Ex-complaints chief reluctant
to probe, inquiry told
Commissioner would investigate police only
when forced to by media, his former deputy says
Gerry Bellett, Vancouver Sun, April 5, 2008
VANCOUVER | During his term of office, former police complaint commissioner Don Morrison would never order an investigation into allegations of wrongdoing by the Vancouver police unless he was forced to by the media, his former deputy testified Friday.
"It is my perception that it would be extremely unlikely that Commissioner Morrison would order a public hearing against the Vancouver police unless the matter was in the media and there was very little other option," said former OPCC deputy commissioner Matt Adie.
This was Adie's explanation for why Morrison refused to order an public hearing into the death of Frank Paul, a homeless, alcoholic, aboriginal man who died in December 1998 after being dumped while stupefied with alcohol in a cold, wet downtown alley by Vancouver police.
Paul was arrested after being found lying unconscious on a vegetable stand, but was refused access to the jail by a senior officer who decided he wasn't drunk and instructed an inexperienced constable driving the police wagon to take him away. An autopsy determined Paul died from a combination of alcoholic intoxication and hypothermia.
Adie's testimony to the Frank Paul inquiry was perhaps the most damning observation yet about Morrison's reign as commissioner, which ended in 2002 when he resigned following a legislative review of his performance.
The former deputy commissioner said he was so perturbed by Morrison's failure to order a public hearing -- and what it might do to the reputation of the OPCC -- that before he resigned in 2001, he wrote a letter warning that if the contents of the Paul file became public "it could provoke criticism from the general public and outrage from the native community."
Adie said his observations of Morrison's actions were based on "my being reasonably astute and knowing my commissioner's mind about various things."
Morrison and Adie were appointed in 1998 following the Oppal Commission on municipal policing, which resulted in the OPCC being established.
Adie said Morrison had not told him anything about his reluctance to investigate the police, but added:
"There were other files where things didn't happen, or happened in certain ways. I think I'm right in saying you'd be hard-pressed to find a public hearing or an external investigation ordered on something that wasn't already in the media.
"There was very little appetite to be assertive in the matter of responding to a complaint unless it was already on the six o'clock news," said Adie.
"During the time you worked at the OPCC, was the Frank Paul matter in the news?" asked Martland.
"No, I don't believe it was. Even in Vancouver, a dead body gets a few lines, but I don't recall it being in the media at all as a talking point," said Adie.
Adie said Morrison was alone in his view with his staff -- himself, commission counsel Dana Urban and investigator Bill MacDonald -- urging him to call a public hearing into the conduct of the two police officers involved in Paul's death.
Urban has testified that Morrison once said he didn't call a hearing because he didn't want to ruin the career of Const. David Instant, the officer who drove the comatose Paul to the alley.
Morrison told the inquiry he felt a coroner's inquest or criminal charges were better ways to deal with the death.
The inquiry was told earlier that Morrison had met privately with the Vancouver police chief at the time in a restaurant, and promised the chief that he wouldn't order a public hearing -- a decision Morrison did not at the time share with his staff.
While Urban and MacDonald confronted Morrison to demand he act, Adie, as a career civil servant, used a less confrontational approach with Morrison, but found this got him nowhere.
"I hadn't verbally been able to reach Mr. Morrison and influence him, so I thought I had a better chance if I put it in writing.
"I thought it was easy to get lost in the legal debates, but there was another side to the agency, its reputation and its goodwill among the legislature and the public.
"I wanted to be sure we weren't getting so lost in the file that we weren't looking at how this would this appear in the glare of publicity. If this was on the evening news, if the minister is being faced with those cameras outside the legislative assembly and being asked, 'What are you doing about this,' you want him to give a good account of himself and you also want the organization not to appear inept."
Adie said he was concerned at the time with other reports of Canadian police mistreating aboriginals, such as the infamous "starlight tours" in Saskatoon, where police abandoned poorly clad men outside the city limits in wintertime. His letter to Morrison said the Frank Paul affair was an "acid test" for the OPCC.
Adie said he was concerned for the agency's reputation.
"This was an agency dependent upon the goodwill of the public coming forward with complaints. If we come across as uncaring, then I'm not sure people will beat their way to the door to say this happened to me, or my daughter or my uncle.
"And I wanted to alert the commissioner that this might not stay under wraps forever. It might come out and if it did, every decision he made would be reviewed and how are we going to look?"
Adie said the agency was new and had the chance to "set the bar high" in terms of its outreach to the public and its integrity and to show it wasn't a "haven for ex-police officers."
He said he felt the Frank Paul file was so important that "it had the potential for destroying all the good work done by the Oppal Commission and any hope of civilian oversight of the police in B.C."
"It perplexed me why he didn't do anything. If he had had a good reason and had he explained it to me I would have been as loyal a deputy as I could have been," said Adie.
"As it was this ended my career. I was proud of the office and I wanted it to do well," he said.
[end of Vancouver Sun story]
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