Three police officers from VPD's sex crime unit being criminally investigated by B.C.'s police services director
Credit to Author: Susan Lazaruk| Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2019 02:10:15 +0000
B.C. Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner has confirmed it has been asked to investigate alleged misconduct by three members of the Vancouver police sex crime unit and that the officers are under criminal investigation by the province’s director of police services.
The commissioner in 2017 ordered an investigation into the alleged misconduct of the three officers, Andrea Spindler, deputy police complaint commissioner, said in an email on Friday to Postmedia News.
The commissioner ordered the investigation after he received information from the VPD that it discovered during an investigation into disgraced detective Jim Fisher, Spindler said.
The three officers, who have not been named, worked in the same unit as Fisher. The 60-year-old former detective is serving a 20-month jail term for sex-related offences against two vulnerable crime victims.
Spindler said that “due to the seriousness of the allegations,” former complaint commissioner Stan Lowe referred the matter for independent criminal investigation to the director of police services.”
She said the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner suspended its misconduct investigation while awaiting the outcome of the criminal investigation, adding her office is “closely monitoring this matter” but would release no further details.
The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner oversees municipal police forces in B.C. as an “independent agency of the B.C. legislature that works to ensure complaints are handled fairly and impartially,” according to B.C. Solicitor-General Ministry’s website.
Request for comment from police services director Brenda Butterworth-Carr, who oversees provincial policy on municipal police forces and is a former deputy commissioner of the RCMP, was referred to B.C.’s solicitor-general.
A spokeswoman for Solicitor-General Mike Farnworth didn’t return a request for comment, and it’s not known which police force was asked to handle the investigation.
VPD had earlier confirmed the three officers were being investigated but wouldn’t name the independent agency or release any details about the specific allegations against them.
The officers have been under investigation since 2017 but it only became public when a lawyer for a pimp convicted following an investigation by the sex crimes unit, which investigates prostitution and criminal exploitation cases, raised it the B.C. Court of Appeal on Wednesday.
Lawyer Marilyn Sandford told the court the investigation of the three officers apparently relates to corruption-related offences.
She said that she was frustrated by delays in getting disclosure related to the Fisher case for her client’s 2017 trial.
The Crown told the court that attempts are being made to ensure proper disclosure.
The matter ties into the appeal of Reza Moazami, a convicted pimp who was also investigated by Fisher.
Moazami was sentenced to 23 years in prison after being convicted of more than two dozen counts of pimping and sexual interference involving victims ranging in age from 14 to 19.
Postmedia and the CBC have applied to the court to see documents filed in Fisher’s case.
With files from Postmedia News