Category: CR

PPS hands cell death case over to Manitoba

After a year of secrecy, the victim gets a name: Corey Rogers

The Nova Scotia Public Prosecution Service says a conflict of interest prevents it from providing legal advice to the Serious Incident Response Team regarding the death of Corey Rogers, 41.

This is the first official identification of Rogers since his death in a Halifax police cell on June 16, 2016. The delay constituted a level of secrecy that is unacceptable in a democracy.

Rogers, of Spryfield, had been arrested for pubic intoxication but not charged. He was well-regarded by people who posted on his Facebook page.

The PPS says it has asked its counterpart in Manitoba

Corey Rogers
Corey Rogers

to provide advice to SiRT Director Ronald J. MacDonald on whether a criminal prosecution is warranted. It’s my belief that MacDonald has wanted a prosecution since early this year, but hit a roadblock with the PPS.

From the news release: “As we examined the material being gathered by SIRT, it became apparent the prosecution service was in conflict,” said Martin Herschorn, director of public prosecutions. “To avoid any conflict of interest or appearance of conflict, the involvement of another prosecution service is necessary to ensure public confidence in the PPS and in the administration of justice.”

You can find the full PPS news release here and in the text box below.

You can find my most recent post on this story here. For all six previous posts on Corey Rogers, click on the “CR” category at the bottom of this page.

Public Prosecution Service Calling in Manitoba to Advise SIRT Investigation
Public Prosecution Service

July 5, 2017 2:21 PM


The Nova Scotia Public Prosecution Service (PPS) has asked the Manitoba Prosecution Service to provide legal advice to the Serious Incident Response Team (SIRT) on its ongoing investigation into a 2016 death in Halifax Regional Police cells. 

On June 16, 2016, Corey Rogers, 41, was found unresponsive in a police cell at 1:45 a.m. Emergency Heath Services were called but Mr. Rogers could not be revived. SIRT was then called in to investigate. 

The Public Prosecution Service provides legal advice to any police agency during an investigation, when requested.

“As we examined the material being gathered by SIRT, it became apparent the prosecution service was in conflict,” said Martin Herschorn, director of public prosecutions. “To avoid any conflict of interest or appearance of conflict, the involvement of another prosecution service is necessary to ensure public confidence in the PPS and in the administration of justice.” 

The Manitoba Crown has agreed to advise SIRT as it moves forward with its investigation and will prosecute any criminal charges that may result. 

It is common practice for prosecution services across Canada to help each other in conflict cases. Currently, for example, Nova Scotia Crown attorneys are dealing with matters in Newfoundland and New Brunswick.
FOR BROADCAST USE:

     The Nova Scotia Public Prosecution Service has asked the 

Manitoba Prosecution Service to provide legal advice to the Nova 

Scotia Serious Incident Response Team as it investigates a 2016 

death in Halifax Regional Police cells.

     On June 16th, 2016, 41-year-old Corey Rogers was found 

unresponsive in a police cell at 1:45 a.m. Emergency Health 

Services were called but, when resuscitation efforts were 

unsuccessful, SIRT was called in to investigate. 

     Martin Herschorn, director of public prosecutions, says 

that as the Crown examined the material being gathered by SIRT, 

it became apparent the Nova Scotia Public Prosecution Service 

was in conflict. He says the involvement of another prosecution 

service was necessary to avoid a conflict of interest or any 

appearance of conflict. 

     The Manitoba Crown will advise SIRT as the investigation 

progresses and will prosecute any criminal charges which may 

result.

     It is common practice for prosecution services across 

Canada to help each other in conflict cases.

-30- 

Media Contact: Chris Hansen
              902-424-2225
              Cell: 902-430-5529 
              Email: Chris.hansen@novascotia.ca

 

A life and death dishonoured

It’s time for the authorities to clear their heads and come clean on CR’s death. Apart from the threat to civil liberties, a year of official silence dishonours the life and death of a man who was loved and is missed.

 

When officials create an information vacuum, regular folk will fill it with theories.

