(Published in 24 Hours Feb 8, 2012)
Cover-up comment out of line
By
Leo Knight
Ever since he made his name defending the 1997 APEC rioters, lawyer Cameron Ward has been on a campaign against the police.
It doesn’t matter the case, Ward seems convinced the police are involved in a conspiracy to trample everyone’s rights no matter what, no matter where. He sees bogeymen disguised as cops everywhere he looks.
His latest cause du jour is representing the families of 25 missing or murdered women in the Robert Pickton missing women inquiry in front of Justice Wally Oppal who is presiding over the commission of inquiry into the affair.
On the weekend, Ward was quoted in a National Post story saying the commission has “enabled a cover-up” by police.
Oppal was suitably so outraged by the outlandish statements that he read a formal rebuke of Ward’s comments on Monday morning.
Instead of taking the verbal slap down, as he should have, especially since Oppal didn’t name Ward in his statement, the latter leapt up on his hind legs and proclaimed, “I was the counsel that made those comments.” He then continued to insult the integrity of the commission, in addition to the intelligence of the rest of us.
At issue, evidently, is a 320-page manuscript written by Vancouver Police Department Detective Constable Lori Shenher in 2002 while on an extended leave. She testified she wrote the manuscript as a “cathartic” exercise with a view it be published at some point.
By definition, it’s her work and her manuscript. By what great leap of mental gymnastics can Ward somehow claim this as being withheld by police, and is a “cover-up enabled” by the Oppal commission? The claim is, of course, outrageous and insulting.
In Ward’s topsy-turvy world, the cops are the bad guys and the people who actually do bad things are the good guys – no matter what.
That’s fine as far as it goes. He’s entitled to his opinion, however misguided. But his grandstanding at the Oppal inquiry is really over the top, especially when he is on the public dime, as is the case with this inquiry.
He sees ghosts and goblins everywhere and does little more than waste the commission’s time and therefore the public’s money.
Ward walked out of the inquiry Monday morning after huffing and puffing about a police conspiracy and cover-up.
I wonder, considering he left the courtroom, if he still billed the taxpayer?