RCMP brass accused of sending 'inflammatory' email about officers in code of conduct hearing
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A lawyer for one of three B.C. Mounties facing code of conduct proceedings for making racist and sexist comments in online group chats accused the leadership of their detachment of sending out an "inflammatory" email Tuesday commenting on the officers' evidence.
The allegation came a day after Const. Ian Solven testified at length about what he described as a toxic workplace and a failure by RCMP leadership to respond to the stresses and concerns of front-line officers.
"I'm not going to get into the whole content of the email," Solven's lawyer, Brad Kielmann, told the three-person code of conduct board.
"It's an email from the entire leadership team of the Coquitlam detachment — detachment-wide — making what I can only describe as highly inflammatory comments about the subject members, commenting about their evidence and making other editorialisms about them."
CBC News has not seen the letter.
A second revelation
The RCMP wants Solven, Const. Philip Dick and Const. Mersad Mesbah fired over posts to a private chat group on the Signal app and messages sent over the RCMP's internal mobile data messaging system.
The existence of the email — which Kielmann described as "highly problematic" — was one of two revelations to rock the proceedings Tuesday, with a lawyer for the RCMP's conduct authority telling the board a new witness had also come forward to challenge Solven's evidence.
According to the RCMP lawyers, a fellow officer who Solven and the others had mocked using the epithet "Big" to make fun of her size contacted an inspector with the RCMP on Monday night to take issue with Solven's characterization of their relationship.
On Monday, Solven claimed he approached the woman to apologize shortly after realizing comments made on the RCMP's internal messaging system were about to be the subject of a complaint.
"I told her that I made some comments about her size and we had a good talk and I just apologized to her," Solven told his lawyer in direct testimony.
"I just said, 'Some of the things you've done at work have frustrated me, and I made it personal and I made some comments about your weight. She said, 'You've frustrated me too at work, and I've made some comments about you,' and we kind of just laughed it off. And we moved on and I still talk to her regularly."
On Tuesday, a lawyer for the RCMP told the board the female officer gave a statement to the RCMP giving her take on events.
"[She] ultimately made disclosure to the effect that Const. Solven lied in his testimony," he said.
"And over and above that, I think it's fair to say based on the preliminary information that [she] takes a very different view of the relationship that she had/has with Constable Solven."
The conduct board hearing broke early on Tuesday morning to give lawyers on both sides time to decide how to proceed with the information.
The hearing — which has already faced multiple delays — was expected to hear from Dick on Tuesday.
'Penis touching team'
During his testimony, Solven apologized for what he claimed were uncharacteristic comments in some of the messages he posted, but sought to explain the context around others — including one in which he appeared to joke about Tasering an unarmed Black suspect.
The officer said he was referring to an incident in which he was called to a scene where he used his conducted energy weapon to take down a Black suspect threatening people with a syringe in front of a crowd of several hundred.
Solven said he worried a "three-second clip" of the interaction would make the news.
"I know the RCMP is not the best at defending its members publicly," he said.
"And I was concerned I was going to be thrown under the bus for this situation where I was just doing my job."
During his testimony, Solven spoke extensively of conflicts between general duty members and the members of special units, including major crime and the prolific offender targeting team — who he referred to as the "penis touching team" in one message.
He also gave an example of what he claimed was "management not really caring about what happened to us" when he said they refused to take action against an officer who clocked out during a detachment-wide call for help from two officers who feared for their lives.
Toward the end of his testimony Monday, Solven said he resorted to "dark humour" to deal with the stress of policing.
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