Here then, is the Turpin Laboratories theory of why the identity of CR remains a provincial/municipal secret a year after he died in a Halifax police cell: the Serious Incident Response Team, which investigates possible misdeeds in the policing world, and the Public Prosecution Service, which prosecutes when SiRT brings charges against someone, don’t get along.

And they don’t get along, the theory goes, because of the “Officer 1” case. In January 2016, SiRT charged Officer 1 with stealing “cut”, a substance used for diluting illegal drugs, from the HRP evidence room. The PPS, aka “the Crown”, failed to act until it was too late to go ahead with the prosecution, so Officer 1 got to walk away from it all.

SiRT gets the last word in these situations, so its director, Ron J. MacDonald, wrote a masterpiece in the art of flaying another organization while being studiously neutral.

Here is MacDonald’s conclusion:

This investigation led to the conclusion that there were sufficient grounds to lay charges of theft, breach of trust, and obstruction of justice. As a result, charges were laid on January 27, 2016, and SiRT’s file was provided to the Crown on March 15, 2016. Subsequently, the Crown entered a stay of proceedings on May 30, 2016. On January 27, 2017, SiRT was informed by the Public Prosecution Service that due to issues related to delays in the prosecution of the charges, that the charges would not be re-instituted.

As a result, Officer 1 is deemed never to have been charged with any criminal offence.

You can find more on this here and MacDonald’s concise report here.

At best, we have here a conflict between two public agencies with different mandates over two unrelated policing issues. Worse, is the possibility the two organizations are engaged in a peeing match. Worst, is the possibility that SiRT believes the PPS is protecting bad cops.

How have we arrived at these hypotheses? We know that MacDonald wants to charge someone because both SiRT and the PPS acknowledge they’re currently discussing CR’s case. Chris Hansen, a PPS spokesperson, said last week: “I think it would be correct to say advice from the Crown is ongoing as the investigation continues.”

We know that SiRT and PPS have been batting this one back and forth since January or February because MacDonald told me in late 2016 that CR’s case would be ready early in 2017.

In other words, as in the Officer 1 case, SiRT wants to prosecute and the Crown is taking a long time to get  on board.

SiRT and police don’t need PPS permission to file charges, but they almost always consult first. It makes sense because if the PPS does not believe the case will succeed, then there’s not much point in going ahead with it. If you ignore the Crown’s advice and lose, well then you have career-damaging egg on your face.

Hansen said there is no connection between the two cases. When I asked MacDonald about that, he was studiously forthright: “I do not intend to address that question.”

It’s time for the authorities to clear their heads and come clean on this. Apart from the threat to civil liberties, a year of official silence dishonours the life and death of a man who was loved and is missed.

Other posts about CR:

One death, 365 days of inquiry, 0 answers

Did a police dog eat SiRT’s homework?

Irony or hypocrisy?

Criminal charges disappear along with dope

Sure hope there’s no cover-up here

 

One death, 365 days of inquiry, 0 answers

A year ago today, June 16, 2016, a 41-year-old man died in the holding cells of Halifax Regional Police after being arrested, but not charged, for public intoxication.

Strictly speaking, we do not know who he was. Neither HRP nor the Serious Incident Response Team, which is investigating, will say, and they are the only official sources.

This is worthy of a little soak time. A man was taken off the street by the Halifax police and died in their custody, but his name is a secret. Oh, and there are indications the death involved a criminal act. You’d think that by now the media and/or the Halifax Police Commission would have started making a fuss about this.

The victim’s mother, however, can’t. I’m advised by a third party that she’s been told that loose lips could sink the investigation into her son’s death. I haven’t contacted her because upsetting grieving mothers is not necessary here. Any citizen can learn the name of the victim by checking obituaries for the period. His initials are CR.

But that’s not the point. The problem is that our law enforcement officials don’t believe they have an obligation to make their actions public, even when someone has died.

So, yes, this is a slippery slope argument that ends with a police state such as Argentina during its “Dirty War” and countless others now and in history (including Canada’s own suspensions of civil rights).

The reason that doesn’t happen here and now is that police states are contrary to our values and we back up those values with scrutiny. But the scrutiny has to be habitual, reflexive and even obsessive to be effective. You can say it’s a job for media, but when media expose something, citizens have to care.

