Tag Archives: police

Half of B.C. first responders who file mental-health claims don’t receive the help they’ve requested

Lorimer Shenher was a Vancouver cop for 24 years before finally leaving the force with a PTSD diagnosis. He warns many B.C. first responders aren't receiving the help with mental health that they need, in part because of a difficult claims process at WorkSafeBC.
Lorimer Shenher was a Vancouver cop for 24 years before finally leaving the force with a PTSD diagnosis. He warns many B.C. first responders aren’t receiving the help with mental health that they need, in part because of a difficult claims process at WorkSafeBC.

Lorimer Shenher estimates that less than five percent of B.C. first responders who need help with mental health ever ask for it. That’s only a guess, he said in a telephone interview. But it’s an educated one.

Shenher was an officer with the Vancouver Police Department for 24 years, before leaving the force with a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in 2013. He’s also the author of That Lonely Section of Hell, a book about the investigation of women missing from the Downtown Eastside and the prosecution of serial killer Robert Pickton. The book recounts Shenher’s lead role in that investigation, and the debilitating toll it took on his mental health.

In a telephone interview, he discussed the challenges that B.C.’s first responders—firefighters, police officers, and paramedics—can encounter on their way to getting help with conditions such as PTSD.

 Shenher argued that because relatively few first responders who ask for help, WorkSafeBC should make it as easy as possible for them to receive it.

“I think there are much higher percentages of people in those professions that need help that aren’t asking for it,” he said. “When they do finally acknowledge to themselves that they are struggling, it takes a huge amount of courage and faith to put a claim into WorkSafe.”

Yet roughly half of B.C. first responders who do file a mental-health claim with WorkSafeBC do not receive the assistance they are looking for.

According to WorkSafeBC data first reported on by the Tyee and updated for the Straight, for the period July 2012 to December 2015, only 51 percent of 277 B.C. first responders who filed a mental-health claim saw their case approved. (These statistics exclude the RCMP and Transit Police.)

In a telephone interview, Jennifer Leyen, director of special care services for WorkSafeBC, emphasized those numbers do not mean 49 percent of claims were rejected.

She supplied a statistical breakdown showing that of 136 first responders’ mental-health claims not approved, 15 percent were stamped “no adjudication required”, which means that paperwork was only filed for “informational purposes” and did not include a claim for health-care costs or lost wages. Another 32 percent of disallowed claims were suspended, meaning the applicant dropped out of the claims process before a resolution was reached.

Leyen also emphasized that the acceptance rate for mental-health claims filed by first responders was significantly higher than that of all mental-health claims. That number was just 26 percent.

“We accept a significantly higher percentage of first-responder claims than we do any other employer group,” Leyen said. “It is double.”

But she conceded WorkSafeBC accepts a smaller percentage of mental-health claims than it does of the claims it receives as a whole (the bulk of which involve physical injuries). According to Leyen, the acceptance rate for all WorkSafeBC claims hovers around 91 or 92 percent.

“Because the mental-health legislation is very specific about what gets accepted under this part of our legislation, there is much more adjudication required,” she explained. “And we do have a higher disallow rate.”

Leyen noted that changes enacted in July 2012 broadened the scope of mental-health claims deemed eligible for WorkSafeBC compensation. Whereas the rules once said an individual had to be on the scene of a traumatic event—a car accident, for example—now they also cover mental-health challenges that can result from what WorkSafeBC calls “work-place stressors”.

Shenher benefited directly from that legislative change. His claim was initially rejected on the grounds he had not spent time on the farm where Pickton took his victims. It was only accepted by WorkSafeBC when it was reviewed again under the revised legislation.

“I understand how difficult it is to get your head around how PTSD manifests itself,” he said. “It is really weird, the things you can do, the things that you can’t do, the things that trigger you, and the things that are okay. It’s different for everybody.”

At the same time, Shenher questioned whether there’s a need for an arduous review process of mental-health claims. He suggested there’s already such a degree of stigma around mental health, especially in the tradition-bound environment of a police department, that only people with a very pressing need for help ask for it.

Shane Simpson, NDP MLA for Vancouver-Hastings, worked with first responders to draft a private member’s bill that would see WorkSafeBC handle first responders’ mental-health claims with a “presumptive” approach.

“For somebody who was diagnosed with that [PTSD] who is a first responder, the claim would be accepted immediately, without any further processes, unless there was a glaring reason to review it,” Simpson explained in a telephone interview.

He said he introduced that bill last March, but, without government support, he doesn’t expect it to go anywhere.

Simpson maintains that a presumptive approach to mental-health claims is important because a mental-health challenge is very different from a physical injury. He said a condition like PTSD can make the WorksafeBC claims process seem especially daunting, hence the organization’s high percentage of suspended mental-health claims.

“One of the challenges with PTSD is, it’s an area where, because of people’s health condition, they get frustrated,” he said. “And numbers of them don’t follow through to the end of that [WorkSafeBC] process, because of their level of depression.”

The Tyee’s May 20 article presents the stories of several first responders who struggled with long and difficult processes of filing mental-health claims with WorkSafeBC. Shenher recalled how hard the process was for him before his claim was finally accepted in 2012.

“And when you get denied—” Shenher paused. “It’s devastating.”

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This article was originally published at Straight.com on May 25, 2016.

Timeline of transit police shooting fits troubling pattern of fatal encounters with B.C. police

An independent body has found transit police should be cleared of any wrongdoing in the December 2014 fatal shooting of a 23-year-old First Nations man named Naverone Woods.
An independent body has found transit police should be cleared of any wrongdoing in the December 2014 fatal shooting of a 23-year-old First Nations man named Naverone Woods.

Today (May 16) new details were released about the death of Naverone Woods, a 23-year-old First Nations man who was shot and killed by transit police in December 2014.

A report by the Independent Investigations Office of B.C. (IIOBC)—which cleared the officers involved of any wrongdoing—includes a time line for the shooting. It notes that one of the first officers on the scene at a Safeway in Surrey fired the shots that killed Woods within 60 seconds of their arrival.

At 8:03 a.m., Woods entered the Safeway, according to the report. At 8:07 a.m., 911 received a call wherein Woods was reported to be stabbing himself with a knife.

Two minutes later, at 8:09 a.m., two transit police officers arrived and entered the Safeway. That same minute, two shots were fired and Woods was on the ground.

He was pronounced dead at Royal Columbia Hospital at 9:27 a.m.

Helen Slinger is a Vancouver-based documentarian whose recent film Hold Your Fire focused on police shootings involving a person experiencing a mental-health crisis. She told the Straight that the time line of the Woods shooting resembles many cases she reviewed for her film.

“It is very much a pattern,” Slinger said in a telephone interview. “Police are going in too fast, too hard.”

In researching Hold Your Fire, Slinger and fellow journalist  Yvette Brend read hundreds of coroner reports from across Canada. In B.C. alone, they found that between the years 2004 and 2014, 28 people were shot and killed by police or RCMP while experiencing a mental-health crisis.

“After two years of research it took to do that documentary, it was the one thing that finally, really jumped out at me,” she said. “That in so many of these high-profile police shootings of persons in mental distress…police just do not take the time to back up.”

High-profile cases

Stringer listed off a number of fatal police shootings that she described as similar to the Woods case in that officers fired their weapons within less than three minutes of their first encounter with their suspect.

In November 2014, Vancouver police officers shot and killed Phuong Na (Tony) Du less than two minutes after they arrived to apprehend him at the intersection of Knight Street and East 41st Avenue.

In July 2013, Toronto police shot and killed 18-year-old Sammy Yatim within one minute of the first officer arriving on the scene.

In August 2007, a Vancouver animator named Paul Boyd was shot by police on Granville Street. Less than three minutes had passed since the first officer had intervened.

In 2004, Christopher Reid was shot by Toronto police, also within three minutes of their arrival.

Slinger also mentioned Robert Dziekański, who, although not shot with a gun, died after RCMP repeatedly tasered him almost immediately after meeting Dziekański at Vancouver International Airport in October 2007.

The pattern Slinger says she’s noticed in coroner reports from across Canada mirrors findings of the Straight’s own analysis for British Columbia.

In February 2015, the Straight published a review of more than 120 coroner reports that dated from 2007 to 2014. During that period, there were 99 incidents where someonedied during an interaction with police.

An update the Straight published in December 2015 looked specifically at deaths involving firearms. It revealed an increase in those incidents. And, echoing Slinger’s findings, the Straight’s investigation revealed that the first few minutes or even seconds of an encounter often meant the difference between life and death.

Difficult circumstances

The IIOBC’s report on Woods describes difficult circumstances for the first transit police officers who arrive at the Surrey Safeway that morning.

Multiple eyewitnesses are quoted there describing the young man as holding two knives, failing to respond when people tried to intervene, and repeatedly inflicting harm on himself.

Those anecdotes support one another in stating that police repeatedly shouted warnings before any shots were fired. “Drop the knife,”, “Get down,” and “We’ll shoot,” people heard the officers say.

The witnesses are also in agreement that Woods “lunged” or was “moving towards” the officers when they met him just inside the store’s entrance.

