The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner released its first quarter report for 2013 and New Westminster is among the top three municipal police departments when it comes to complaint files opened within the last three months.
According to the report, the New Westminster Police Department opened 20 complaint files against officers within the department. There are 13 different categories of misconduct, according to the Police Act. They include abuse of authority, corrupt practice, discreditable conduct, neglect of duty and damage to property of others.
Seven of the complaints were admissible, which means the complaint commissioner confirmed they contained "an allegation of misconduct" and concerned "an incident or event that occurred within 12 months of making the complaint."
However, five of the complaints were not serious in nature, and have already reached an informal resolution, said Sgt. Diana McDaniel of the New Westminster Police Department, in an email.
But it was the section on substantiated allegations concluded during the quarter that highlighted New Westminster's department as having the most concluded misconduct investigations. The department closed five investigations involving its members, some of the incidents dated back as far as 2009.
According to the report, of the five investigations there were four counts of discreditable conduct and four counts of abuse of authority. There was also one count of corruption in connection to a series of incidents from January to December of 2011.
In this case, the "member knowingly associated with a known illegal drug trafficker; possessed and used cocaine; and agreed or allowed himself to be in debt to a known criminal as a result of purchasing illegal con-trolled substances and failure to pay an outstanding bar tab," stated the report.
Sgt. McDaniel said that this officer, Jeff Klassen, resigned before the investigation was complete.
"However due to the seriousness of the allegations a full investigation was completed despite Klassen's resignation and the decision was dismissal," she said, in an email.
Most of the investigations came from requests the department submitted to the complaints commissioner. Only one of the five closed cases during this quarter was the result of a public complaint.
As for discipline, one officer received two two-day suspensions without pay and one five-day suspension without pay, which were served concurrently, for their abuse of authority, while the others received a written reprimand.
"All admissible complaints are taken seriously, and the department proactively reports incidents to the OPCC when they occur. NWPD also proactively advises complainants about the Police Act complaint process through providing them with complaint forms, information brochures and directing them to the OPCC website," McDaniel said in an email.
Some other notable cases of misconduct mentioned in the report include an officer discharging his "fire arm in the department's men's locker room unloading station," and driving "the police vehicle into a rock." In both of these cases the officers were disciplined internally.
