Pubdate: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON) Copyright: 2005 The Ottawa Citizen Contact: http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326 Author: Lawrence Greenspon Note: Lawrence Greenspon is president of the Defence Counsel Association of Ottawa. THE PUBLIC SHOULD EXPECT BETTER FROM THE POLICE Police Chief Vince Bevan's recent comments ("Bevan defends police in 'gang boss' probe: Chief says judge who threw out case didn't have full story," Nov. 2) about Judge Hugh Fraser excluding evidence gathered by police using an improperly obtained wiretap are far more troubling than the result of the ruling. Chief Bevan claims the judge did not have the full story, despite the obvious fact that the trial judge heard every minute of the court testimony. It was the chief who was not present for a single moment of the evidence being presented. If he had been present, Chief Bevan would have realized that the alleged good faith of his officers was debated and then rejected by the trial judge. It is almost a quarter of a century since the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms became law. The purported good faith of police officers as a justification for rights violations is an argument that is happily beginning to wear thin. How long must the public wait for the remaining few police officers to learn that misleading judges, using excess force, investigating without reasonable and probable grounds and other improper police practices are not going to be excused as either ignorance or malevolence disguised as good faith. The wiretap-approval process, like that used for search warrants, has always been an anathema to our judicial system. The applications take place behind closed doors. The police are sometimes understandably but unfortunately overly zealous in their attempts to get their requests approved. There is no one in attendance to present the other side of the story, as is the case throughout the rest of our adversarial justice system. Search warrants and wiretaps allow such invasive surveillance that they have to be pre-authorized by the court. This protection of our freedoms and privacy is a good thing. The court can only grant these extraordinary powers to search, tap, and monitor on the basis of sworn police affidavits. Judges have to be able to count on the police making honest and full disclosure of their investigations before granting a search warrant or a wiretap. In the same breath as he claimed there is an information gap, Chief Bevan said he is going to follow through and determine that the federal Crown had full information. Perhaps the chief would have been wiser to do that before criticizing any supposed gap between the federal and provincial Crowns. Maybe the follow-through should have taken place before, when questioned by the Citizen editorial board, he made a knee-jerk attempt to support his officers. The claim of lack of communication between two different jurisdictional agencies is a favourite old Ottawa game that does not succeed in this case. By speaking out without having heard the evidence and without knowing whether there was any gap, the chief has done a great disservice to the court and the Crown, by undermining, in the public's eyes, the integrity of both. The chief should have responded to the judicious ruling by providing for better officer training, as was suggested by the defence counsel, Susan Mulligan. This additional training would emphasize the importance of candid disclosure in requests for wiretaps or search warrants. Instead, Chief Bevan says he is satisfied that his members acted in good faith and that the evidence before Justice Lynn Ratushny "indicated quite clearly that at that point in time, this gentleman was no longer a suspect in the murder investigation." Gang violence is a serious problem in Ottawa and if the Nnanyere Obiorah case is an example of why certain individuals are not successfully prosecuted as the community should expect, perhaps the chief should look in a mirror for the explanation. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman