(Prime Time Crime exclusive Nov. 27, 2006)
Review Board shares shame with Chief
By Leo Knight
William Gladstone, the 19th Century British Prime Minister, famously said “Justice delayed is justice denied.” But even he could not contemplate the blatant denial of justice accorded to a Calgary woman whose life was turned upside down on a September night six years ago.
Nancy Killian Constant was at home with her family when members of the Calgary Police Service pushed their way into her Elbow Drive home and ordered them to the floor at gunpoint. The police were armed with a search warrant issued by a Justice of the Peace based on an Information to Obtain sworn by then-junior Constable Ian Vernon.
The police were, ostensibly, looking for a grow op. But the information came from her landlord and his son who had been embroiled in a dispute with Killian Constant. That, in and of itself, should have made the police leery.
But it wasn’t just that the police returned with an empty warrant. Indeed, according to an internal memo written by then Inspector, now Deputy Chief, Jim Hornby, one of the officers involved altered his notebook, after the fact, to enhance the grounds needed to get the warrant approved. In the police world that is tantamount to lying under oath and is potentially a career-ender given that a police officer needs his credibility in the eyes of the courts.
So, despite knowing this and the fact other due diligence was left out of the warrant application, the senior management of the Calgary Police Service have seemingly done everything humanly possible to avoid admitting a mistake was made.
But they did not anticipate the dogged determination of Killian Constant. Like a dog with a bone, she worked to get answers about what went so wrong that the police pointed their weapons in a warrant execution at the family of Joe and Jane SixPack, who had no criminal history.
The management of the Calgary Police Service did its level best to obfuscate and frustrate all attempts to get answers. And why would that be? Unless, of course, they knew they had some liability in this.
In the spring, nearly six years after the events of September 2000, the Chief Constable ordered another investigation into the circumstances done by Insp. Brian Whitelaw.
Whitelaw believed he had sufficient evidence to prove charges under the Police Act against a number of serving officers including Hornby. He filed his final report in the summer.
Ordinarily, when this occurs, the Chief Constable reviews the investigation and either decides on the information presented or convenes a tribunal to hear the allegations. In this case, on September 29th, Chief Jack Beaton wrote a letter to Killian Constant essentially saying that while a few bad things happened as far as he was concerned, the Service had dealt with it appropriately and the rest of the allegations were not established.
On the heels of that, the Law Enforcement Review Board issued a decision on an application made by Beaton for costs to be assigned to Killian Constant. Essentially, Beaton and his minions have done everything in their power not to admit liability for police officers forcing their way at gunpoint, late at night, into a private residence based on a contrived warrant to search for a grow op that never existed. And then he asked Killian Constant to pay for the privilege.
Last week the LERB issued its decision that Killian Constant was liable for costs of $5000 to pursue her complaint against the Calgary Police Service.
To quote the Bard in The Twelfth Night, “If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.”
None of this need have occurred had Beaton recognized the problem back in December, 2000 when Hornby first identified that a junior constable had altered his notes to support getting a warrant. At that point in time, the CPS could have made all of this go away with an apology and some minor disciplinary procedures.
But Jack Beaton is not the sort to say he’s sorry. Evidently, he’d rather attack a victim than say the Service made a mistake.
Beaton and the LERB should be ashamed.
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