I say this even though I believe we have a good police force in Halifax — its undemocratic “street check” policy notwithstanding. But keeping it that way requires more than regular budget increases. We need to raise hell when our appointed scrutineers  suppress the name of someone who died in the hands of the police.

A scary, closer-to-home example of how things can go wrong is the Chicago Police Department’s secret detention centre, which was exposed not by American media, but Britain’s The Guardian. Fake news? Google “Homan Square Chicago” and see for yourself.

And why is this investigation taking so long? SiRT Director Ron MacDonald told me in 2016 he expected it to wrap up early this year.

All MacDonald will say now is the case “is long and complex.” But he also said the Public Prosecution Service is involved. For the record, the PPS says the case long and complex.

But wait! The PPS prosecutes criminal charges, so THAT’s interesting.

Next: Are SiRT and the public prosecution service getting along?

Related posts:

Did a police dog eat SiRT’s homework?

Irony or hypocrisy?

Criminal charges disappear along with dope

Sure hope there’s no cover-up here

 

 

 

 

Did a police dog eat SiRT’s homework?

Tomorrow, May 16, the Serious Incident Response Team (SiRT) and the Halifax Police Service will reach the 11-month mark in their suppression of the name of a 41-year-old man who died in a Halifax police cell.

That means it will have been 11 months since SiRT supposedly began investigating the death of CR, as I call him.

I have several theories about the delay. One is that SiRT Director Ron MacDonald has been too busy helping the NS Bar Society put Lyle Howe in his place to move the CR investigation along.

Another theory is that, for the dullest of reasons, SiRT is never going to release the results of its investigation and, consequently, you will never know whether the victim simply died from misadventure, was killed accidentally through negligence, or was murdered.

A third theory is that a police dog ate MacDonald’s homework.

It’s difficult for bloggers to dig into these issues because we don’t have the thousands of followers enjoyed by mainstream media. A communications flack once told me: “I really don’t have time to give a high priority to questions from bloggers.”

I completely understand and even sympathize. But the media don’t seem interested, which means I’ll have to put on my amateur reporter fedora and begin calling CR’s family and friends to confirm his identity.

They won’t like it and neither will I, but I’ll do it because the police and SiRT are being undemocratic. And, unfortunately, it seems to be catching on.

If you know something about CR, you can email me at gpike@eastlink.ca. I’ll do my best to honour a request for anonymity, but I don’t have the resources to resist a court order demanding your name and I don’t want to go to jail. A pretty good solution is go to a library or internet cafe you don’t routinely visit, set up a phony gmail account, send me the email, and then kill the account. It’s not bulletproof security, but it requires a lot of effort to learn who you are. Whatever you do, don’t send it from work.

If you feel your information is so hot that organizations will indeed go to extreme lengths to find you, then give it to the CBC, which has a secure drop at https://securedrop.cbc.ca.

 

Irony or hypocrisy?

Another troubling aspect of the trials of Lyle Howe

More than nine months ago, on June 16, 2016, a 41-year-old man from Halifax (let’s call him CR) died in the cells of Halifax Regional Police.

The province’s Serious Incident Response Team

Lyle Howe
Lyle Howe

was asked to investigate. But SiRT has a policy of suppressing the identities of people involved in their investigations. And HRP, in the style of Canada’s famously “tight-lipped” RCMP, has itself made CR’s name a secret.

So, nine months after CR died in HRP’s care, no one will say who he was. This is a serious, but not severe, case of  authoritarianism, which can break out in a police force at any time. In Canada, it is usually associated with the RCMP, not HRP.

But why is the secret investigation taking so long? After all, we know from watching TV that witnesses’ memories fade with time and sometimes they move away or even die.

Incredibly, the answer may lie the high-profile troubles of Halifax lawyer Lyle Howe, who is currently being roasted by the bar society for poor conduct.  CBC’s Blair Rhodes wrote about Howe’s latest trials last week. Here’s an excerpt:

“The three-member disciplinary panel has sat for 58 days since it began 15 months ago. The hearing was originally expected to take about a week.