A Safeway security guard told IIOBC investigators he estimated the length of time officers had their guns drawn before firing was between 10 and 12 seconds.

Transit police spokesperson Anne Drennan told the Straight she couldn’t comment on specifics pending the completion of investigations by the Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner and the B.C. Coroners Service.

But Drennan emphasized that transit police officers receive the same basic training as every police and RCMP officer in B.C. She emphasized that this includes instructions on mental health and the appropriate use of force.

“Since January 2012, the province of B.C. sets binding standards to ensure that B.C. police officers are trained to use crisis intervention and de-escalation techniques,” she said.

The province requires that officers receive a refresher on those topics every three years. The IIOBC report confirms that both officers involved received that training in July 2014.

A larger problem

Doug King is a Pivot Legal Society lawyer who keeps a close eye on police-involved deaths. He told the Straight the fact that the IIOBC cleared the officers of any wrongdoing is actually indicative of a larger problem.

“We know that this is the legal standard, currently,” King explained. “That if you’ve got someone who’s presenting with an edged weapon and they are physically advancing on an officer, the legal test is, basically, that at that point lethal force is justified.”

King asked why the officers were not equipped with alternative weapons that could have been used without killing Woods. He noted the IIOBC’s report concludes with the same question.

Like Slinger, King told the Straight that details in the IIOBC’s report fit a pattern.

“I would say it’s almost déjà vu,” he said. “We see these cases where the officers are not able to contain the individual until the appropriate resources arrive.”

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This article originally appeared in print and online at Straight.com on May 16, 2016.

B.C. RCMP officers at centre of sharp rise in fatal police shootings

The family of Naverone Woods, a 23-year-old First Nations man who was fatally shot by transit police, is still waiting for answers about why guns were used.
The family of Naverone Woods, a 23-year-old First Nations man who was fatally shot by transit police, is still waiting for answers about why guns were used.

December 28 marks one year having passed since the death of Naverone Woods, a 23-year-old First Nations man who was shot and killed by transit police at a grocery store in Surrey.

On the phone from Hazelton, B.C., one of two Interior towns where Woods grew up, sister-in-law Tracey Woods said the family is still waiting for answers.

“We just want to have some kind of closure,” she explained. “And to know that there was an investigation done, that this case wasn’t just pushed aside.”

Tracey, whom a neighbour described as “like a stepmother” to Naverone, said she has questions about what efforts were made to deescalate the situation before force was deemed necessary, and why guns were used at all.

“We always compare it to a big grizzly bear that they will shoot, put to sleep, and relocate,” she continued. “How come they couldn’t use a Taser or something rather than drawing their weapons?”

Woods was the eighth British Columbian to die in a police-involved incident in 2014, according to a database maintained by the Georgia Straight. So far in 2015, that number stands at 11, the most for any year since 2009.

Last February, the Straight reported that a stark pattern emerged from an analysis of dozens of deaths involving B.C. authorities dating back to 2007: of 99 police-involved deaths investigated by the B.C. Coroners Service or scheduled for investigation, 90 percent involved a mental-health component, substance abuse, or both.

Now a review of that database updated for 2015 reveals another pattern: as deaths have increased, so has the frequency with which guns were involved in those incidents.

In 2015, there were seven fatal police shootings in B.C. That was up from five the previous year, two in 2013, four in 2012, five in 2011, three in 2010, and seven in 2009.

Six of those seven shootings in 2015 involved the RCMP. That compares to two during each of the years 2014, 2013, and 2012, and four in 2011, three in 2010, and five in 2009. Fatal RCMP shootings were geographically dispersed across the province. One exception is Surrey, where RCMP officers have shot and killed seven people since 2009.

Josh Paterson, executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said that, to an extent, the data simply speaks for itself.

“These numbers suggest a doubling of police-involved deaths in the last three years in B.C.,” Paterson told the Straight. “The number of people shot and killed by the RCMP have risen to the highest level in over 10 years. While these numbers don’t allow us to draw a conclusion as to why this is happening, they raise an alarm and require us to ask hard questions.”

The B.C. RCMP and the B.C. Ministry of Justice refused to grant interviews.

Steve Schnitzer is the police-academy director for the Justice Institute of B.C. He called attention to courses that focus on crisis intervention and deescalation tactics and how best to respond to emergencies involving a mental-health component. Those lessons were made mandatory in 2012 following the 2007 death of Robert Dziekański at Vancouver International Airport and the subsequent Braidwood Commission of Inquiry.

“That is a policing standard now,” Schnitzer emphasized. “It [training] changed significantly after the Braidwood commission report came out.”

