Robert Matas, Vancouver (Globe and Mail) – The RCMP has spent $15.3-million over the past four years on the Air India task force investigating the deaths of 331 people in two horrific explosions on flights from Vancouver 26 years ago.
The investigation continues with a staff of 17. So far, Vancouver mechanic Inderjit Singh Reyat is the only person convicted in the Air India case. He served 20 years in prison for bringing together material that was used in the bombs. Two suspects in the case were acquitted in a first-degree murder trial in 2005.
Financial records released by the RCMP also show that an additional $3.1-million has been spent over the past four years on Project Expedio, an investigation into several murders in the Lower Mainland, including the assassination 13 years ago of publisher Tara Singh Hayer. A fearless and outspoken journalist, Mr. Hayer agreed shortly before his assassination in 1989 to testify against a suspect in the Air India case. Continued…
Categories: Air-India Flight 182, Shoddy Investigations, Your Tax Dollars In Action.
Gary Mason (Globe and Mail) – The Mounties want you to believe they take sexual harassment allegations seriously. But when you listen to Janet Merlo’s story, the RCMP’s oft-repeated declaration rings hollow.
In September, 2007, Constable Merlo wrote to then-RCMP commissioner William Elliott concerning plans under way to transfer her out of the B.C. detachment in which she was serving. In the note, she talked about a run-in she had with a supervisor because “I did not think his sexual advances were funny.”
She didn’t think the sex toys he was leaving on her desk were funny either. Continued…
Categories: Abuse By Mounties, Abuse Of Mounties, Broken Force, Harassment within the RCMP, Internal Morale, Senior Management.
Suzanne Fournier (Vancouver Province) – Women who proudly donned the red serge suit of the RCMP only to suffer sexual harassment by bosses have been growing in strength and numbers.
RCMP Cpl. Catherine Galliford, who was the calm, professional voice of the Air India and the Missing Women Task Force, said in a recent 115-page statement that she was constantly sexually harassed by RCMP officers.
Galliford, who has been on medical leave, is slated to testify at the Missing Women Inquiry in January but has not filed a civil lawsuit. Continued…
Categories: Abuse By Mounties, Abuse Of Mounties, Broken Force, Harassment within the RCMP, Internal Morale, Senior Management.
Keith Fraser (Vancouver Province) – A Surrey RCMP officer is suing the B.C. solicitor-general’s ministry, the Attorney-General of Canada and three RCMP officers, alleging she was harassed, demeaned and belittled by bosses who operated in an atmosphere of “fear and control.”
Elisabeth Mary Couture says her problems began in May 2009 when she was promoted to corporal and appointed to work in the Surrey detachment’s branch of the Drugs and Organized Crime Awareness Service (DOCAS).
In a notice of civil claim filed in B.C. Supreme Court, Couture says she was told that contact between co-workers was “highly discouraged” and that all conversations among co-workers had to be approved in advance. Continued…
Categories: Abuse By Mounties, Abuse Of Mounties, Broken Force, Harassment within the RCMP, Senior Management.
Vancouver, B.C. (CKNW – AM980) – Four RCMP officers accused of lying when they testified at an inquiry into the death of a man at Vancouver’s airport will not go to trial before next fall.
Jury selection for the perjury case against Corporal Monty Robinson and Constables Kwesi Millington, Gerry Rundell and Bill Bentley has been set for October 4th, 2012.
They were all charged in May of this year. Continued…
Categories: Attempted Cover Up, Death While In Custody, Excessive use of Force, Mounties Charged, Mounties Investigating Mounties, Oversight of the RCMP, Public Complaints, Robert Dziekanski, Senior Management, Shoddy Investigations, Taser.
Gary Mason (Globe and Mail) – RCMP Constable Janet Merlo says she felt compelled to respond when a supervising officer made a sexist remark to her in the company of a high-ranking official from the force.
“You know, if I were to make a complaint, I could probably retire on just what you say to me alone,” she said.
“What was that?” her boss replied. “Did you say you want to retire on me? Does that mean you like it on top?” Continued…
Categories: Abuse By Mounties, Abuse Of Mounties, Broken Force, Harassment within the RCMP, Internal Morale, Senior Management.
Todd Coyne (North Shore Outlook) – A North Vancouver provincial court judge continues to hear submissions in a lawsuit filed by a former District of North Vancouver council candidate against the RCMP and a private security firm.
Before beginning an unsuccessful campaign for council that garnered just 1,500 votes, Austin Park filed a lawsuit last November seeking damages of $50,000 for injuries he said he sustained in 2007 at the hands of two North Vancouver Mounties and three guards from Paladin Security.
Park is representing himself in the matter which stems from an alleged June 6, 2007 altercation at the Lions Gate Hospital where Park’s mother was then receiving treatment for cancer. Continued…
Categories: Mounties Sued.
(CBC News) – The RCMP sent business and personal information to Algerian officials about a New Brunswick farmer now being held in a Lebanese prison over a shipment of potatoes to Algeria, CBC News has learned.
The police force tried to interview Henk Tepper in 2009, but he said he wanted a lawyer at the meeting, and they never returned, according to documents obtained by the CBC’s Laurie Graham. The documents show the RCMP closed the file – eight months after the force sent Tepper’s financial information to Algerian officials.
Algerian authorities suspect Tepper forged Canadian Food Inspection Agency documents in 2007 to say his potatoes were a better quality than they were. Continued…
Categories: Shoddy Investigations.
Leo Knight, Vancouver, B.C. (24 Hrs) – Many years ago when I served in the RCMP, it was often stated that the force was “100 years of tradition unhampered by progress.”
The words were, of course, said in jest. But it seems they bear more than a kernel of truth given the sexual harassment allegations made earlier this month by Cpl. Catherine Galliford.
The tradition in the RCMP is a double-edged sword. On the one side, it gives the organization its pride and its global reputation as an icon of Canada. But, it is the other side, the darker one of the old boys club that causes many of the problems the force has with its domestic reputation and ongoing image battles in the wake of successive public relations disasters. Continued…
Categories: Abuse By Mounties, Abuse Of Mounties, Broken Force, Harassment within the RCMP.
Vancouver, B.C. (Postmedia News) – The sisters of a woman murdered by serial killer Robert Pickton say they are “sickened” after hearing that RCMP and Vancouver police officers allegedly joked and “fantasized” about how their sister may have died.
“We are very angry, especially when we know that the police could have prevented the murder of one of our sisters,” said Cynthia Cardinal, the sister of Georgina Papin.
At Pickton’s trial, eyewitness Lynn Ellingsen gave key testimony that she saw Pickton hang a woman from a meat hook in his barn and gut her. Continued…
Categories: Broken Force, Oversight of the RCMP, Robert Pickton, Senior Management, Shoddy Investigations.
Recent Comments