Former VicPD board member calls for independent investigation
CBC
A lawyer who resigned from Victoria's police board over concerns about transparency says the city's residents deserve an independent investigation of the circumstances that led to the collapse of a major drug prosecution.
Paul Schachter says he has filed a complaint against the Victoria Police Department over allegations of misconduct by officers who allegedly misled the court about the involvement of a disgraced colleague in the initial stages of a probe into a $30-million fentanyl trafficking ring.
Details of Project Juliet's demise emerged last week in a B.C. Supreme Court decision which said officers "obscured" the fact former Const. Robb Ferris was part of the first iteration of the investigation by filing a record of the case suggesting it began a month later than it actually did.
The Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner (OPCC) is investigating the actions of the now-retired officer who led Project Juliet when charges were brought against three accused.
But Schachter says citizens need to know if larger issues are at play.
"The board has the power under the law to require an independent investigation. This could be a more effective investigation than individual complaints of officer wrongdoing in which the OPCC looks at individual conduct in isolation," he told the CBC.
"There seems to be a major systems failure here for which VicPD management should be held responsible rather than simply blaming a lower level person who was likely acting under orders."
According to B.C Supreme Court Justice Catherine Murray, Ferris was kept on as part of the 'Strike Force' team which laid the groundwork for Project Juliet in May 2020 so as not to alert him to the fact he was himself under criminal investigation.
Ferris was arrested in June 2020 and later resigned from the department on the eve of a disciplinary proceeding that substantiated 19 charges of misconduct under the Police Act.
He was never criminally charged.
According to Murray's decision, the investigation — rebranded as Project Juliet — continued without Ferris as remaining team members set about relearning everything they knew about the case.
But following arrests, a report to Crown Counsel made no mention of Ferris or any investigation prior to June 2020. Murray says that when Crown finally learned about the omission, the charges were stayed.
Schachter resigned from the Victoria and Esquimalt Police Board in 2022, citing a lack of transparency about how operations are conducted to determine if the force is using its resources effectively.
Last week, he filed a 'Service or Policy' complaint with the co-chairs of the police board.
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