| Nancy Killian Constant was sitting in the dining room of her house on Elbow Drive just after 11 p.m. when the police knocked on her door. She claims that when she answered, the police kicked the door open and ordered her to the ground with guns drawn. "It was pretty brutal," she says.
More police entered the house searching for a marijuana grow-op. In the process, they got her kids out of bed, pointed a gun at her nephew and searched the bedroom of her 89-year-old grandmother, Killian Constant claims. After 20 minutes of searching, the police left without finding anything.
Seven years later, a videotaped arrest has some Calgarians accusing the police of abusing their power. In a four-minute video of police arresting Koney Okpoti on April 25, one officer appears to punch Okpoti twice in the head then holds his head down with his leg across Okpoti’s neck. He later forcefully plants his knee in Okpoti’s back while the man is handcuffed. On the video’s muffled audio track, it appears that Okpoti tells the police that he will speak with his lawyer before the officer takes him to the police car, places his hands around his neck and puts his hand over Okpoti’s mouth. Both officers involved were suspended after the video surfaced, but some who have dealt with police in the past believe the process for investigating cases of misconduct is ineffective.
Greg Wilcox was involved with a number of social causes when he took part in a May Day parade in 2004. Downtown on Macleod Trail, a disgruntled motorist drove his car into the parade and, according to Wilcox and others who were there, struck four people including Wilcox. "I felt a bump in the back and then I started to fall over," says Donna McPhee, another participant in the parade.
Wilcox and some fellow marchers surrounded the car and sat down on it while one man opened the door and pulled the driver out. Two months later police arrested Wilcox and charged him with mischief, accusing him of damaging the car. Wilcox, an Australian national who’s been living in Calgary for five years and has no criminal record, says police targeted him because he was a known activist. He faced deportation if convicted and claims that police twice falsely told him he was wanted on an immigration warrant.
When he and McPhee attempted to press charges against the motorist, they say the police officer they spoke with became irritated and told them that it was too late to press charges, which turned out to be false. Through the proceedings Wilcox learned that two undercover police officers equipped with cameras were present when the motorist drove into the march but claimed they hadn’t seen it happen.
After two years, two delays in the trial and spending $6,000 on legal fees, Wilcox finally went to trial in August of 2006. After the prosecution presented its side, the judge ruled that the case against Wilcox was too weak to proceed and dismissed the charge outright. "When I tell people I was charged with mischief and threatened with deportation because I got hit by a car, it’s pretty weird," Wilcox says with a smile.
Wilcox chose not to lodge a complaint with the police and some who have say that it was a waste of time. Under the current system, a complaint can be sent in writing to the police chief within one year of the incident and the professional standards unit conducts an investigation. When the chief receives the outcome of the investigation, he can decide the matter is not serious and end it. Alternatively, he can refer the officer involved to a disciplinary hearing. If the complainant isn’t satisfied with the outcome, he or she can appeal to the Law Enforcement Review Board (LERB).
Juan Melendez, who claims that police assaulted him in a case of mistaken identity in August 2000, filed a complaint with the police. The chief decided that the complaint was not serious, so Melendez appealed to the LERB. The board ordered a hearing into the conduct of one of the officers involved but ultimately cleared him, so Melendez launched a lawsuit that was thrown out on a technicality. Years later, he says he still takes pain medication and suffers impaired vision in one eye as a result of the incident. "If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t participate in the complaints (process)," says Melendez. "I would charge the officers."
Stephen Jenuth, a Calgary civil liberties lawyer, says that the current system for handling complaints is unfair to both complainants and police officers. "The system is almost completely broken down," he says. Internal investigations typically take six months to a year to complete and can take years if they go to the LERB. Jenuth believes that this is too long for complainants to wait and too long for individual cops to have an accusation hanging over their heads. Compared to a regular police investigation, he believes it is far too long. "I get the impression a regular investigation (for assault) between civilians takes a matter of hours," he says. In theory internal investigations are supposed to be complete within three months, but the Police Commission regularly grants extensions, he says.
The best way to fix the system is to stop police investigating themselves, says Jenuth, who believes there should be an independent body to investigate misconduct allegations. He doesn’t know of a complaint that has led to a loss of pay or dismissal of a police officer.
Killian Constant went to the LERB after Calgary’s police chief opted to use minor reprimands to censure the officers involved in the raid on her house. At a hearing last fall, the board ordered her to pay $5,000 towards the police department’s legal costs. The mother of four has another hearing to determine what mistakes the police made in issuing the warrant for the raid. As it turned out, the family’s landlord had told the police there was a grow-op in the house but recanted. However, the police went ahead and carried out the search.
The raid affected Killian Constant’s family for years afterward. Her grandmother frequently locked the door, locking the family out on a couple of occasions, and her son is still mistrustful of the police. "Now he doesn’t have the time of day for any cop. That’s very sad," she says. "I try to explain to him that there are some bad cops doing a bad job, but not all cops are like that."
Michelle Dassinger, spokesperson for the Calgary Police Service, says that the police could not comment on their investigation process for this story because it relates to the ongoing Okpoti investigation. |
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