HIS VOICE ON SOME CALLS
Audio manipulated, union boss says
The head of Ottawa’s police union, Matt Skof, has acknowledged his voice is caught on tape in leaked phone conversations that are now the subject of a chief ’s complaint and an OPP investigation.
In a statement to this newspaper on Sunday morning, Skof said the voice is not always clear on the four recordings that have circulated online for nearly two weeks.
He also said he has “concerns about the accuracy of the context and content” of the recordings. However, he admitted that “some of them are indeed my voice,” but did not specify further.
Until now, Skof had denied it was him on the recordings, in which a man is heard speaking candidly about an apparent undercover police investigation, and in another call is heard making disparaging, unsubstantiated claims about Coun. Eli El-Chantiry, the head of Ottawa’s police board.
“I previously denied that my voice was on the recordings. At that time, inaccurate information was presented to me,” Skof said in his statement.
“For clarity I should point out that as the president of a labour organization I receive countless calls, raising any number of issues that involve my members’ employment relationship. These conversations are confidential, and privileged.
“Any leader of a labour organization will agree, I cannot perform my duties if there’s a concern about the privileged nature of conversations.
“The nature of this privilege is akin to the reporter’s protection of sources. The expectation of privilege goes to the heart of the work that we do.”
Skof was first approached for comment after we reviewed hundreds of email and text exchanges, and numerous recorded phone conversations between Skof and the person who is the original source of the four edited audio clips that have surfaced on social media.
Some of those clips were removed from YouTube following a third-party privacy complaint on Skof’s behalf, though they were later published on another website before once again appearing on YouTube.
In a previous statement Skof said the inflammatory content of the leaked recordings had “been purposefully manipulated and (is) therefore very inaccurate.”
The person who made the recordings — a civilian who does not work for the Ottawa police, nor any of its unions — met with a reporter for an analysis of phone records, text messages, and emails between the civilian and Skof.
The communications reviewed by the Citizen clearly established a link between the two parties. The civilian described the relationship with Skof as a friendship. The audio quality of the published recordings is, at times, poor and the tapes have been clearly edited so that only Skof ’s voice can be heard.
“My voice is taken out because I want to remain anonymous because I do fear retaliation,” said the civilian, who agreed to speak on the condition that they not be named because they fear reprisals.
El-Chantiry has strongly denied the allegations heard on the recordings, calling them baseless and slanderous. Since first publishing an article about the recordings last Monday, further efforts by the Citizen found no evidence to support the allegations made on the tapes. In fact, at least some of the information contained on the tapes, and specifically the allegations made against El-Chantiry, was described as inaccurate by a senior police official weeks before the tapes were made public.
Ottawa police Chief Charles Bordeleau announced last Monday that he’d asked the OPP to investigate the tapes, with a focus “directly on the origins of the recordings and the individuals involved.”
Bordeleau said it was “false information” on the tapes that in part prompted his call for an investigation.
The civilian who made the recordings said the information being shared by Skof on the calls, which were recorded and archived nearly a year ago, was at all times believed to be accurate and truthful information.
In a previous statement, Skof said he had never been “informed by anyone, nor have I advised anyone, that Coun. El-Chantiry has been involved in any” of the activity alleged on the tapes.
But the civilian said Skof ’s rank, his access to information, and the protracted conversation about ElChantiry, which spanned dozens of phone conversations over several months, led the civilian to believe the information shared was true.
“I have no reason to believe that it was not absolutely true,” the civilian said, adding that the two had an in-person conversation “that still led me to believe that everything that (Skof ) told me was absolutely true.”
Lawyer Ronald Caza, who represents El-Chantiry, called the allegations on the leaked recordings “serious and unfounded.”
“To the contrary,” Caza continued, “Coun. El-Chantiry has vehemently denied any suggestion that he has ever been remotely involved” in any of the activity alleged in the recordings.
Bordeleau, in a prepared statement at the outset of last week’s Police Services Board meeting, said the police service “has not and is not conducting any investigation involving the Ottawa Police Services Board chair Coun. Eli ElChantiry.”