Statistics compiled by the coroner’s service suggest that there is still room for improvement. According to the organization’s annual report for 2010, just 40 percent of coroner’s recommendations related to police-involved deaths were adopted by the agencies involved in those incidents (2010 being the most recent year for which such statistics were included).

Doug King, a lawyer with Pivot Legal Society, said there is one factor that can make all the difference in how a police encounter plays out: time.

“There is a huge correlation—based on our work and what we see—with police-involved shootings and first responders,” he said.

King explained that when police officers fire their guns, the weapon is almost always discharged by an officer who was first on the scene and during the first few minutes of a confrontation.

“To me, that indicates there needs to be better training and a greater emphasis on what someone can do to contain an individual until help can arrive,” King said.

The death of Naverone Woods remains under investigation by the Independent Investigations Office of B.C., a public body created in 2012 to examine police incidents involving death or serious harm. Once that review is complete, the case will likely proceed to the coroner’s service.

King said that investigation is one of three he’ll be watching in 2016.

The second, he continued, is that of Phuong Na (Tony) Du, who was killed by Vancouver police at the corner of Knight Street and East 41st Avenue in November 2014. The third is Hudson Brooks, a 20-year-old male who was shot by Surrey RCMP in July 2015.

“These three shootings are all really problematic, from what we’ve heard, and really beg explanations,” King said.

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This article originally appeared in print and online at Straight.com on December 23, 2015.

Varied takes on marijuana turn Metro Vancouver into a patchwork of unpredictable enforcement

Sarah Bowman was handcuffed by Burnaby RCMP after smoking a joint.
Sarah Bowman was handcuffed by Burnaby RCMP after smoking a joint.

Late one evening last February, Sarah Bowman was on her way home when she was approached by two RCMP officers at the Edmonds SkyTrain Station in Burnaby.

She had just smoked a joint, Bowman recounted in a telephone interview, but she didn’t think she was in real trouble. Bowman explained that she had a doctor’s prescription for the drug and had obtained it with that document at a medicinal-marijuana dispensary in Vancouver.

“I saw police officers making the rounds, so I threw my joint away,” she said. “They walked straight up to me, a gentleman showed me his badge, grabbed my hands, and handcuffed me without me even responding.”

Bowman sat on the ground as officers searched her bags. They didn’t find any marijuana and eventually located both Bowman’s prescription for cannabis and her dispensary membership card. But the RCMP officers dismissed those documents as irrelevant.

They argued that under existing laws, medicinal marijuana must be obtained via mail order from a certified Health Canada supplier. That is accurate (with exceptions) and remains true today.

On November 13, Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau issued a mandate letter that stated the Ministry of Justice should “create a federal-provincial-territorial process that will lead to the legalization and regulation of marijuana”. But Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould (MP for Vancouver Granville) has yet to act on that directive.

Both the Justice Ministry and the RCMP refused to grant interviews. Cpl. Janelle Shoihet, a spokesperson for the B.C. RCMP, did however confirm officers are still enforcing cannabis laws including those that prohibit possession.

Dana Larsen is vice president of the Canadian Association of Medical Cannabis Dispensaries. He told the Straight that although the country remains in a period of transition on marijuana, municipal jurisdictions are policing cannabis as they see fit. Larsen suggested that situation has turned an urban region like Metro Vancouver into an unpredictable patchwork where some jurisdictions zealously enforce drug laws while others turn a blind eye to petty crimes like possession.

“In B.C., it totally depends on the mayor and the mayor and city council,” he said.

Bowman was travelling from Vancouver to New Westminster but stopped in Burnaby to visit her boyfriend. The Vancouver Police Department has long maintained it does not consider marijuana possession an enforcement priority. Meanwhile, in 2014, the New Westminster Police Department recorded a seven-year low for drug offences (going as far back as data is publicly available). But Burnaby is policed by the RCMP.

“They left me shaking uncontrollably and terrified,” said Bowman, who was eventually released without charges. “I used to think that police officers were there to help. Now, I’m paranoid. I’m afraid of police.”

Murray Rankin, opposition critic for justice and NDP MP for Victoria, told the Straightthat stories such as Bowman’s should serve as a warning. He said cities like Vancouver and New Westminster may not consider it a priority to go after someone with a joint but anecdotal evidence suggests the situation is different in jurisdictions covered by the RCMP.

“It’s quite a varied landscape out there,” he said. “We want a coherent position across the country.”

Rankin added that the situation on Vancouver Island is similar to that of Metro Vancouver. The City of Victoria (which has its own municipal police force) has tacitly accepted marijuana storefronts and is drafting regulations comparable to those Vancouver adopted last June. Meanwhile, Rankin continued, in Nanaimo (where the RCMP patrols the streets), marijuana is still getting people into trouble with law enforcement.

