226 of 260 Police Complaints Stemming from Fairy Creek Have No Named Officer.
This article was first published earlier this year. Subsequently the crown sought a publication ban. The court handed down its decision June 20th. This is a reposting of the original article, with prohibited content redacted.
Enforcement at Fairy Creek has been carried out by the Community Industry Response Group (CIRG) unit of the BC RCMP.1 From the very beginning they have hid their identification. Something we learned later in the courts is they were instructed to remove name tags and/or regiment numbers, to prevent identification.2 Justice Thompson found the reasoning for this unjustified but the damage had been done. From May 18th, the beginning of enforcement, to September 28, Thompson’s ruling, there were 1096 arrests by officers who hid their identity.
Having been on the ground, I can confirm that after Thompson’s ruling officers started wearing identification semi-consistently. It was not universal and many officers did not wear their regimental number, or refused to provide it when asked.
New data I received from the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission (CRCC) sheds light on a disturbing trend: of 260 complaints, 34 (13%) have at least one named officer, 226 (87%) have no named officer. This is the direct result of CIRG members hiding their identity.
I asked the CRCC for data regarding complaints because I had received confidential court material pertaining to Fairy Creek. ████████████████████████████
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This is the first document I’ll be reporting on. ████████████████████████ ██████████████████████████████████████████████████████
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The proceeding line is possibly the most critical, and important in respect to ██████ data,
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Taking this into account, I surmise that ████████████████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████.
Cross referencing ████████████████ with information from sources who have filed complaints relating to Fairy Creek ███████████████████████████.
I began contacting people who have either been victim or witness to the most violent arrests, ███████████ is named in at least one complaint, which has an investigator attached to it, ██████████████████████. A second complainant named an officer ████████████████. Another officer has already been investigated and disciplined for their behaviour at Fairy Creek—█████████████ █████████████████████████████████. After reviewing the contents of the complaint,██████████████████████. Their behaviour was even denounced by other officers at the scene.
Another source named████████████████ in their complaint. ███████████ ███████████. Another came forward saying they are in the process of completing their complaint against ███████████. Two other people came forward just to make sure I was aware of ███████████ behaviour. I’m aware ███████████ because I’ve been receiving suggestions to investigate ████ complaint history as far back as October.
When talking to complainants I verified the dates of investigations by reviewing their communications. ██████████████████████████████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████.
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I have communicated to about two dozen complainants, so my reporting is by no means exhaustive, but it does provide an alarming sample. Only four people I spoke to had named officers in their complaints. Of those four, █████████████████ ██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████. Some sources I spoke to have filed complaints against multiple officers, all with no means of identification.
I contacted the Attorney General’s office, who assured me they would have a response by deadline. They forwarded my request to the BC Prosecution Service and have yet to respond. These are the three questions I’ve requested clarification on:
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Given the scale of enforcement, the number of arrests and the 13% identification rate, ███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████.
The BC Prosecution Service hasn’t replied by date of publishing, but the story will be updated should they respond.
Epilogue
Another document shared with me is a statement by Sgt Jonn Uzelac where he describes,
Enforcement of the injunction at Fairy Creek has been and continues to be largest and longest consistent act of civil disobedience in recent Canadian history. Policing this public order issue has been the most labour-intensive operation in RCMP history.
I don’t think the good Sergeant realizes he called enforcement the largest act of civil disobedience in recent history.
He might be right though.
Thompson struck down the application for renewing Teal-Jones injunction. It was later granted appeal, and temporarily reinstated. The case has been heard by the Court of Appeal but no decision has been made yet.