jaw that had been recovered was positively identified as that of our missing person. The file and the person were put to rest.

Prison Riots

In the early eighties, there was a lot of unrest in the Federal Prison system. Two riots were spurred in British Columbia, the first in Kent institution in Agassiz and the second in Matsqui institution in Clearbrook. Both of them were maximum security institutions. I was involved in the Matsqui riots the day after the officials managed to gain control. The rioting began because of some concessions the federal government had reneged on, one of which was the cancellation of their Olympic size swimming pool and the inmates not having control of their bank s outside of the prison. This meant that an outside source could not deposit money into their s, thus allowing them power within the institution since money buys power. During the riot the inmates destroyed everything. I was amazed when I walked through the burned-out dorms, and then flooded with water. I looking at the safe in the medical facility and it was ripped open as if someone had taken a can opener to it. I said to my partner, “Can you believe they got in there.” His response was, “Why do you think they are in here?” The safe had contained drugs, which appeared to have been consumed very fast. The medical room contained an operating room second to none. It would have made a hospital envious before it was destroyed. The scary part is that the medical instruments were not recovered. The inmates pace off an area in the court yard or the playing field, put the weapon on the ground, and then step on it, pushing it into the ground for future use. I imagine that if they dug up the courtyard, you could supply an army with the weapons buried like this. The inmates took up residence in the playing field which contained a regulation sized football field and a running track around it. Within it was a nine-hole golf course. The prisoners broke into the stores, kitchen and food storage coolers. That made them self-sufficient for several days. When they became cold, wet, and hung over, they surrendered. The officials wanted to move them to a more secure location where their environment could be controlled. So where did they relocate them? They were relocated to the learning centre, the only area surrounded by an eight-foot fence, and the only area they had not destroyed. It didn’t take the inmates long before they destroyed this area also, causing hundreds of thousands

of dollars in damage. Tents were brought in from the armed forces base in Vedder Crossing. The next morning the officials were running around trying to figure out how they could feed them, as they did not want to dishonor their obligation to provide the inmates with their three meals a day. Small shelters were constructed to provide us shelter from the rain. When I relieved the night shift member, I was given a shotgun containing five rounds of ammunition. Looking at several hundred pissed off people who were doing time for the most dangerous offences, I requested on the radio that more ammunition be provided as I felt I could get off fifteen rounds before they could climb the eight-foot wire fence and overtake me. The military were on the outside fence area and they also were provided five rounds of ammunition and were advised not to use it. The playing field was like a department store turned upside down and had the daylights shaken out of it. There was fresh food, cigarettes, pop, clothing and footwear strewn everywhere. I did not smoke but the prison fellow I was teamed up with did, and when we left, his lunch bag was loaded with cartons of smokes he picked up off the field. The next morning I returned to the prison. Things were quiet before the prisoners woke. I gathered up some golf balls and a club from the field and was teeing off, hitting the tents of the inmates. I thought this was funny until they woke up and threw the balls back, almost hitting my friend. I sure got a blast of shit from the guys. During the day the inmates complained that the presence of the mounted police was upsetting them. As a result the prison officials requested us to stand behind buildings so that they could not see us. We all got together and told them to pump sand. It was one of the only times I saw the troops stand up to the political crap of management. The inmates began to flex their muscles and the RCMP responded by calling in the tactical troops. They formed up down the road from the prison and began to march in. Thirty-two men in perfect formation banging their batons on their shields wearing helmets, shields, and blue overalls. It was enough to wake the dead. It even made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It was about time the inmates were told who was paying the bills. Needless to say, they shut up and did what they were told after this little exercise. I was sitting on the bench looking down on the inmates when the prison guard

pointed to an inmate coming out of his tent. He said to me, “Do you know who that guy is?” He went on to tell me that his nickname is Corn Flakes Nelson. He apparently killed a child in Nelson, B.C., disemboweled him, and ate the corn flakes out of his stomach. The stories continued.

Chapter Five Prince Rupert

Airplane Crash

Prince Rupert, British Columbia, is located approximately 700 kilometers north of Vancouver on the west coast of Canada. The Alaska panhandle almost touches the community of Stewart, 50 kilometers north of Prince Rupert. The city of Prince Rupert hosts a population of fifteen thousand people. It is a centre of commerce for outlying centers for the coastal residences. The climate is wet, consisting of three to six meters of precipitation a year, making it one of the wettest areas in North America. Our detachment has a good working relationship with the other Federal agencies, including the crew of the Canadian Coast Guards Cutter, Point Henry. The Point Henry is a twenty-meter rescue ship with a crew of five. The skipper is a wellseasoned man. We call him Captain Jack. The first mate is Seth Wood. Lorne Wimpier and Les Palmer are the deck hands and the engineer is Johnny. Since I was a member of the RCMP dive team and since the crew consisted of only two ships divers, while a third was required, I quickly became an adopted hand on the cutter. We seldom needed an excuse to go to sea with Captain Jack, anything to justify taking the vessel out of port. It became difficult as time ed to take the cutter to sea because of financial restraints put on Captain Jack. We used to do our training dives about thirty kilometers out to sea in an area west of Prince Rupert called the Tree Knob Group islands. On one occasion, my wife Marion and our two young daughters came along on one of our diving exercises. On this occasion, we received a call from the Coast Guard emergency dispatch centers that a Trans Provincial Grumman Goose aircraft, which is an amphibious plane, had been forced to emergency land in rough water on the south end of the Queen Charlotte Islands by Rowe Spit. We were already a third of the way there. We had only about 100 kilometers of seven-meter seas to cross to get there. The vessel cruised at twenty-two knots. It was quite a ride and one I thought my children would . Instead, they went down below and were rocked to sleep. When we located the aircraft we determined it had had to set down in rough seas

because of a vapor lock in the aircraft fuel line. The aircraft was still functional but had sustained a broken wing stabilizer float in the landing and the wing tip had filled with water. We managed to get the engers off the aircraft safely. The pilot wanted to taxi into calmer waters and drain the wing and attempt to take off again. Here was what the pilot wanted to attempt. Lorne Wimpier and I would climb up on the wing tip from an inflatable boat and be used as ballast since we were the heavyweights of the crew. Seth Wood and Les Palmer would drain the wing tank on the other side of the aircraft when the wing tip came out of the water. Sounds easy enough? Well what a performance. I thought surely Lorne and I would end up in the cold ocean. It was extremely difficult to be boosted onto a wing tip meters up from a bobbing inflatable boat, using your wet fingertips on the smooth aircraft aluminum to pull yourself up. We did it. I was worried when I got up there, especially when the pilot started the engine beside us and taxied towards shore. He got the aircraft flying after taxiing to calmer water—after we got off the wing of course—and flew it to its base in Prince Rupert safely.

Teslin Lake

Upon arriving in Prince Rupert, I was quickly advised of the incident at Teslin Lake. Teslin Lake is located in Prince Rupert Sub Division several hundred miles north of Terrace. A Corporal and one Constable manned it. As it happened, several complaints were received over a period of time that cabins were being broken into around the remote areas of Teslin detachment area. The suspect in these break-ins was an experienced mountain man by the name of Norse. The Constable in Teslin Lake chartered a private aircraft to search for the location of Mr. Norse. They located him snowshoeing across a frozen lake in the direction of an Indian burial ground. When Norse spotted the aircraft, he began shooting at it with his rifle. As a result the member returned to Teslin Lake to request assistance in apprehending Norse. The member called Prince Rupert Sub Division and spoke to Inspector Harry Useless, the Officer in charge of the emergency response team. The Constable explained his involvement with Norse and Useless assured him the emergency response team would be attending to Teslin Lake the next day. As it turned out, Inspector Useless did not call the whole Prince Rupert Emergency Response Team because of the cost of an additional helicopter. Instead he called for two ERT , Constable Gary Cooper, Constable Bill Waters, and two dog masters, one from Prince Rupert named Corporal Al Bagger, and another named Constable Mike Beady from Terrace. When they flew in the next morning, Norse was up and traveling across the frozen lake heading for the heavily wooded shoreline. It was felt by the that they would cut him off inside the bush. To do this it was decided they would cut him off on each side of the point. Bagger, his dog, and Constable Waters would follow him into the area and Constables Beady and Copper would cut him off. The problem the had was the snow was too deep to travel in and it was exhausting traveling through it. Little did they know that Norse had removed his snowshoes, placed them in the snow in front of him, and waited for the to approach? The first member in his sights was Constable Mike Beady. Norse lined his sights up and shot Beady in the chest, killing him instantly. Norse reloaded and fired at Constable Copper. This time the rifle

misfired and Constable Copper shot his M16 rifle from the hip and hit Norse in the head, killing Norse instantly. Harry Wallace, the ERT Inspector, was promoted to Superintendent and transferred to “E” Division Staffing and Personnel.

Mannequin

One quiet evening while policing Prince Rupert, I came up with a practical joke to play on a new French Canadian recruit who was just out of training in Regina. We got a life-size mannequin from the storage room upstairs in the detachment. The Crime Prevention Unit used them for displays. Constable Childs provided us with clothing and we dressed it up with a hockey shirt, grey track pants, running shoes, and a toque. We decided to place the mannequin on Wanich Road where there is a blind spot after crossing a small bridge. We intended to wait until the victim was in the office, place the mannequin on the road, and run over it while attending to a complaint at the dump down the road. Here is what happened. Early in the morning Robert was in the office, completing his paper work. I phoned the dispatcher, Allison Bates, from a phone in the guardroom. She acted as if she had received a complaint of gunshots coming from the dump on Wanich Road. I came forward to watch Robert take the details of the complaint since he was within hearing distance of Allison. He said he would respond to the complaint and had started out the back door when I intercepted him. I asked him to come with me. He stated he wanted to take his own car. I nearly had to force him in with me; I didn’t want him to run over the mannequin himself because he might have ended up in the ditch. The mannequin had been placed there about fifteen minutes earlier and we were hoping no one else would run over it before we got there. I began down McBride Ave., towards the dump and Robert said to me, “Slow down. I have already been in an accident.” I pulled onto Wanich Road and sped up. I didn’t want him to have much time to react or to notice that the mannequin was not real. We came up over the bridge and there it was. All Robert had time to do was to grab the dash and say, “Look out. There’s some . . .” and I ran over it. He almost came unglued. He yelled, “Stop the car. You ran over someone. Stop the car.” I said, “Holy shit. Did you see that someone was on the road?” He began to freak out, telling me to stop the car as a piece of the mannequin was under the car. I had to drive over the high graded shoulder to dislodge the piece. Robert started to order me to stop when I quickly turned around down the road and told him not to say anything about the accident, to shut his mouth and everything would be