Barely an hour after Rankin’s call with the Straight, the RCMP issued a news releasestating they had executed search warrants at three marijuana dispensaries in Nanaimo.

Rankin acknowledged that legalizing marijuana—that is, creating a framework for sales similar to rules that cover tobacco—will be complicated and take time. But he argued it would not be hard for the federal government to decriminalize possession of small amounts of cannabis. Rankin noted the Liberals have discussed this as a likely first step, and he wondered when that will happen.

As few as seven percent of B.C. marijuana violations result in charges, according to a 2011 analysis published by the University of the Fraser Valley. But according to B.C. Justice Ministry numbers, from 2003 to 2012, police across the province recorded 173,157 offences related to cannabis.

Larsen emphasized that even without a charge, an apprehension such as the encounter with RCMP Bowman experienced is usually entered into a police database, where it can remain for years and create problems for someone when the apply for a job or travel to the United States.

Like Rankin, Larsen said he accepts that full legalization will likely be a long process. “But there is no reason to continue arresting people for possession,” he said. “Especially when those charges are likely going to be dropped in a few months anyways. What’s the point?”

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This article was originally published in print and online at Straight.com on December 2, 2015.

First Nations activist appeals Vancouver police dismissal of complaint

A review and dismissal of a complaint against the Vancouver police filed by Audrey Siegl includes many pages that are almost entirely redacted. Travis Lupick photo.
A review and dismissal of a complaint against the Vancouver police filed by Audrey Siegl includes many pages that are almost entirely redacted. Travis Lupick photo.

A prominent First Nations activist is appealing a decision by the Vancouver Police Department’s professional standards section (PSS) to dismiss a complaint she filed claiming abuse of authority and oppressive conduct toward a member of the public.

CBC doc Hold Your Fire reveals B.C. police shot and killed 28 people experiencing a mental-health crisis

A new documentary scheduled to air on CBC examines a number of deaths involving police, including that of Paul Boyd (left), a Vancouver animator who was shot and killed in 2007.
A new documentary scheduled to air on CBC examines a number of deaths involving police, including that of Paul Boyd (left), a Vancouver animator who was shot and killed in 2007.

Research behind a forthcoming CBC Television documentary includes new data on Vancouver police encounters with people experiencing a mental-health crisis. It suggests despite progressive training, many incidents still end with an officer deploying lethal force.

For the period 2004 to 2014, investigative journalists Helen Slinger and Yvette Brend analyzed hundreds of coroners’ reports from jurisdictions across Canada.

In British Columbia, they found evidence police or RCMP officers shot 28 people who were experiencing a mental-health crisis, Slinger revealed in a telephone interview. That was out of 72 such incidents for the country as a whole.

The filmmaker added that according to a “very conservative estimate”, nearly 40 percent of all fatal police shootings in Canada involved either a person with a mental illness or an individual experiencing a mental-health crisis.

Slinger noted distinct themes emerged in those coroners’ reports.

The first was that when a police officer did fire a weapon, that usually happened almost immediately after they encountered a person in distress. The second was that training could be clearly traced to make a notable difference in outcomes.

“It comes down to what happens before police arrive at the scene,” she said. “If you are trained to approach with a command and control attitude, that could very likely backfire with someone in mental distress.”

The documentary is called Hold Your Fire. It was produced by Bountiful Films and is scheduled to debut on CBC Television as part of the network’s Firsthand program on Thursday, October 22.

The hour-long film looks at a number of police-involved deaths across the country. Those include the case of Sammy Yatim, who was shot by Toronto police in 2013, and Paul Boyd, a Vancouver animator who police shot and killed in 2007.

With video footage of those deaths plus interviews with family members, Hold Your Firemakes the case that neither young man needed to die.

“The police were the cause of the violence that night,” Boyd’s father says in the film.

Slinger’s findings mirror those of the Georgia Straight’s own analysis for British Columbia.

In February 2015, the Straight published a review of more than 120 coroners’ reports that dated from 2007 to 2014.

During that period, it was found there were 99 incidents where someone died in the custody of the RCMP or police.

Of those cases, the Straight determined 17 deaths involved a mental-health issue, 59 involved substance abuse, and at least 13 involved both drugs and a mental-health component. (The Straight’s analysis differed from Slinger’s in a number of ways. For example, in addition to looking at cases involving a mental illness, it also included situations where a person struggled with a serious addiction issue.)

Again echoing Slinger’s findings, the Straight’s investigation revealed that the first few minutes or even seconds of an encounter often meant the difference between life and death.

It’s those brief windows that Slinger focuses on in her documentary.

“We started out looking for that moment, asking, ‘how do you pull back?’” she said. “And what I felt was really obvious is it is how the particular unit goes to that call that makes all the difference.”

Slinger said if there is one message she hopes people take from her documentary, it is that police officers need to slow down when responding to an individual experiencing a mental-health crisis.

Hold Your Fire presents tangible lessons for how that can be accomplished without significantly adding to the risks that police officers face on the job.

While Slinger described the Vancouver Police Department as a force where there is “still lots of room for improvement”, she also said it stands “among the most progressive police forces in the country in terms of their programs for people with mental illness”.

She suggested what’s at play within the VPD and other departments across Canada is a sort of competition between old and new schools of police training.

For example, the documentary explains that in North America, many departments train officers to respond with lethal force if a person perceived to be a threat moves within 20 feet of an officer. That lesson, which can be engrained to a point where it can play out almost as a muscle reflex, can come into conflict with training for how one can de-escalate a potentially violent situation without using lethal force.

“Vancouver has kept moving in that direction with a number of programs that are very progressive,” she said. “I think it just hasn’t made its way through the entire force yet. But I do think things are changing.”

In 2014, Vancouver police recorded an all-time high for apprehensions it made under the Mental Health Act, a law that permits officers to detain individuals deemed to have a mental disorder and to pose a threat to themselves or others. Officers apprehended 3,010 people under the act, a number that has increased each year, up from 2,278 in 2009.

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This article was originally published online at Straight.com on October 6, 2015.

RCMP record reveals a long list of calls to Kinder Morgan properties in Burnaby

RCMP officers drag an opponent of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline project away from a November 2014 demonstration atop Burnaby Mountain. Jackie Dives photo.
RCMP officers drag an opponent of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline project away from a November 2014 demonstration atop Burnaby Mountain. Jackie Dives photo.

How much time does the Burnaby RCMP spend policing Kinder Morgan properties?

It’s a question politicians are asking again after RCMP records obtained by the Georgia Straight shed some light on how many calls the force receives in relation to the pipeline company.

“There are a whole lot of calls in 2014 and 2015, more so than other years,” said Burnaby city councillor Sav Dhaliwal. “I think that is a result of activity relating to the expansion project. That has brought Kinder Morgan into the public arena.”

Dhaliwal was referring to the company’s plans to twin an existing pipeline that carries heavy crude oil from Alberta to a port in Burnaby. Last November, the RMCP arrested dozens of people when they refused to leave a protest on Burnaby Mountain that aimed to disrupt survey work Kinger Morgan was conducting in the area.

Those sorts of heightened tensions around environmental concerns are driving the increased volume in calls, Dhaliwal suggested.

“The last couple of years, the activity just suddenly picked up,” he continued. “I think Kinder Morgan bears the responsibility for any additional activity for the RCMP on the financial side of it.”

RCMP data supplied in response to a freedom of information request provides basic details for 53 calls the force received in relation to Kinder Morgan’s Burnaby Mountain facilities and the company’s Westridge Marine Terminal from 2010 to March 2015. However, the record is not complete and the actual number of calls the RCMP received could be much higher.

The RCMP withheld information on an unknown number of calls citing sections of the Access to Information Act. Those pertain to disclosures of information obtained or prepared in the investigation of a crime or enforcement of the law.

In a brief telephone interview, Burnaby RCMP Cpl. Daniela Panesar declined to discuss specifics. The spokesperson for the force clarified that the list displays calls to police and does not state whether any call resulted in an officer or officers being dispatched. Panesar also declined to provide any context or opinion indicating whether the volume of calls to Kinder Morgan facilities was in any way atypical.

Documentary filmmaker David Lavallee has a rough idea how much time went into each of those 53 calls.

In a telephone interview, he recounted one afternoon last November when he recorded video of Kinder Morgan’s Westridge Marine Terminal using an unmanned aerial vehicle. Lavallee is producing a film about unconventional energy reserves and that terminal is a key transit point for bitumen mined in Alberta.

Two days after filming, Lavallee told the Straight he received a voicemail message from the RCMP. Two weeks after that, two community RCMP officers knocked on his door and left a business card while he was out.

In a subsequent telephone call with a third officer, RCMP national security investigatorGregory Haasdyk, Lavallee asked how authorities came to know of his interests in energy infrastructure.

“He [Haasdyk] said, ‘We got a call, a complaint, from Kinder Morgan, who had called in your [licence] plate,” Lavallee said.

In a recording of that conversation, Haasdyk maintains a friendly tone and answers Lavallee’s questions.

“Kinder Morgan does make a lot of complaints,” Haasdyk says. “And if we don’t know who they are complaining against then, yes, we do have to go and find that out.”

After reviewing the RCMP record obtained by the Straight, Lavallee noted he could not find his own encounters with the RCMP listed there. Another incident missing from the document is a March 6 call the RCMP received about an SFU professor named Tim Takaro. On that date, Takaro caught the attention of a Kinder Morgan security guard by taking a photograph of the Burnaby Mountain property. Five days later, he too received acall from the RCMP.

Lavallee said those two missing dates make him suspect the actual number of calls the RCMP fields in relation to Kinder Morgan is much higher than 53.

“Certainly, in my case, it was an egregious waste of taxpayer dollars,” he added.

In a telephone interview, Kinder Morgan spokesperson Ali Hounsell said any call the company makes to the RCMP is a matter of public safety.

“When our security folks do report something, it is because there is something suspicious,” she emphasized.

Hounsell noted Kinder Morgan’s private guards will engage a person before calling police. She cited a recent encounter with a CBC National News crew where guards asked journalist Chris Brown why the group was filming adjacent to company property.

“Those are normal conversations that happen, I would say quite regularly,” Hounsell said. “It’s just when it’s something unusual that it does get reported to police.”

Meanwhile, a number of other RCMP documents have come to light in recent years that use dramatic language to describe environmentalists and First Nations people.

“There is a high probability that we could see flash mobs, round dances and blockades become much less compliant to laws,” reads an RCMP document dated December 2012. “The escalation of violence is ever near.”

A 2014 RCMP intelligence assessment similarly warns that in British Columbia, “there is a coalition of like-minded violent extremists who are planning criminal actions to prevent the construction of the pipeline.”

B.C.’s lone Green party MLA, Andrew Weaver, described the sort of government surveillance revealed in those documents as “carried away”.

On the RCMP call list obtained by the Straight, he asked the same questions posed by Dhaliwal.

“I don’t want to second guess it [the RCMP] but it does seem like a lot,” Weaver said. “It really begs the question: why? Why were the RCMP being called so many times? What for? What could possibly warrant it?”

He also asked if citizens were getting in trouble for simply wandering to close too a fence, and warned that could constitute an infringement on their civil liberties.

Weaver revealed such an incident happened to him, though under different circumstances. He recounted travelling Europe for a summer with a friend named Tony.

“Tony saw this amazing power plant, which was so archaic that he wanted to take a picture of it,” Weaver recounted. “So he took out his camera to take a picture. And security guards came running up with sub-machine guns.”

“But this was in East Germany,” Weaver said with a laugh. “I would have loved for it to have been 1984 but it was 1982. So this is the direction we are heading.”

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This article was originally published online at Straight.com on October 3, 2015.

2015 stats for marijuana offences show police tactics changed before Vancouver’s dispensary boom

One of Vancouver's largest dispensary operators, Don Briere of Weeds Glass and Gifts, has said he welcomes the city's proposed regulations and hopes they will help bring the industry into the light. Travis Lupick photo.
One of Vancouver’s largest dispensary operators, Don Briere of Weeds Glass and Gifts, has said he welcomes the city’s proposed regulations and hopes they will help bring the industry into the light. Travis Lupick photo.

Over the last several years, the number of medicinal marijuana dispensaries operating in Vancouver has ballooned, from fewer than 20 in 2012 to more than 100 today.

That might have people wondering how police enforcement of marijuana laws has changed during that time, especially since the City of Vancouver lent a great deal of legitimacy to dispensaries when it proposed a legal framework for marijuana sales last April.

As the VPD turned a blind eye to over-the-counter marijuana sales, one might expect the department’s overall numbers for cannabis offences experienced a sharp decline.

But it turns out VPD enforcement numbers have barely changed at all.

During the first six months of 2015, the VPD registered 473 cannabis offences. Multiply that number by two and one can very roughly project 946 for the year.

That compares to 1,048 marijuana offences in 2013 and 864 in 2012.

This means the VPD is on track to record a very average number of marijuana offences this year, despite the proliferation of dispensaries likely giving many people the perception Vancouver police tactics have shifted.

(Numbers for 2015 were obtained via a freedom of information request. The Straightrequested statistics for 2014, but the VPD withheld that data citing a section of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection Act that allows a public body to refuse disclosure of information previously scheduled for release within 60 days.)

In a telephone interview, the Straight asked Sgt. Const. Brian Montague why it looks like the VPD is continuing to bust people for marijuana while letting dispensaries go about their business.

