Officer accused of bribery was whistleblower: lawyer
Court hears about surveillance conducted on woman on behalf of ex-boyfriend
The civil lawyer for a woman allegedly stalked by police in a suspected bribery case said one of the accused was the “whistleblower” who led to the prosecution.
Clive Llewellyn, who acted for Akele Taylor during a custody dispute with her former boyfriend, Kenneth Carter, said Anthony Braile approached them in 2014 to reveal she’d been under surveillance.
Llewellyn said he intervened when Braile attempted to talk to Taylor, and they eventually met in a bar across from the lawyer’s office in August 2014.
“Mr. Braile then spent about two hours giving me a story about everything that had gone on,” Llewellyn told the Court of Queen’s Bench trial of Braile and two suspended officers.
Braile revealed that individuals had been “following her, putting GPS on her vehicle, bugging her home,” the lawyer said.
Braile, Bryan Morton and Bradford McNish each face charges of bribery and unlawfully using a police computer system. Braile faces an additional charge of criminal harassment and McNish an extra allegation of breach of trust by a public officer, while Morton faces both additional accusations. The charges stem from incidents between Aug. 11, 2012, and 2015.
The three are accused of being paid by former Calgary police officer Steve Walton to investigate Taylor on behalf of Carter during their child custody battle.
Llewellyn testified that Braile said he believed Taylor was being investigated for criminal activity.
“He was advised that Akele was a bad person, a drug user and a prostitute,” he said.
“He said that he had investigated her, had spent approximately a year … following Akele Taylor.”
But Braile indicated in the bar meeting and a subsequent get-together at the lawyer’s office that he determined the information about her was false.
“He had come to the conclusion that she hadn’t done anything bad and he felt bad about it,” Llewellyn said.
Llewellyn said he had a junior lawyer eventually obtain a sworn affidavit from Braile detailing his allegations, which were to be used in a lawsuit he was going to file on Taylor’s behalf against the police and Carter.
The admissibility of that affidavit is being challenged by Braile’s lawyer, Pat Fagan, who may also argue the entire investigation into his cli- ent was an abuse of process and his prosecution should be stayed.
Llewellyn said the lawsuit, which was never filed, was not going to name Braile as a defendant.
“We were never going to sue (him), he was the whistleblower,” he told Crown prosecutor Julie Snowdon.
Meanwhile, court heard about some of the surveillance conducted on Taylor on behalf of her exboyfriend.
Robinson Wilson, a security consultant and former member of the Calgary Police Service, said he was hired by Walton to help observe her.
“I was told that Mr. Walton’s client and Ms. Taylor were involved in a custody dispute,” Wilson said.
“The client wanted to obtain some evidence to discredit her for the purpose of the custody hearing .”
Wilson reviewed several emails he sent in which he described the observations made by the surveillance teams, which sometimes included Braile and McNish, in August 2012.
In one, he described Taylor using “a number of basic counter-surveillance tactics when approaching (her home) in an unsuccessful attempt to thwart anyone attempting to identify her place of residence.”
Carter, Walton and Walton’s wife, Heather, are scheduled to stand trial in September.