OK. He grabbed the microphone and called Corporal Rick Daychuck the shift supervisor when we approached the pieces in the middle of the road. There was the bald head of the mannequin. I said, “Look at that. I took his freaking head right off.” I drove around it and the other pieces scattered about. Robert got on the radio and called Corporal Daychuck again. He said “Corporal Daychuck, Corporal Daychuck. Something terrible has happened on Wanich Road” and told me again to stop. Of course, I kept driving and we arrived at the office. All along I’m trying to tell Robert to cover it up and nobody would find out. Upon arriving at the office, I stopped to back the car into the parking space. Robert jumped out and called Daychuck on the radio again. Daychuck’s job was to attend to Wanich Road, pick up the mannequin, and put it in his car so when Robert returned it was gone. The problem Rick had was there were pieces everywhere. I went to the telecom room where Allison and I watched Robert through the security camera, laughing and exchanging stories. Robert got on the radio and asked another member to locate me because, as he put it, “I think Constable Kift is going to eat his gun.” Meanwhile Daychuck didn’t show up to pick Robert up, so he jumped into his patrol vehicle and proceeded with lights and siren to Wanich Road where he expected to meet Daychuck. Ross heard him coming and took off, ing Robert on McBride Road. Robert said, “Corporal Ross, where are you going?” Corporal Daychuck replied, “I’m going to the hospital. He is still alive”, and told Robert to go back to the scene and secure it. Meanwhile Daychuck returned to the office and exchanged stories with us. Robert was at the scene for about five minutes when he got on the radio and said, “Corporal Daychuck, something is wrong: it is made of plastic.” We called him back and explained the joke we had played on him. He didn’t say much to me for quite some time after that. By the way, I changed Robert’s name as I do have some morals.

Moby Dick Inn

One evening while working in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, I was in the detachment completing some paperwork when our dispatcher received a call from the Moby Dick Inn reporting a man was in the bar with a gun. During this shift we had three people working, a senior Constable by the name of Ian McDonald, a female Constable by the name of Spring Childs, and me. Ian McDonald was on the road and he was the first dispatched to the call. The information we had received was from the bartender of the Moby Dick Inn indicated that there had been an altercation and that an unknown person had a firearm lying beside him at his table. It was believed that he intended to shoot the person, named Roger that he had had an altercation with whenever the opportunity arose. I left the office and arrived at the Moby Dick Inn a few minutes later. There was no sign of Ian McDonald or Spring Childs when I entered the Inn. I was met at the door by the bartender who filled me in with what had transpired. It was determined that two individuals from Montreal had arrived in town to traffic narcotics. They provided the bartender a sample of marijuana and told him that they were in town for the purpose of selling drugs. They had anything anybody wanted and they asked him to send business their way. The bartender stated that one of the two individuals stole a harmonica from one of the local entertainers. When this individual named Roger confronted the two they denied the allegation. A short time later the harmonica was found under their table and it was returned to the band member. Roger and a few other locals waited until one of them went to the washroom and followed him in, where they beat him up. When the roughed-up drug dealer returned to his table, Harry Gibson, an off duty bartender and the operator of the beer supply truck, who was sitting at the table beside them, overheard a conversation between the two. The man who had been assaulted stated that there was no way a hick from Prince Rupert was going the lay a beating on him and get away with it. He indicated to his partner that he was going to kill him. This individual left the bar and returned five minutes later with something under his jacket. When he sat down, Harry saw him take a sawed off shotgun out from under his jacket and put it on the seat

beside him. After I received this information and with still no sign of my other two coworkers, I asked the bartender to show me where they were sitting. The bartender took me to the side entrance and was pointing to the individuals when one of them saw the bartender pointing. I felt that they knew they were had and that I would confront them at this time. I walked directly towards them, not talking my eyes off their movements. There was a large pillar and I used it for cover. I told the two that they were under arrest and to raise their hands above their heads. One individual complied but the other started toward me. I drew and pointed my revolver at him and again demanded he put his hands above his head. He then raised one hand while the other remained under the table. Harry Gibson yelled at me and said he had the shotgun pointed at me under the table. I told the individual that I would shoot him if he did not drop the firearm. Immediately after this request, I heard a thump on the floor and he raised his other hand. I told them to stand up, turn around, and walk back towards me. At this time, Springier arrived and assisted in handcuffing the two individuals. The rest of the evening was utilized in gathering evidence and preparing court documents for their appearance for court later that day. With the information obtained, the two individuals were charged with Trafficking, Possession for the Purpose, Possession of a Dangerous Weapon, Possession of a Prohibited Weapon and Pointing a Firearm. At the court appearance the judge released the one suspect on an undertaking and held the person who had pointed the firearm in custody. The person the judge released was checked by the Ontario Provincial Police in Northern Ontario a few days later on route to Montreal. He was never seen again. The triggerman was being held in custody in Prince George where he pleaded guilty to the charges and received a three-month jail term. Ian McDonald showed up after it was all over.

