B.C.’s police complaint commissioner rebuked the Victoria and Esquimalt Police Board’s co-chairwomen on Friday for not being fully honest about an investigation of Victoria Police Chief Frank Elsner.
In a 12-page order, commissioner Stan Lowe harshly criticizes the co-chairwomen, Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins and Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps, over how they led the investigation into an exchange of private Twitter messages between Elsner and the wife of a subordinate Victoria officer.
The mayors hired a Vancouver lawyer to find out what happened.
Lowe said in a case with obvious potential for conflict, Desjardins and Helps led a process that failed to meet Police Act requirements for fairness, accountability and transparency.
As a result, Lowe has ordered a new probe, to be conducted by the RCMP and the Vancouver Police Department.
Lowe said with “limited information” he had agreed that the police board could investigate Elsner’s social-media exchange as an internal personnel matter with the condition that police board members receive full and continuing briefings and that the police officer serving under Elsner be canvassed as to whether he wanted to initiate a complaint.
But Lowe said there was no contact from the co-chairwomen until about Oct. 28 “when our office received information that members of the board had not received adequate disclosure with respect to the allegations and investigation related to Chief Constable Elsner,” Lowe said.
The next contact between the commissioner’s office and co-chairwomen was on Dec. 4, when a member of the media called and asked if Elsner was the subject of an investigation.
“We did not comment at all,” Lowe said. However, given that the media were told by Desjardins there was “no current investigation,” the commissioner said he had to direct Desjardins to “correct the misinformation she had provided earlier.”
An internal discipline investigation requires a systematic and thorough search for evidence, Lowe said. Under the Police Act, it was the responsibility of the discipline authority — the co-chairwomen — to set the investigation’s terms of reference and the manner in which it would be conducted, he said.
“It was my expectation that, at a minimum, all interviews would be audio recorded,” Lowe said. “Instead, I learned afterward, all the witness interviews were documented by handwritten notes made by the interviewer, and constituted summaries of the evidence.”
Lowe said there was no opportunity for witnesses to review their statements for accuracy.
He said some individuals “were not accorded sufficient informational rights, were not provided a sufficient right to be heard, and did not receive a decision which clearly identified the basis upon which the co-chairs decided the matter.”
Lowe said the Victoria officer under Elsner’s command was not informed about the messages exchanged between his wife and the chief — depriving the officer of essential information he would have needed to make an informed decision on whether he wanted to launch a complaint against the chief.
When the board’s discipline authority realized the officer was not aware of the messages, they failed to inform him, Lowe said. “It appears that the co-chairs did nothing to correct the member’s misguided appreciation of the circumstances, despite the co-chairs knowing the information provided to the member was false and misleading,” Lowe said.
He disclosed a paragraph from the Vancouver lawyer’s investigation: “It is particularly troubling that [the member …] still does not know about the Twitter exchanges between his spouse and the chief. As a result, there continues to be a risk of further workplace consequences should those Tweets be exposed.”
Glen Shiels, acting president of the Victoria police union, said the Victoria police officer still doesn’t know what the messages say or contain.
Despite the commissioner clearly blaming the two mayors for mishandling the probe, Desjardins insisted Friday that they were not to blame.
“We followed legal advice, advice we received from OPCC [Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner],” Desjardins said. She asked the public not to rush to judgment.
“Let’s allow the process to occur.”
