Police brass killing transparency despite words to contrary
Grievance-arbitration meeting ordered closed despite complainant wanting it open
The Calgary Police Service’s much-touted culture of transparency and accountability took another bullet Wednesday.
After deliberations, a police grievance arbitration hearing was closed to the media, despite the complainant not objecting to the hearing being open.
David Jones, an Edmonton lawyer and chartered arbitrator, ruled “the press is not allowed. It’s a private hearing.
“Taking into account the various factors, I exercise my discretion not to open the hearing,” said Jones, who added that his written decision would be publicly released in the future.
Counsel for the Calgary Police Service and the City of Calgary, Rebecca Andersen, argued against the hearing being open to the media, while Tamara Friesen, the lawyer for the Calgary Police Association, argued in favour of allowing the media to report on the proceedings.
That in itself speaks volumes. There is no legitimate reason to keep the process secret if the person who is complaining about how they were treated wants an open hearing.
Jones even banned reporting the legal arguments made Wednesday afternoon.
If sunlight is the best disinfectant, then this process is a cesspool in a black hole.
CPA president Les Kaminski said police service executive members have waxed poetic about the “new era of transparency and accountability” for the two years he’s been head of the police union.
“When the spotlight shone upon a flawed process, suddenly transparency and accountability don’t seem to be as important,” Kaminski said outside the hearing room at the Marriott hotel in downtown Calgary.
“If there’s nothing to hide, there should be full-on transparency.”
Clearly, however, there is something to hide.
“This would have been the perfect chance to be able to see how the process is failing the members,” said Kaminski. “Now, nobody is going to know the details.
“This person has been underneath this for two-and-a-half years.
“For a while she was destitute. She had no place to work. She literally had no office to work out of. She was given a project with no true goal. Any other person probably would have folded,” said Kaminski, who described the complainant as a trailblazer for women in the police service.
“I thought that there would be a clear picture painted finally of what the members are talking about when they talk about bad morale, about how it’s transparency from the bottom up and not from the top down,” said Kaminski, a former sergeant with the TAC team.
The Respect Matters human resources policy is supposed to be a non-punitive process.
“If you tell me that what happened to this member is nonpunitive, for two-and-a-half years to get spanked like this is very, very punitive,” added Kaminski.
In September, Sheila Ball, the CPS’s first civilian humanresources manager — brought in to implement reforms designed to improve a culture of bullying, harassment and gender discrimination — resigned after just eight months on the job. She told the CBC in September that the management style was like a “dictatorship” and it became clear that the executive didn’t really want to bring about change.
“The process cannot be weaponized,” said Kaminski.
“If people aren’t accountable for when they come out and make an allegation against another person, you can come out and ruin people’s careers with false allegations.”
As a result of how she was treated, “rumours spread like wildfire,” said Kaminski.
“She was removed from her job,” and not allowed to get her personal items out of her office for two years. “People made assumptions that there was some criminal wrongdoing happening. There was no voice for her. This was before it was even investigated. This was before she even responded to it. It spread through the service. People watched what happened. It was a non-punitive process that absolutely penalized this person … and there was no way for her to explain to anybody and it nearly destroyed her career.”
Kaminski says the police brass claim “what they did to her wasn’t punishment.”
Mike Nunn, communications manager for the CPS, said: “Our priority is looking after the welfare of our members and ensuring they feel comfortable going through the appropriate confidential channels to deal with internal matters. Any coverage relating to cases that have gone through those processes would be detrimental to people feeling comfortable coming forward and using them in the future.”
The bullets against transparency keep on flying at CPS. This is another bull’s-eye into its longdead corpse.
People made assumptions that there was some criminal wrongdoing happening. There was no voice for her.