Chapter Six Victoria

Interesting

An interesting incident occurred while I worked on Highway patrol in Victoria BC. One evening, while completing my shift, I returned to the Victoria Sub Division headquarters office which I worked out of at 2 o’clock am. I hung up my keys and left the building. My car was not in the place where I had left it. The parking lot was not too big and it did not take long to confirm that my car was missing. My first thought that one of my co-workers had towed the car for a joke. How could they? I’m the only member working. I quickly came to the conclusion that my car was stolen. But who in their right mind would steal a car from the police parking lot? Around the corner was the Ingram Hotel, which attracted some undesirables. Due to cut backs, the force had canceled the contract with the commissioners who guarded our building at night; therefore the criminals had free rein of our property. As a result, a stereo was stolen from one member’s car and another was broken into, prior to mine being stolen. I went back to the office and reported the theft to the Victoria Police Department in whose area our office was. I knew that they would get a chuckle and nothing would be done. I then called our dispatcher in Colwood and asked him to notify the other detachment areas up island. A member from Colwood detachment gave me a ride home and I went to bed about 4 am. Steve Isaac from Colwood Telecom called me advising me my car had been recovered in Duncan Detachments area sixty kilometers north on the Trans Canada Highway. Three native males who were going to a potlatch in Alert Bay had stolen the car. The next day I went to the towing compound and was stuck with paying a fiftydollar towing charge for my car. I never followed up on what sentence the youths received from the court. I did not want to be disappointed any further.

Raglan Fatal

On the afternoon of August 28, 1991, I was involved with a radar operation on Highway #14 in the community of View Royal, which is a suburb of Victoria, B.C. Our operation involved a member operating radar in a marked Police car several hundred meters up the road. Whenever he clocked a speeder, he would radio the Pick up team and watch the violator travel down the road until one of the flagged the violator over and gave them a ticket. I was part of the pickup team until I received a call of a motor vehicle collision on the Trans Canada Highway, a couple of kilometers away. I and one of my partners, Brian Frieda, attended the accident a few minutes later. We found a woman lying on the roadway dead, with debris from the car scattered in all directions. We determined that the deceased woman had been traveling north on the highway on the inside lane of two northbound lanes. She was apparently traveling at a high rate of speed in order to get ahead of traffic because two lanes were merging into one ahead. A car beside her made a lane change in front of her, cutting her off. This forced her to hit her brakes and swerve into the single southbound oncoming lane. She struck a large recycle truck head on and was ejected from her vehicle onto the road, killing her instantly. The recycle truck went off the road to the right and imbedded itself into the high rock wall parallel to the highway. Measurements, photographs, and statements of persons were obtained and the accident scene was cleared, allowing the Victoria rush hour commuters to get home. I had made the decision to leave the recycle truck in the ditch until the traffic would be cleared later on that evening. I then went home for my meal break and about eight o’clock that evening I returned to the scene with Constable Brian Frieda to recover the damaged vehicle. We placed our police cars so that they protected us from oncoming motorists, and had turned our emergency equipment on. Brian and I put all the traffic cones from the trunk of our cars along the highway, making lanes for vehicles in both directions as well as lighting roadside flares to warn approaching vehicles. The vehicle extraction was to be a simple one and was not expected to take very

long. To the tow truck driver’s horror the vehicle had an air brake system, which caused the brakes to be applied when the operator removed his foot from the gas pedal. As a result, the job became much more difficult than anticipated. Brian and I directed traffic through the area for about two and a half hours, when we were assisted by another co-worker Constable Chris Raglan. We were able to get the vehicle out of the ditch at about eleven p.m. and were in the process of picking up our equipment from around the scene. Without warning a car traveling northbound pulled around my police car. I was standing a couple of meters from Chris Raglan and Brian was standing a few meters north of Chris. Chris was looking north at Brian when the car quickly proceeded towards him from behind. Brian, seeing that the car was traveling towards Chris, shouted, “Look out Chris” a second before the vehicle struck him. The vehicle hit Chris with its front bumper and he flew over the hood, hitting the driver’s windshield, and then rolled over the roof and landed on the pavement fifteen meters from the point of impact. I immediately ran over to Chris. All I could hear was a gurgling sound coming from him. I felt, at that time, that Chris was dead. Brian ran after the driver of the car who had failed to stop, but later pulled off the highway several hundred meters up the road. I ran back to Chris’s police car to find the enger door locked. I then ran to the driver’s door and was able to gain access and radio to Colwood Telecom, advising them to dispatch the ambulance as well as additional to assist. I ran back to Chris and a person who asked what had happened. I told him that Chris had just been hit by a car. To my amazement the man was a cardiologist named Noel Oxford, who was practicing at the Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria. Noel and I removed Chris’s Sam Black belt and undid his shirt. Noel said that Chris was not breathing and that I would have to do mouth to mouth resuscitation. I lay down on the highway at a 45° angle to Chris and began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Dr. Oxford was excellent in coaching me the entire time, by saying things like, “You’re doing fine, you’re breathing for him” and “Good! You’re keeping him alive”. It seemed like an eternity until the ambulance paramedics arrived, but in reality only minutes had ed. The paramedics put an airway into Chris’s mouth, then placed a plastic bag over his face and told me to squeeze it and then let it expand. I tried to do this but by this time I was shaking badly and was having much difficulty. Dr. Oxford said that he would take over and he went into the ambulance with Chris. Brian stayed with the driver and I went to the hospital in my own cruiser in a state of shock. When I attended the hospital the Emergency staff was working furiously on

