2 Mounties face code-of-conduct hearing over deletion of surveillance video
CBC
Two RCMP officers testified Tuesday they didn't think much when a colleague suggested cutting a 25-minute video recorded on a drug-trafficking surveillance operation down to 10 seconds.
A code of conduct hearing has begun for Cpl. Mathieu Potvin and Const. Graham Bourque. They face allegations of discreditable conduct and failing to provide complete and accurate accounts of their work on May 15 and May 16, 2019.
They denied the allegations at the start of the hearing, which was held virtually and beset by technical issues and delays. Both officers were suspended with pay in late 2020 pending the outcome of the conduct investigation.
"I didn't think anything was wrong," RCMP Const. Eric Pichette testified about the May 2019 conversation that took place as the officers tried to trail a drug-trafficking suspect.
"I just heard it, I moved on to try to locate the target. I didn't really think about it."
Pichette, Bourque and Potvin were among four officers involved in surveilling two locations in Moncton. Const. Melissa Cormier was the fourth. They were all driving separate vehicles trying to watch and follow targets of the investigation while communicating over a police radio.
A transcript of the radio conversation shows Bourque had lost sight of a target, Jesse Logue, the evening of May 15 after seeing him leave a building on Donovan Terrace.
"OK, question for you guys," Bourque asked on the radio, according to the transcript. "Say, the video camera, where I took a brief video, didn't stop recording and it video recorded for 25 minutes. Can we edit that to just 10 seconds?"
Pichette responded he didn't think so.
Potvin was responsible for taking detailed notes of the team's actions that day for a report on their work. He responded that he hadn't written down anything about a video.
"So we can act as if it never happened," Potvin says, according to the transcript.
Bourque says to not write anything down.
"Well, technically, if you act with full disclosure it has to be disclose right?" Potvin says, referring to how evidence gathered by police for use in a criminal case must be provided to Crown prosecutors and then disclosed to the defence.
"But if it never happened it never happened. You can't, you can't try to cut pieces of a video off. It's creating an issue for no reason."