‘EXTREME DECEPTION’
RCMP CONDUCTED AN ‘ELABORATE’ UNDERCOVER STING ON A MAN SUSPECTED OF VANDALISM AND THREATS
One day in the fall of 2016, at a gym in Burnaby, B.C., a stranger joined Nilakshan Selvanayagam in the hot tub.
The stranger introduced himself as Vijay, a successful businessman from out of town looking to open a restaurant. Selvanayagam, who was 26 and unemployed, thought Vijay seemed like a nice guy, and when he suggested they exchange numbers Selvanayagam didn’t hesitate.
Over the next few weeks Vijay took him out for fancy meals and had an associate teach him how to scout investment properties. In fact, Vijay wasn’t interested in working with Selvanayagam at all — he was an undercover RCMP officer, and he was looking for a confession.
That summer, someone had twice gone to the Burnaby RCMP detachment, vandalized parked cars and left behind notes threatening to shoot officers with a Glock pistol.
Investigators zeroed in on Selvanayagam — a troubled man with a history of making threats — and sent in officers to befriend him in the hopes of getting him to talk about his crimes. It worked, and in July 2017 Selvanayagam pleaded guilty to mischief and uttering threats.
Looking back on the covert operation — which until now has gone unreported — Selvanayagam acknowledges what he did was wrong. But he and his lawyer, Mike Bozic, question the operation that followed, which in their view resembled a Mr. Big sting — a controversial technique usually reserved for murder cases wherein undercover officers recruit a suspect into a fictitious criminal organization, win over his trust and then set up a meeting with the group’s boss designed to get the suspect to talk about his crimes.
Some legal experts said while this wasn’t a traditional Mr. Big operation, the response seemed excessive, especially considering Selvanayagam’s sentence — two years of probation.
In a statement to the National Post, B.C. RCMP Supt. Chuck McDonald said the operation was necessary because Selvanayagam’s threats were escalating. McDonald declined to say how much the RCMP spent on the effort, but insisted it wasn’t close to the cost of a Mr. Big sting.
“This was a small-scale operation ... which resulted in a suspect who had threatened the lives of police officers and civilians being charged and brought to justice.”
But Bozic said he’s troubled undercover officers would offer money, work and friendship to a man “struggling in life.”
“The state using this extreme level of deception is the kind of activity we would expect from security services in a non-democratic society.”
‘A LOT OF BULLETS’
It all started on the morning of Aug. 12, 2016, when an RCMP officer arrived at the Burnaby detachment and discovered that an unmarked police SUV had been scratched along the passenger side.
A note written in red ink and left on the windshield read: “I keyed your car cause two corporals in your detachment made me angry and put me in a cell before. … I also came here with a tactical bulletproof vest and a Glock 43 just in case I got caught.”
The following month, similar damage was done to an RCMP employee’s personal vehicle. Whoever was responsible left a more explicit note — saying they were prepared to shoot officers in the face.
“If your officers ever f— with me I will be ready to spray a lot of bullets at your members.”
Police suspected Selvanayagam based on surveillance footage from the area and on their earlier encounters with him.
According to unsealed court documents obtained by the Post, he had sent “veiled threatening Facebook messages” to a former teacher in July 2010 and a “borderline obsessive” email to Christy Clark, then premier of B.C., in May 2011. Both incidents resulted in warnings from police. (Selvanayagam says he merely wanted Clark, who had just been sworn in, to answer questions about her platform).
Things got more serious in December 2011 when a suicidal Selvanayagam barricaded himself in his home and told police he had a loaded gun. He urged police to shoot him, warning he would otherwise shoot them.
It ended peacefully and police took him in under the mental health act. No weapon was found and no charges were filed.
A couple of weeks later, he was at it again — sending threatening messages to a psychiatrist who had assessed him and to an RCMP media relations officer. This time, he was convicted of uttering threats and received three years’ probation.
What really set Selvanayagam on a tear against police was their response to a domestic dispute at his parents’ home, where he lives with a brother, in November 2015. During a search of his room, police found a kitchen knife on a dresser and arrested him for breaching the terms of his probation.
Though the charge was stayed, Selvanayagam couldn’t stop seething. He filed a complaint against police, but it went nowhere.
That led him to strike out against the detachment. In May 2016, he smashed the window of a marked police pickup using a sparkplug. He then returned in the summer and keyed the two vehicles and left behind the threatening notes.
“I was pissed,” he recalled.
TIGHT ON CASH
The use of undercover officers to extract confessions has had mixed success. In one Ontario murder case, a Peel Region officer posed as a spiritual adviser to get confessions. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association argued such tactics should “shock the conscience” of Canadians, but the Ontario Court of Appeal let the convictions stand.
RCMP officers in Nova Scotia posed as members of a motorcycle gang to get a confession from a woman suspected of being an accessory to murder, but a judge threw out the confession, saying the tactics were an “abuse of process.” An appeal court upheld that ruling.