Chris. I took his clothing and placed it in a bag as they were removed. At this time, I knew he was dead because he still wasn’t breathing and they were putting him on life . About an hour later the Commanding Officer of the Sub Division arrived and asked me what had happened. I later drove back to the detachment by myself and then went home, where my wife Mary met me. I received a call the next day telling me that Chris had been removed from life and had died. They were currently in the process of donating his organs. The impact had compressed his brain into his spinal cord causing his brain to stop functioning. I took two weeks off work, but it was not nearly enough time. However, the force felt it was better for me to jump back into the saddle and try to get on with my life. The following year became more difficult for me. The preliminary hearing was a disaster. Alcohol and drugs had impaired the driver of the car who had hit Chris. The driver Steven Stevens, who had previously lived in Victoria but was living in McKenzie, B.C. at the time, was taking steroids to build muscle mass and had also taken Tylenol 3’s. His blood alcohol level was 120 mg of alcohol per 100 mg of blood, according to Len Williamson, the member who processed Stevens. Len stated that Stevens was a difficult person to deal with and showed no remorse for hitting and killing Chris. A couple of months later Alan Perry from CFAX 1070 radio called our office reporting that he had received an anonymous call from a court clerk, that Stevens was scheduled to appear that afternoon to plead guilty to a reduced charge of impaired driving instead of impaired driving causing death. The court didn’t want a group of irate Police Officers in the courtroom upsetting poor Steven or influencing the judge. When we showed up, they adjourned sentencing to another day and on that day we made sure we were there. Stevens received six months on an electronic ankle bracelet monitor. You are only supposed to have a maximum of four months on an electronic monitor but Stevens’s lawyer got permission for him to wear it for the full six months. I blame myself in some part for the accident, but after trying to defend the Force I have come to realize that it’s very difficult to do a job like the one we had to do with a three dollar flashlight, a dozen orange safety cones, and a five dollar fluorescent vest? Ironically Stevens died a year later in Vancouver of a drug overdose.

Arthur Accident

I received a call about a motor vehicle accident on Tunnel Hill, which is on the Trans Canada Highway north of Victoria. When I arrived I was met by a couple of motorcyclists who showed me their friends in the ditch. A check of the two occupants revealed that the woman was deceased and the male seriously injured. In my opinion he wasn’t long for this world. It was determined that the driver of the motorcycle, Kelly Arthur, and friends were consuming liquor at the Black Swan pub in Cobble Hill before the accident. The pub was about 20 kilometers north of the accident location. The paramedics and the coroner attended the scene, Mr. Arthur was taken to the hospital, and his girlfriend was pronounced dead at the scene. I went to the hospital emergency unit and located Arthur. I determined that Arthur had been consuming alcohol prior to the accident and that I had enough evidence to obtain a blood sample. It was my opinion that he would not understand the blood sample demand; therefore I would have to obtain a tele-warrant. This would involve calling an on-call Justice of the Peace, explaining my grounds to him, and getting authority over the phone to obtain a sample without the acc’s consent. This did not include the three documents I would have to complete and serve on the doctor and Arthur, and forward to the Justice of the Peace. If you do not follow the process exactly, you run the risk of getting the case thrown out. The attending physician indicated that Arthur would understand the demand if I read it to him. On the doctor’s advice I read Arthur the demand and obtained the sample. As it was, Arthur survived the accident. His blood alcohol reading was also well over the legal limit. Speers was interviewed and he itted to being impaired by alcohol. He showed remorse and indicated he wished to plead guilty. About six months ed and I was summoned to trial. After the preliminary hearing, the judge would not allow the blood sample as evidence. Without this we had no case. A sharp crown counsel prosecutor thought we could set a precedent and obtain a warrant to get the hospital’s blood sample results. This was what we did and, lo and behold, the Judge did not accept their sample either. Therefore, the case was dismissed.

A year later Arthur had a dispute with his former roommate in the Victoria Police Department area. The roommate threatened to kill Arthur. As a result, Arthur went to his apartment, got his 30-06 rifle, returned to the parking lot and confronted his ex roommate. Arthur then shot him in the groin, reloaded and shot him in the chest, killing him dead. He pleaded not guilty and was found not guilty by a jury in Supreme Court. His defense was self-defense. Two people were killed within two years and he never spent a minute in jail.

Sooke Fatal

One sunny warm summer afternoon in 1995, I was working in the yard when I received a call from the office requesting me to go to Sooke Highway and assist in a motor vehicle accident which had just occurred. Upon attendance, I found two vehicles with their front ends together on the side of the three-lane section of highway. The hoods of both vehicles were up. A young man was lying on the engine of the pickup truck. He was curled up in a ball with bones sticking out of his flesh everywhere. The sight was sickening, to say the least. The person lying on the truck motor had had a breakdown in his vehicle. The person in the pickup stopped to provide assistance to the stranded motorist. He gave the accident victim’s battery a boost and then the young man got out of his vehicle and closed the door. An impaired driver pulled from the centre lane over the slow lane and sideswiped the driver of the car receiving the boost. The impaired driver drove the victim onto the hood of the pickup truck. The victim then fell on the motor. The impaired driver did not stop but continued up the highway towards Sooke, B.C. The impaired driver was located further along the highway by Sooke detachment and arrested for impaired driving. A short time later a police car stopped with the driver of the suspect vehicle in an attempt to see if the people assisting the deceased could identify the driver as the one responsible for the accident. While I looked on, the impaired driver became cocky towards the member and the witnesses. It has been my experience that some of these people show no remorse about the victims they have injured. At this point, I had the strong desire to take my service revolver and provide him with instant justice. At this time, I knew I could not deal with impaired drivers anymore. It was a good thing I had left my sidearm at home. In previous years, I could tell, upon arriving at an accident that the driver of one of the vehicles was impaired. The percentage of accidents involving impaired drivers is much higher than reported. This is due to the fact that do not have the resources to process the impaired driver so they look the other way in dealing with him, or they give the driver a 24 hour suspension of his driver’s license.