“The panel chair, Ron MacDonald, also heads Nova Scotia’s Serious Incident Response Team, the body that looks into complaints against police. He has had to schedule breaks in the hearing process to allow him time to do his main job. Decisions from SiRT have been announced in fits and starts over the last 15 months.

“Similarly, panel member Don Murray, a prominent Halifax-area defence lawyer, has had to reschedule cases in order to continue attending the hearing.”

In other words, cases such as CR’s appear to have been delayed because Ron MacDonald, like Don Murray, has too much on his plate. In a general sense, you could say MacDonald and Murray are “double-booked”. This is reasonably common for lawyers, which is why they can often be seen flying around the halls of courthouses, their robes flapping in their wakes like Harry Potter.

OK, you say, but why is the bar society reviewing Howe in the first place? Here’s Blair Rhodes again:

“The bulk of the allegations against Howe focused on rather mundane aspects of his practice — things like double-booking and missing court dates.”

Let’s give this a few seconds of soak time …

Got it? Yep, two of the lawyers reviewing Howe have found the process so demanding that, on the face of it, they are exhibiting the same failing for which they are slow-cooking Lyle Howe.

Could be ironic, hypocritical, or both.

This brings us to the continuing suppression of CR’s name. It’s a serious matter. Being in custody means you’ve lost control of your life to your jailers. It’s a life-and-death responsibility for the jailers. Unfortunately, they’re human, so we create outfits such as the Serious Incident Response Team to keep an eye on them — to ensure cell-deaths, accidental or otherwise, don’t become a routine event in law enforcement.

This is because in less civilized parts of the world, people are arrested and never seen again. Sometimes they die by accident, sometimes not. Their bodies are dumped at sea, fed to animals — whatever. When their loved ones come looking for them, there’s no record of them ever being in custody. Or if there is a record of arrest, it turns out the prisoner was “released” the next morning and then disappeared. Or he hanged himself and incident is still under secret investigation.

If there truly are bad guys involved, the best case scenario for them is that everyone just gets tired of waiting for the answers and stops asking.

Long ago, I met a freshly-immigrated coroner in Montreal at a New Year’s party. We had both been over-served by the time I asked him about an obvious failure of the justice system in Canada’s Ocean Playground.

“Well,” he said, smiling as he swirled his Scotch. “People do get away with things, you know.”

Can’t happen today, you say? Well, maybe not if we consistently exercise proper oversight, which we’re not doing in this case. At the very least, secrecy and investigatory sloth undermine public confidence in law enforcement.

If you’ve read this far, you might enjoy my novel, Max’s Folly. Click here for more information. — Bill Turpin

 

 

 

 

Criminal charges disappear along with dope

UPDATED

Halifax Police Chief Jean-Michel Blais reported Feb. 27 that none of his officers stole the drugs or $100,000 that disappeared from police evidence lockers in 2015.

But Turpin Laboratories has been rooting around the website of Nova Scotia’s most powerful police oversight organization and found a document that has shaken our faith in that statement.

On Feb. 1 Ronald J. MacDonald, the director of the Serious Incident Response Team, posted a “supplemental summary” of the only criminal case to arise from the affair. In effect, it’s a mandated opportunity for SiRT to get the last word after someone they’ve charged has been prosecuted.

The document is dry and studiously neutral. If MacDonald’s got an ax to grind, there’s no indication of it. It reads like a conscientious civil servant fulfilling his duty to inform the public.

MacDonald says “ … it is SiRT policy, in accordance with the Regulations, to publish a supplemental report in cases where the facts relevant to the charge decision were not originally made public and were not subsequently disclosed during court proceedings.”

Well, THAT’s interesting right off the bat, especially since Halifax police chief Jean-Michel Blais just told the Halifax police commission that the whole thing was a bureaucratic merry mix-up and that none of his officers were blame-worthy.

I have doubts about that now, and also harbour some unease about the Public Prosecution Service. Here are some snippets from MacDonald’s summary that inspired water-cooler talk across the sprawling T-Labs campus.

MacDonald wrote that a related investigation of “Officer 1”, a Halifax cop, concluded there were sufficient grounds to lay charges.