“Vijay,” the undercover investigator who joined Selvanayagam in the hot tub on Oct. 19, 2016, said he was from Oregon and planning to open a restaurant in Vancouver.
Selvanayagam told Vijay he worked at the airport. In reality, he had been laid off months earlier as an airport dispatcher during a company takeover.
A few days later, Vijay invited Selvanayagam and his then-girlfriend to the Cactus Club in downtown Vancouver. Over dinner, Vijay said he was looking to buy a home and talked about not liking the cops because they always pulled him over, Selvanayagam recalled. According to court records, Selvanayagam shared his feeling that he’d been mistreated by police.
They met again days later at an Earls restaurant. Selvanayagam told Vijay he was tight on cash as he’d lost his airport job, records say.
Over lunch, the two talked about work, girlfriends, U.S. politics, gun policy, and their views on police.
During their next meeting, at the trendy Nightingale restaurant in downtown Vancouver, Vijay was accompanied by another undercover officer, Jamie, who he identified as a business partner and real estate agent.
Jamie invited Selvanayagam to join him the next day to look at potential investment properties. He offered to pay him a stipend and Selvanayagam “excitedly” accepted.
The pair toured several homes in Jamie’s BMW. Jamie confided that, like Vijay, he wasn’t fond of police, Selvanayagam recalled. Records say Selvanayagam opened up about his arrest over the knife and how he had sent a threatening email to the officer who arrested him.
At the end of the day, Jamie paid Selvanayagam $100 for his help.
The pair picked up Vijay the next day so they could close a deal on a property. While Jamie drove, he made a call on his cellphone. Suddenly, a Burnaby RCMP officer pulled him over and gave him a ticket — all part of a staged encounter.
Jamie pretended to get into an argument with the officer. Vijay suggested they return to his hotel to cool down.
Inside, they ordered room service and drank beer, Selvanayagam recalled.
Selvanayagam told Jamie he had a story to “make him feel better,” according to records. He disclosed he had smashed the window of a police pickup earlier that year.
Vijay, Selvanayagam recalled, said he had a police friend who helped him do background checks on people he worked with. Would it be OK if he did one on him? Sure, Selvanayagam said.
(RCMP say the undercover officer brought up the friend in the “spur of the moment” after Selvanayagam volunteered information of which they were unaware.)
Confronted with the suspicion he was behind the threatening notes, Selvanayagam admitted it.
A few days later, police arrested him at a SkyTrain station.
In July 2017, Selvanayagam pleaded guilty to mischief and uttering threats. During sentencing, a Crown prosecutor told the judge the threats couldn’t be laughed off — not when terrorism is in the “forefront of a lot of people’s minds.”
B.C. Provincial Court Judge Joseph Galati agreed.
“Maybe you are not the danger that you have presented yourself as being, but who knows?” the judge said.
‘MR. BIG’ RULES
In 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada laid out new rules for Mr. Big operations. While the top court did not ban their use, it placed a burden on the Crown to show that confessions were reliable and not overshadowed by inducements, threats or preying on suspects’ vulnerabilities.
Lisa Dufraimont, York University law professor, said the tactics used against Selvanayagam were not as coercive as a traditional Mr. Big sting and the new rules likely would not apply in this case. That said, the operation seemed “rather elaborate for an offence of this type.” Further, Selvanayagam’s “markers of vulnerability” should have given police pause, she said, referring to his suicidal past.
Terry Coleman, a former municipal police chief in Saskatchewan who has done extensive research on police interactions with people with mental illness, said he doesn’t understand why RCMP didn’t bring in Selvanayagam for a conventional interview.
“I don’t think I’d have gone as sophisticated as they did here,” he said, adding that undercover operations are used when “all else has failed.”
Tim Moore, a psychology professor at York University who has criticized Mr. Big operations, said he is willing to give RCMP the benefit of the doubt.
“Given what they knew of his history, it is understandable (to me) that there was a risk of significant mayhem,” he wrote in an email. That said, if Mr. Big-like operations proliferate in nonmurder cases, “a cost-benefit challenge would make a lot of sense.”
Bozic, Selvanayagam’s lawyer, said he wonders how such police deception affects an offender’s ability to relate to authorities later in life.
“I don’t know if (Selvanayagam) will ever know who to trust,” he said.
Selvanayagam, who is seeing a therapist for anger management and landed a job as a big-rig driver, said being “stabbed in the back” by police “traumatized” him.
Asked if threatening to shoot officers might not be traumatic for them, Selvanayagam didn’t disagree, but he insisted RCMP could have used another tactic.
“What I did was wrong, but I think going after someone who’s vulnerable … that’s just bullshit,” he said.
“I’m not trying to play the victim here.”
THIS WAS A SMALL-SCALE OPERATION ... WHICH RESULTED IN A SUSPECT WHO HAD THREATENED THE LIVES OF POLICE OFFICERS AND CIVILIANS BEING CHARGED AND BROUGHT TO JUSTICE.”
— B.C. RCMP SUPT. CHUCK MCDONALD IN STATEMENT TO THE POST