Kilby

At 11:30 one evening, my wife Marion and my two daughters Tiffany and Shannon had just finished watching Mrs. Doubtfire on video when Tiffany, my oldest daughter, answered a knock at the front door. It was a person named Dave Kilby, from whom I bought firewood, wishing to talk to me. When I answered the door, Dave Kilby was in an excited state. He told me he had just hit and killed a person on a bike with his truck down on the Kelly Road. Dave indicated again that he had killed the man. Dave Kilby was a heavy drinker, and the odor of liquor was strong on his breath. It was ascertained from him that a lone bike rider was off the road, lying in the ditch dead, undetected by ing motorists. I called the Colwood Detachment, which was responsible for policing that area, and I advised them that a person on a bicycle had been hit by a truck and killed. I requested that they dispatch a Police Officer and an ambulance to the area of Kelly and Sooke roads in Colwood. When I went outside I could see the damaged windshield on Dave’s truck. The driver’s side of the windshield had hair and blood embedded in it. Since Dave’s state of mind was altered by the shock of the accident and the alcohol he had consumed, I advised him to get into my truck. When we arrived at the accident scene I asked where the victim was. Dave indicated the ditch on the west side of the road. I got out of the truck and looked where Dave indicated and I found the lifeless body of a mid thirties man. I asked Dave what had occurred, and he said he hadn’t seen the bicycle operator who appeared to have come from nowhere. A short time later Constable Paula Minstrel arrived on the scene and she told us that she couldn’t deal with this incident. She told Constable Wally Carter, who had arrived behind her, that he would have to deal with this accident and left. The third member at the scene was the shift supervisor, who told Wally Carter that he was on holiday the next day and that he could not get involved with the investigation. So Wally Carter, the accused Dave Kilby, and I were left alone at the scene. The Coroner and the body removal service was ed and attended to the scene. I took photographs of the scene for Constable Carter. The

traffic analyst attended and took some measurements of the accident. Carter, Kilby and I went to the Colwood Detachment where Parsons was given a breathalyzer test. The results of the test found a blood alcohol level more than double the legal limit of .08 mg%. As a result Kilby, knowing he was going to be criminally charged, became very depressed and said he was going to kill himself. The threat seemed real so we felt that we should call his wife and see if she felt capable of looking after him in his state of mind. Or would she like us to take him to the hospital where he could seek some professional help. Dave’s wife Karen requested that we take him to the hospital. Although he had never harmed her, he was known to get violent towards other people when he consumes liquor. McCue and I escorted Parsons to the Royal Jubilee Hospital where he was taken into the psychiatric unit. When we were going to escort him to an examination room Dave grabbed me and threw me over a bed against the wall. He had begun to flee past Wally when Wally tripped him. Wally McCue pepper sprayed Dave Parsons after he hit the floor. Dave Parsons was lodged in the treatment room and then he began to threaten to kill me. Dave said that when he got out he was going to get me. McCue and I went back to the office to complete the necessary paperwork before we could go home. We finished about 4:00 a.m. the following morning. About 9:00 the next day Dave Parsons called me at home to tell me that he was at his home and that he was fine. He indicated that shortly after we left a doctor attended to him and put some drops in his eyes, which immediately had taken away the burning caused by the pepper spray. He was then interviewed and released. Dave was at home before I was that night. During the next two years, Dave Parsons played the game, getting four adjournments, indicating he had to change lawyers twice. Then they were not prepared, and when we finally went to court everyone forgot about the incident except for the wife of the deceased and her children. I spoke to the wife of the deceased and she reported that the crown would provide her no information with respect to the trial dates or status of the court proceedings. When the final outcome came about, the defense argued that the operator of the bike was not wearing a helmet and did not have a light on his bike. Kilby was charged with impaired driving causing death, driving with no driver’s license, and driving under suspension. He pled guilty to a reduced charge of impaired driving and received a three hundred dollar fine and one year’s suspension of a suspended

license he didn’t have.

N.O.K.

N.O.K. stands for next of kin. During your career as a policeman, a part of your duties will consist of notifying the family of relatives who have ed away, usually in tragic accidents. I am going to tell you of three I had to do during the course of my duties. One of the areas of patrol for which I was responsible was in the tourist area of Harrison Hot Springs. A luxury hotel is located there and people all over the world travel to it, especially for business conventions. On morning I received a message requesting me to locate a young couple who were at a convention for the weekend. The message from Maple Ridge Detachment indicated that their six-month-old infant had been left with a relative for the weekend. The child had ed away during the evening, possibly from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Being a young parent myself, I wondered how I would tackle this particular notification. I drove to the hotel, looking at the highway, looking back at the message I had received, thinking, “What do I say to a couple who has lost their child? How do I not show emotion for their loss? Should I show emotion?” Well I have learned from experience that you can plan all you want to but when you deal with the situation a whole different set of circumstances may be tossed at you. I met this one head on. I located the hotel manager Dave Campbell and advised him of the situation; Dave offered me the use of his office to break the news to the couple. When the hotel staff located the couple, they met me in the lobby. Their faces dropped when they saw me. They sensed something was not good. When I asked them into the office to break the news to them, the wife said, “What’s wrong?” They knew something. I coaxed them into the office and dropped the bomb on them. I do not have to explain the reaction I received. You could not help but feel the pain. When I left I said to me “This part of the job sucks”. I attended a motor vehicle accident on a dark damp night. When I arrived, I determined that a car had stopped to turn left on the four lane highway. A car behind him ran into the back of the first car. If that were not enough, three more ran into him. The last vehicle with two teenage girls in it backed up and took off.

It was later recovered abandoned down the road. It had been stolen. The single occupant of the second car got out of his vehicle and was standing in the oncoming fast lane of the road looking at the damage when a vehicle struck him killing him instantly. After the accident scene was cleared I went to the relatives’ residence in Saanich. The wife of the deceased, who called her daughter, when I broke the news to them, met me. The first reaction is denial; it takes a few days for something tragic to . The last incident involved me. I received a call from my father in Ontario, telling me that my mother had suddenly dropped dead of a brain aneurysm. I was twenty-three years old and forty-five hundred kilometers from home. As if that were not bad enough, when I went to the Sub Division office to get my leave signed, a cold hearted son of a bitch by the name of Staff Sergeant George Allan said to me “It is too bad about your mother. But you go home, bury her and get back here in five days. This better not affect your performance.” I will never forget this statement from a callous man.

Assault

I had been posted in Victoria for ten days when I was involved in working a radar operation on Highway 14 in the municipality of Colwood. Constable Al Ashby was the radar operator; Auxiliary Constable Frank Dresden and I were the pickup team located one hundred meters down the road. It was a warm, dry, clear, evening in May when Constable Ashby radioed me, requesting that I stop the vehicle approaching me. He indicated the driver was traveling at 90 in a 50 speed zone. I was writing a ticket to another violator. Auxiliary Constable Dresden stepped out onto the road and attempted to flag down the speeding vehicle. When I looked up, the driver of the speeding vehicle accelerated and swerved to hit Auxiliary Constable Dresden. Frank jumped onto the curb and the driver floored his car past him. Seeing this, I put my car into drive and chased the vehicle down the road. It pulled left off the highway into the main entrance to Royal Roads Military College. The driver was forced to stop by a traffic guard, which was in the down position. I approached the driver of the car who immediately told me to give him his “firkin’ ticket” so he could be on his way. I could determine at this point that the driver was intoxicated and had an attitude problem. He was asked to step out of his car and provide me with his driver’s license and vehicle registration. The driver was advised he was under arrest and I tried to place him in the police car’s rear seat. The driver resisted arrest and the struggle was on. When I finally got him into the police car he attempted to get back out of the police cruiser and after several attempts, and out of breath, I closed the door on his legs. The driver was identified as Bradley Scott Robinson who resided in Sooke twenty kilometers to the west of Colwood. About eight months later we went to trial and Robinson was found not guilty, it was ruled by the judge that I had infringed on his rights. Robinson, when found not guilty, left the court house and went to the Colwood detachment of the RCMP. He laid a complaint that I had assaulted him by closing the police car door on his legs. A criminal investigation was initiated against me and six months later I was charged with assaulting Mr. Robinson. The Crown lost jurisdiction on the summary conviction offence due to the alleged offence being over a year old, so the charge of common assault

would have to be in the form of an indictable offence. I chose to be tried by a judge only and after a preliminary hearing I attended the Supreme Court of British Columbia, charged with common assault on Bradley Robinson. A regional Crown Prosecutor was brought into Victoria especially to prosecute my case. This man normally would be used to prosecute murderers but no expense was spared in prosecuting my case. The judge was brought in from Vancouver because they said a local judge would not be appropriate as I might have given evidence before him in a previous trial. The outcome was that I was acquitted in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. The situation took its toll on me. It hurt me badly to have my name in the paper and to be treated as a criminal when my life revolved around upholding the law.

Justice

Now for my opinion of the justice system. What justice? This topic is one I do not like to discuss since it is like talking about politics or religion. I have summed this up when dealing with the justice system. I do not wish to tar all lawyers with the same brush but here is my opinion. I have been to court thousands of times, Provincial at one time, County before it was absorbed by the Supreme Court, and of course the Supreme Court. Lawyers for lawyers designed our Justice system. My saying is that lawyers defend you, lawyers prosecute you, and lawyers become judges to make the law for the law society. You cannot make a complaint against a judge; he is God. If you want justice, do not believe the courts will give you that. You see what you’re dealing with. The police gather the information and put a case together. At one time, not long ago you told the Crown Prosecutor what charge was to be laid. This has been reversed so that the prosecutor approves the charge. A Crown prosecutor makes a below average salary for a lawyer, sometimes as low as thirty thousand dollars a year. In the courtroom, he has to spar with a lawyer making six times that of him or her. However, as a lawyer starting out or wanting to become a judge, he has to log time in this position in order to gain the experience, so right off the bat we are handicapped. The law is not made to find you innocent or guilty it is made to see what technicality the accused can get off on. You also should have a law degree to become a politician so you can also be out of touch with reality and, to become a politician or lawyer, you must have wealth and when you have wealth you must have power. I have watched people accused of the most serious crimes walk because when you arrested him you followed the rules the law sets out. Six months to a year later, case law has become established on another case and yours has become retroactive to the decision. This is apparent in drug cases. So now you have infringed on poor Johnny’s rights and they set him free, laughing not only at you but also the system. The courts are told Johnny comes from a dysfunctional family, has low self-esteem, and was abused as a child. The more chaos the lawyers can create the more money they make. The constitution was created by lawyers for lawyers. It was a make work project for lawyers that has

cost the Canadian tax payer billions of dollars. As long as you have lawyers running this country we’re screwed. Judges do not believe most of the evidence police officers provide; they think we are devious manipulative people. There, I got it out of my system. I think you get the drift now as to my opinion of the justice department.