“The numbers might seem a little misleading until you explain the fact these aren’t arrests, they are not charges; they are criminal offences,” he said. “In the vast majority of cases where we come across cannabis, there isn’t a charge for cannabis recommended.”

When an officer does catch somebody smoking a joint, Montague said the most likely outcome would be for them to destroy the drugs but otherwise let that citizen go about their day. The encounter still goes into a police database as a marijuana offence (along with the offender’s name and related information) but that’s usually where the matter ends.

Montague explained what statistics for 2015 and recent years actually show is that the VPD changed its enforcement strategies on marijuana long before the dispensaries started showing up at the rate they are today.

“We ask, is a recommendation of criminal charges proportionate to the offence that is being committed?” he continued. “And a lot of times, the answer to that is no.”

On September 17, the Vancouver police board formally received a complaint regarding the department’s alleged failure to enforce drug laws against storefronts selling marijuana.

Ahead of that meeting, the VPD prepared a written response to those allegations.

“In the case of dispensaries, the VPD must consider evolving community standards,” it reads. “The City’s decision to create a regulatory framework rather than using its bylaws to shut down dispensaries; the prioritization of police resources when weighed against other more serious drug offences occurring in Vancouver, and the costs and benefits of taking enforcement action against marihuana dispensaries. As a result, the Chief Constable has decided that such actions will only be taken when there are overt public safety concerns present.”

It’s noted there that since 2013, the VPD has executed 11 search warrants against dispensaries when complaints against those locations were filed and found to have merit.

The police board dismissed the September 17 complaint.

After reviewing the data for 2015, Kirk Tousaw, a B.C. lawyer who specializes in drug law, similarly said it’s his experience that in Vancouver, very few of those offences proceed to see people charged with a crime.

“It is a maintenance of the status quo,” he said. “Enforcement of simple [marijuana] possession does not appear to be a high priority.”

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This article was originally published online at Straight.com on October 1, 2015.

Red tape blocks B.C. health officials’ proposals for dealing with fentanyl overdoses

Naloxone kits that are used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose area vailable at 88 health-care sites around B.C. Toward the Heart photo.
Naloxone kits that are used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose area vailable at 88 health-care sites around B.C. Toward the Heart photo.

Provincial health officials are discussing a variety of interventions that could be deployed in response to a recent surge in overdoses linked to the synthetic opioid fentanyl. However, several of those ideas remain blocked by legal or bureaucratic challenges.

During an August 11 conference call, Jane Buxton, harm-reduction lead for the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, said one suggestion is to open drug “checking” sites where people could bring illicit narcotics to be analyzed without fear of police persecution.

“The possibility of testing street drugs, that is something that would be of value,” Buxton said. “Currently, there is no way to do that in the legal framework that we have and there is no test available.” (A test for fentanyl does exist but it requires specialized equipment and a trained technician.)

On August 5, the Straight reported that the Vancouver Police Department would not oppose such drug-testing.

Joining Buxton on the call was deputy provincial health officer Bonnie Henry. She said she would like naloxone, a drug used to counter opioid overdoses, made available without a prescription in B.C. That decision has to be made by Health Canada, she noted, and though it is being discussed, it is unlikely to come soon.

Although ambulances in B.C. are equipped with naloxone kits, police and RCMP officers still respond to calls without them, Henry added. In a subsequent telephone interview, she explained that there is concern about officers carrying needles and the risks those can pose. In the United States, some police departments equip their officers with an intranasal form of naloxone, but that has not been approved in Canada.

Buxton said she would also like to see an expansion of harm-reduction services in B.C. But again, she noted, there are barriers such as opposition from the federal Conservative government.

Buxton maintained the province is advancing these ideas, especially in the case of naloxone. But she conceded that it is “frustrating”.

According to an August 11 warning issued by the B.C. Coroners’ Service, so far in 2015 it has detected fentanyl in 66 overdose deaths. That’s up from 13 in 2012 and on track to surpass the 90 seen in 2013.

This article originally appeared in print and online at Straight.com on August 12, 2015.

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After five-year climb, Vancouver police see small drop in Mental Health Act detentions

In September 2013, Vancouver police chief Jim Chu and Mayor Gregor Robertson issued recommendations to address what they say is a growing crisis of severe, untreated mental illness. Yolande Cole photo.
In September 2013, Vancouver police chief Jim Chu and Mayor Gregor Robertson issued recommendations to address what they say is a growing crisis of severe, untreated mental illness. Yolande Cole photo.

During the first half of 2015, the Vancouver Police Department saw a slight decline in the number of apprehensions its officers made under the B.C. Mental Health Act.