Edmonton Police Watch

Copyright Southam Publications Inc. Jun 27, 2001

I would like to respond to the allegations of Edmonton Police Association (EPA) president Peter Ratcliff, that officers are victims of media bias against them. (”Officers victims of yellow journalism,” Letters, June 23.)

In my experience as a lawyer in general practice the majority of police officers perform their duties well, but sometimes they make mistakes. That’s human.

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Copyright Southam Publications Inc. Jun 12, 2001

Solicitor General Heather Forsyth would do the public a big service if she revised a section of the Police Act dealing with misconduct by officers.

Fortunately, misconduct by police officers is infrequent. But the public is ill-served by a section of the act which basically lets officers off the hook if they resign before or during an investigation into misconduct.

If an officer resigns before an investigation starts, the investigation is derailed. There is no public airing of the evidence and no ruling whether police are at fault. This is frustrating and unfair to the individual citizen who launched the complaint and unfair to the public concerned about how far their police force can go with their special powers in the pursuit of crime.

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Copyright Southam Publications Inc. Jun 10, 2001

An Edmonton police officer has escaped punishment for misconduct by resigning, says a provincial panel that hears complaints from the public about police conduct.

The Law Enforcement Review Board ruled that Const. Brent Lajeunesse used excessive force when he hit Todd Letcher, who he and his partner had pulled over in October 1996 on suspicion of impaired driving. The blow left Letcher with a broken nose.

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Copyright Southam Publications Inc. Jun 9, 2001

Klara Shvartsman felt some vindication after a police review board found two city police officers guilty of abusing their authority during the events that led to the closure of KAOS, her family’s controversial club.

The Law Enforcement Review Board, a quasi-judicial panel that hears public complaints about police conduct, found Supt. Mike Bradshaw had “engaged in misconduct” and “abused his authority as a police officer” during a 1997 meeting, where he told the West Edmonton Mall, the club’s landlord, and liquor-licensing authorities that Shvartsman was receiving financial backing from the Russian Mafia.

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