Poor judgment in Elsner case
Because the matter is before the courts, Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins says she can’t comment on the controversy surrounding suspended police chief Frank Elsner, but when this sorry mess is finally cleaned up, she and Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps have some explaining to do.
Their attempts to hide the facts from the public made a bad situation worse.
In August 2015, Helps and Desjardins, police board co-chairs, received information that Elsner had exchanged Twitter messages with the wife of one of his officers. They brought the information to the attention of the police complaint commissioner. The matter was treated as an internal discipline matter.
The police board was told in December that Elsner had been disciplined, and the board expressed confidence in the police chief. The two mayors decided not to make it public on the grounds that it was a personnel matter.
Hours later, when asked by reporters about the police chief, both Desjardins and Helps denied Elsner was under investigation.
“He’s the best thing that’s happened to this town and Esquimalt in a long time,” Helps said of Elsner.
But there had indeed been an investigation, and according to complaint commissioner Stan Lowe, it failed the test of fairness, accountability and transparency under the Police Act. He said he had been given limited information when he agreed that the mayors could investigate the social-media exchange as an internal personnel matter. He said the investigation had significant shortcomings, and removed Helps and Desjardins as the disciplinary authority.
Lowe asked RCMP Chief Supt. Sean Bourrie to lead a new public-trust investigation into the social-media allegations against Elsner, as well as into allegations of workplace harassment submitted by the police union on behalf of four female police-department employees.
In March, Elsner filed a petition asking the B.C. Supreme Court to quash that investigation, claiming Lowe does not have the authority to order an investigation into conduct that has been the subject of an internal investigation. After a three-day hearing on the petition this week, Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson has reserved judgment.
Last year, when Desjardins had to acknowledge that Elsner’s conduct had been investigated, she said an internal investigation by Vancouver lawyer Patricia Gallivan found no inappropriate relationship between Elsner and the wife of his subordinate officer. Yet court heard this week that Gallivan had reviewed six months of “salacious and sexually charged” Twitter messages and learned of a hug and a kiss in the office between Elsner and the subordinate officer’s wife. She found the relationship to be inappropriate.
Whatever the outcome of this week’s hearing and other investigations into Elsner’s conduct, it is clear the conduct of Desjardins and Helps in this matter has come up short.
No doubt they had the best of intentions. Following two Victoria police chiefs who were the subjects of investigation for improper conduct, Elsner was brought in to make positive changes. He jumped right in with energy and an infectious enthusiasm. He certainly showed the skills and talent to move police work forward in the region.
It’s understandable that the mayors would want to see Elsner’s conduct in the best possible light — the last thing Victoria needed was another police-chief scandal.
But we have one, and it appears destined to be worse than the previous two, exacerbated by the mayors’ attempts to minimize or cover up what Elsner did.
The chief’s actions put the mayors in an unenviable position. Theirs was a costly misjudgment — Elsner is suspended, but the public is still paying his salary and legal costs.
In conducting public business, the truth can sometimes be painful, but trying to mask the truth invariably makes things worse.