And so SiRT laid charges of theft, breach of trust, and obstruction of justice against Officer 1 (they’re not allowed to say who he is) on January 27, 2016.

SiRT provided its file to the Public Prosecution Service (the Crown) on March 15, 2016.

Just two months later, on May 30, 2016, the Crown entered a “temporary” stay of the proceedings because it needed more time to brief Officer 1’s defence team. (See the Local Xpress, May 31, 2016, for more details.)

On January 27, 2017, — now seven months after they got the file and a year after the charges were filed– the Public Prosecution Service told SiRT that because of “issues related to delays in the prosecution of the charges”, the charges could not proceed.

Four days later Director MacDonald issued his supplementary summary. Here, in block quotes, are more the things MacDonald wrote, emphasis added by Turpin Labs.


On May 21, 2015, the Halifax Regional Police (HRP) contacted SiRT with information regarding a potential theft, breach of trust, and obstruction of justice committed by Officer 1. The allegations of theft and breach of trust related to a substance known as “cut” which went missing from an HRP exhibit locker. “Cut” is used in the illegal drug trade … The allegation of obstruction of justice relates to alleged steps taken to help a third party* avoid detection and arrest by other HRP members.

 

The “cut” is this case was lidocaine and is used to dilute the product.

The evidence gathered from the investigation showed that the cut went missing in late January, 2015 from an HRP exhibit locker. It was delivered by Officer 1 to another individual shortly after it was taken. Officer 1 did not dispute that he took the cut and made the delivery, but took the position that his Sergeant permitted him to do so. That was disputed by the Sergeant in question, and SiRT had gathered other evidence that questioned certain other details put forward by Officer 1.

So you can see why SiRT was keen to prosecute. They believed the Sergeant and had doubts about Officer 1. I don’t know who to  believe, but this is why we have judges and courts.

So why did the Crown enter a temporary stay so quickly? And what was the Crown doing during the “temporary” stay to the point where the charges could not be re-instated.

Oh, and it was the Crown — that is, the Public Prosecution Service —  that decided re-instating the charges was impossible because of its own delays. It’s odd, I dare say, for an organization whose middle name is prosecution, but it does happen.

On TV, and in real life, the decision to dismiss a charge because of undue delay is generally made by the judge in the case, and at the request of the defence. Typically, the Crown then responds with a stout explanation of how the delay was unavoidable and/or caused by the accused and/or will have no effect on the ability of the accused to defend himself. Frequently, the trial proceeds anyway.

Was SiRT’s investigation not thorough?

During the investigation, SiRT obtained statements from 20 police witnesses and five civilian witnesses. Other investigative steps included certain forensic investigations, as well as a review of documentary evidence.

Not too shabby, I’d say. Most reporters would either be fired or awarded a national award for that kind of diligence.

As noted, MacDonald played it straight in his summary. Nonetheless, his last line seems a little mournful: “As a result, Officer 1 is deemed never to have been charged with any criminal offence.”

(* The Turpin Laboratories Conspiracy Division could barely contain itself at the mention of a “third party” in MacDonald’s summary, but was told by our executive leadership team to “chill” for the time being.)

 

Sure hope there’s no cover-up here

It’s been almost seven months since a 41-year-old Spryfield man died in a Halifax police cell June 16, 2016.

Neither the cops nor Nova Scotia’s Serious Incident Response Team will say what the man’s name was, although you can tell with 99% certainty by checking the obits for the period. We did, and his initials are CR, but the job of identifying him belongs to law enforcement, not bloggers.

SIRT says withholding the names of people involved in their investigations is a matter of policy. It also makes it harder for the public to assess SIRT’s performance.

The cops won’t release the name either, which is reasonable until family have been notified, but usually a single day is enough to take care of that.

Given that the man was arrested for public intoxication, it’s likely that he died of misadventure.

But, after seven months without an update on the investigation or the deceased’s name, you have to start wondering about a cover-up of some kind. After all, it’s plenty of time for evidence to deteriorate or get “lost” (e.g. drugs and cash) and memories to fade, which are key to successful cover-ups.

Just sayin’.