Police officers have rights, too. It’s unfortunate that it has taken so long for the bureaucracy to figure that out. Const. David Bratzer of the Victoria police department has been awarded $20,000 in a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal decision. He had been seeking $65,000 because of the department’s longstanding efforts to keep him quiet.
Bratzer’s transgression? While off duty, he advocated for drug legalization and changes to drug laws. VicPD said, however, he could not speak publicly or personally as a member of the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
It can be difficult for some to accept that police officers might not agree with all of the laws they are being asked to enforce.
It is more difficult to accept the notion that a police department could discriminate against one of its officers because of his political beliefs that were not far removed from mainstream thinking.
What is most difficult of all is the realization that this case was allowed to go on for as long as it did, taking time and money that could have been spent on more important priorities.
The tribunal found that former police chief Jamie Graham was not in favour of drug legalization or decriminalization, and that played a partial role in the treatment of Bratzer on at least one occasion.
Let’s restate that: If Graham tried to gag Bratzer’s off-duty comments because he disagreed with Bratzer’s views, then Graham overstepped his position. That kind of management action is wrong.
But Graham left the department at the end of 2013. His political views don’t matter these days. VicPD and the police board have had two years to settle this matter sensibly.
Instead, they pushed ahead. They hired an expensive Vancouver lawyer and went through 10 days of hearings. What was the cost of that? Odds are, the $20,000 that ended up in Bratzer’s pocket was chump change compared to the full cost of pursuing the matter.
No one spending their own money would have fought this case. It would have been cheaper to settle — and settling would have been the right thing to do.
But when it’s taxpayers’ money, there appears to be no problem. The Bratzer case reflects a staggering disregard for the people who pay the bills.
The two mayors who co-chair the board — Victoria’s Lisa Helps and Esquimalt’s Barb Desjardins — should explain why they chose to pursue this case, and why they did not think it would be a waste of taxpayers’ money.
However, they should not take the full blame. They are the co-chairs, and there is one council appointee from Victoria and another from Esquimalt. Four members of the board are provincial appointees, and since the chairs don’t vote unless there is a tie, a majority of the board members are entirely unaccountable to the public — the people they are, in theory, representing.
Remember that the taxpayers are paying both sides of the legal dispute involving Frank Elsner, who was hired to succeed Graham and was suspended last fall, and the two mayors.
Elsner filed a petition in B.C. Supreme Court to try to stop a public-trust investigation into allegations he sent inappropriate Twitter messages to the wife of a subordinate officer. The petition names as defendants police complaint commissioner Stan Lowe, as well as Desjardins and Helps. Taxpayers are paying all the bills.
Will this be another case that continues far too long, with the people involved facing no financial risk?
Given the poor decisions made in the Bratzer case, taxpayers have every right to an answer. As it stands, when our money is involved, we have no reason to believe that the police board has our best interests in mind.
