Officer's penalty for sexual texts too lenient: complainant

The loss of 20 hours' pay for a Calgary police officer who sent sexual text messages to a woman seeking help on a domestic conflict case is too lenient and should be reviewed, a law enforcement watchdog panel heard Wednesday.

Roopa Wickson encountered Sgt. David Keagan in February 2021 when he was looking into a domestic complaint involving the woman's ex-husband.

Soon after that, she received text messages from Keagan propositioning her. She reported them to the officer's co-worker.

Calgary police Chief Mark Neufeld ordered an internal investigation after the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team said the probe should remain with the police service.

After a disciplinary hearing,

Keagan was ordered to forfeit 20 hours' pay and to step back from a position at Bow Valley College.

Wickson considers that sanction far too light and the product of an unreasonable process that lacked transparency and a proper weighing of evidence, her lawyer, Amy Matychuk, told the Law Enforcement Review Board (LERB) on Wednesday.

She noted the board already ruled the chief 's actions in the investigation “were not procedurally fair” and granted Wednesday's appeal hearing.

“All I'm asking is for the board to continue exercising its mandate,” said Matychuk, adding Wickson was a single mother at the time.

“(Wickson) was in a really vulnerable position and a person in power (abused his position).”

The lawyer said Keagan's disciplinary hearing only considered two of 13 text messages the officer sent to Wickson on two separate days, and the officer presiding over it had wrongly stated the woman had initiated the sexual proposition.

“The presiding officer made an erroneous conclusion Ms. Wickson had initiated this,” said Matychuk.

“In 2024 we've made good strides in our society in addressing sexual harassment as a priority, and this is just not the way to proceed.”

She also said after the sanctions were imposed on Keagan, a letter sent by Neufeld to Wickson didn't mention the penalty or her right to appeal it.

“The chief failed to follow the (Alberta) Police Act — the complainant's procedural rights were breached,” said Matychuk, adding the board should order another disciplinary hearing be held on the case, which has left her client traumatized.

But Michael Mysak, the lawyer representing Neufeld and Keagan, said the matter was always taken seriously, noting ASIRT was initially alerted before it was investigated by the Calgary police professional standards section.

He said Wickson only made the complaint when she was going to face charges of her own, and produced only two of the text messages for investigators.

“Ms. Wickson refused to speak to professional standards ... she negotiated the complaint to an agreed statement of facts that limited the complaint to the two texts,” Mysak told the LERB.

Even if all the texts were submitted as evidence, they were similar in nature and “there's nothing to suggest they would have resulted in a materially different penalty.”

Though Neufeld didn't mention a right of appeal in the letter to Wickson, that's moot because an appeal was being heard by the LERB.

The board can only order another disciplinary hearing if there's evidence the original process was “flawed or tainted” and there's no suggestion of that, added Mysak.

The penalties levied on Keagan, he said, are consistent with previous rulings.

“This decision was well-articulated, coherent, based on the facts and well within what was permitted,” he said. “It was treated all along as serious.”

Keagan is currently serving with the Calgary Police Service.

The LERB is to deliver a binding decision within 60 days.