Last Thursday, OPP Staff-Sgt. Carolle Dionne confirmed the provincial police had received a request “to investigate the leaked audio tapes” and that the investigation was assigned to the professional standards bureau. Dionne could not say whether the scope of the investigation would be criminal- or conduct-related.
Before the leak of the tapes, the civilian claims to have brought concerns about the recordings and their contents — and specifically allegations about El-Chantiry — to the attention of senior officials of both OPS and OPP.
“I have no information with respect to that,” Bordeleau said when asked by a reporter whether Ottawa police had received the recordings before they were leaked online.
“I will let the OPP conduct their independent investigation in order to gather all the facts and then to make a determination whether there are any conduct issues involving any of the Ottawa police service members,” Bordeleau said.
The civilian said they sent an email outlining concerns about the tapes to senior OPP officers on June 27.
The civilian said the OPP officer responded by saying the provincial police could not investigate unless requested by OPS brass, which has since unfolded in the form of Bordeleau’s complaint.
Around the same time, in late June, the civilian spoke with a senior officer in the OPS chain of command who had apparently looked into the comments made on one of the tapes, which the civilian provided to Ottawa police.
“Thank you for your cooperation in this matter,” the senior Ottawa officer wrote on July 4.
“I have tracked down and spoken directly to persons involved in the distorted conversation provided. I can say categorically that the interpretation of the conversation is not accurate.”
(The Citizen has identified the senior officer and approached him for comment, but the officer is on annual leave and did not reply.)
The civilian said Skof was contacted, before the complaint was brought to Ottawa police, to make sure the information he had shared was accurate. In the last email and text exchange, between May and June, the civilian confronted Skof in writing, saying: “I was told this was all a lie from the beginning.”
The civilian said in an interview they were never actually told the information about El-Chantiry wasalie.
Instead, the civilian said the email was sent to Skof because, “I was looking for him to either retract or confirm.” The civilian said this was done before bringing the allegations to the attention of the chief.
“I didn’t doubt what he was saying,” the civilian said. “But I thought in fairness because I was going to speak with Bordeleau about it, I gave (Skof ) an opportunity in very plain language to retract anything, and he did not.”
The civilian said Skof never replied.
El-Chantiry’s lawyer said the firm is “taking the necessary measures directly with the relevant authorities at YouTube” over the continued presence of the leaked recordings on the video-sharing site.
The civilian said the fact that their calls with Skof were recorded was not unusual. The civilian said all calls to their cellphone are automatically recorded and archived.
While the civilian recorded the calls, the civilian is not the one who published them online. The tapes were published by Paul Manning, a suspended Hamilton police officer, after the civilian provided Manning with the tapes to obtain his “professional opinion” on their contents. Manning and the civilian source have both said Manning was not instructed to release the tapes.
In a letter sent by El-Chantiry’s lawyer last week to the Citizen, the poster of the recordings was not named, but was alleged to have “illfounded” and “self-serving ” motives for posting the audio.
However, Manning said he was motivated to release the recordings because of his disdain for “police officers not behaving properly.”
Manning has a high-profile history of speaking out against alleged police corruption, and is currently involved in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the Hamilton police force, in which he makes numerous allegations of police malfeasance and corruption. He has been suspended from the Hamilton force since March 3, 2015.
Caza’s law firm, which also represents Bordeleau and the OPS, sent Manning a cease-and-desist order this week in relation to the most recently published recording, which does not involve El-Chantiry.
In communication with Manning, Caza said the recording “has significant privacy implications for the Ottawa Police Service and disparages senior executive members, a retired sworn member, support staff, and Chief Charles Bordeleau. The content of this recording is slanderous, one-sided, unjustly portrays a negative and inaccurate image of the mentioned individuals, and vilifies the Ottawa Police Service as a whole.
“Your behaviour has demonstrated a disregard for the integrity of the Ottawa Police Service, its members and, ultimately, for the safety and security of the Ottawa community. Your actions may also attract civil liability and significant damages.”
The firm asked Manning to immediately remove the audio clip, and to stop circulating any further recordings that may infringe privacy or “negatively impact” OPS members. The clip has since been removed.