Helps wants CRD to help people buy homes
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps is hoping to settle suspended Police Chief Frank Elsner’s future out of court.
On Tuesday, the VictoriaEsquimalt police board filed a petition in B.C. Supreme Court asking for an order requiring the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner to hand over the final investigation reports into allegations of misconduct by Elsner and copies of the decision of two retired judges who will preside over discipline hearings.
Despite that, Helps said Wednesday she hopes the matter doesn’t have to go to court at all. She said she wants to reach a compromise with the OPCC that will give the police board the information it needs to consider suspending Elsner without pay.
“I don’t think anyone wants any more court,” Helps said. “But I think the public does expect that the board is going to look seriously at suspension without pay.”
Deputy police complaint commissioner Rollie Woods has stated that both Helps and Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins, as cochairs of the police board, were interviewed by investigators and could be called as witnesses at either the discipline proceedings or a public hearing.
It would not be appropriate for the mayors to review evidence from other witnesses while the process continues, Woods said. Under the Police Act, only the complainant, the officer being investigated and the OPCC receive the report and the decisions.
“The petition has been delivered to our lawyers, and they’ve received instruction to prepare a response as soon as possible so that we can expedite any court proceeding,” he said.
“Our lawyer is in communication with the police board’s lawyer. The commissioner will certainly consider any advice he receives.”
The petition claims that the Police Act requires the OPCC to “inform, advise and assist” the police board.
Helps said she is seeking information that wouldn’t compromise her ability to be a witness but would establish whether there’s enough evidence to consider suspending Elsner without pay.
“We’ll leave what that is to our lawyers to work out even before it gets to court,” she said.
“We have no intention of interfering or taking over. We recognize we’re not the discipline authorities, that’s not what that’s about. We just need information as the employer.”
Helps said she didn’t know what the solution is but hoped the OPCC would be willing to look for one.
In the past, the police board has stressed that the Police Act provides that any police officer who is suspended is presumptively entitled to receive full pay and allowances during the period of the suspension.
On Wednesday, Helps acknowledged that if the board decides it is in the public interest to suspend Elsner without pay, “then there’s a proceeding that we can begin.”
Asked if the allegation that Elsner sent inappropriate Twitter messages to the wife of a subordinate officer — which Elsner has publicly admitted and apologized for — was not enough evidence to suspend him without pay, Helps replied that the nine-member board “as a whole has determined we need more information.”
“I may have a different position, but I am representing the will of the board, and that is what the board thinks.”