Chapter Seven Discharge

Discharge

After it’s all said and done, this job took a heavy toll on my family and me. After dealing with being charged for assault in 1991, and being treated as a criminal when I never had been on the wrong side of our society’s laws, I saw how different the Police Officers rules are compared to everyone else’s. I saw how the force has its own set of rules by being judged in Service Court with no voice in what transpires. To be convicted of “Conduct unbecoming a member of the Force” before you’re judged in Criminal Court and then to be found not guilty in Criminal Court, but to be sued civilly and to have the force compensating the accused doesn’t make any sense to me. To lose a friend, a co-worker, a partner, and to be called by a radio station’s news reporter to advise us that the accused impaired driver was secretly being brought into court to plea, so that the police presence that should have been there, would not upset the accused, to see the behind the scenes play down of the accident and the politics of the system. To deal with death on a monthly basis, to have to tell the victim’s families that an impaired driver took their family ’ life. To have the force provide only negative on your performance, and complain that you’re overweight. To not have the proper equipment to do a job safely. Yes, the system had created a negative person, pleading for help and trying to be masculine and not lose face with the he worked with. In 1991, after my friend was run over and killed by an impaired driver, and after dealing with the judicial aftermath, I sought medical attention. The force provided me a list of psychologists with whom to consult. At first I dealt with two located locally but did not receive the help I desperately needed. I then went to Abbotsford, B.C. and sought the help of Doctor Mike Webster, a psychologist with twenty years experience in dealing with law enforcement officers. Doctor Webster, in my opinion, is the most talented doctor one could ever hope to deal with in Police Psychology. He diagnosed me with a condition called “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”. Doctor Webster, the two previous psychologists, along with my family practitioner, sent reports to Health Services telling them to relocate me and remove me from Highway Patrol duties, as my condition would worsen. I

went through two transfer processes initiated by me, the first based on medical grounds and the second on comionate grounds. On both occasions Staffing and Personnel refused to move me due to financial restraints or because there was no operational need. After four and a half years of struggling with the force to receive help I desperately required and their refusing to provide me with it or to do what the doctors advised them to do, I was medically released on January 3, 1996. I never ed the Force to be medically released or to be criminally charged with an offence. I spent half my life and all of my adult life upholding the laws of this fine country, maintaining the traditions of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, only to become another buried statistic. I try not to be bitter but it is difficult now to hold my head high as I once did.

Chapter Eight Civil suit

Civil Suit

After relocating to Oshawa, Ontario, I was fortunate enough to acquire a job with Ontario Hydro Security at Pickering Nuclear Power Generation Plant. After six months of working at Ontario Hydro, my eyes were opened to how the company treated their employees who were injured on or off duty. The company stressed that safety equipment was supplied and briefings were often held regarding safety. This caught my attention and I researched their policies with respect to employee and employer relations. Now being a union member, which I had not been in the RCMP, my eyes were opened. How could an employee be treated so fairly? I had never experienced this while a member of the RCMP. In the force we had no representation whatsoever. I went to the local library and obtained a government form, requesting access to personnel information under The Freedom of Information Act. I completed the request, asking for my medical, personnel, and service files. A short period of time later a box of files arrived at my door. It contained the files I had requested. A review of these files disclosed that they were incomplete. I ed the force in Ottawa and advised them that they shortchanged me. The corporal I had dealings with had assured me that it was all they had. Not being satisfied with the response from the force, I made an official complaint to the Privacy Commissioner who was also in Ottawa. The privacy commissioner investigated my complaint and I obtained the remaining paperwork. It was evident to me that the force had extremely screwed me. I always knew that once you become burned out they would put the pressure on you to quit or shoot yourself, so they could replace you with someone who was naive and

young. In my case, I had all the paperwork sitting in front of me proving that the RCMP was negligent in dealing with me over the previous four or five years. In fact I had all the memos from doctors and specialist-advising health services what to provide me in order I could recover from my previous injuries. Feeling abandoned by the force after eighteen years of service, I looked back and wondered what the force would do to me if the table were turned? Fuck Me! Yes they certainly would. I compiled all the pertinent information and had a meeting with a respectful law firm in Whitby Ontario. It was determined that I had a solid civil suit and on January 12 1998, The Attorney General of Canada, Department of Justice was served a statement of claim. The claim contained twenty-two paragraphs of negligence accusing the RCMP of wrongdoing. The Justice Department denied the claim and we had a hearing on August 15, 1998 at Whitby Courthouse. Justice Shawn’s of the Ontario Court ruled, in an eight page decision, that the force was vicariously liable and a tort had been committed. The Department of Justice did not appeal the claim, but came up with more case law they wanted to argue. My lawyer granted another hearing and on December 15, 1998 they argued the same case law, basically saying that I could not sue the force under section 30(1) of the RCMP Act. This section states that if a member doesn’t grieve his discharge, they have no recourse in any court. The grievance procedure barely exists, let alone being impartial. Judge Shawn’s upheld his previous decision and added to it ordering the case go to trial. It was not until October 1999 that a discovery was held in Oshawa where an Inspector McCauley from Staffing Branch in Vancouver gave evidence for the force.

I gave evidence in the discovery on October 14, 1999 in Oshawa. The proceedings lasted eight hours which, when transcribed, totaled 199 pages of evidence. The Justice Department wanted more information and on May 2, 2000 I returned the discovery and gave another five hours of evidence which was almost a carbon copy of the discovery in October 1999. At present the case is still before the courts. Only God knows if I will beat the force at their own game.

The End.

There’s 3 Ways to Do It, The Right Way The Wrong Way The RCMP Way