Lethbridge officer searched Shannon Phillips on database after overhearing 'tail end' of conversation: report
CBC
A Lethbridge police officer who used a police database to search for former Alberta environment minister Shannon Phillips’s private information claimed to authorities he did so because of something he partially overheard fellow officers saying, on top of what an informant claimed they’d overheard the politician say.
This officer was one of three Lethbridge Police Service members that Alberta’s police watchdog recommended should be charged criminally for unauthorized police computer use and breach of trust in Phillips’s case, according to a report released Thursday by the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT).
The three men were never charged, however, because provincial Crown prosecutors decided no charges should be laid.
The ASIRT report doesn’t name the three constables, but CBC News has previously reported they are Keon Woronuk, Derek Riddell and Joel Odorski.
Woronuk and Riddell resigned from the force in 2021, following a separate disciplinary issue. Lethbridge police confirmed that Odorski remains with the force.
Phillips, who resigned as Lethbridge-West MLA last year, said in an interview that the ASIRT report’s long-awaited release marks the “end of the line” for this stage in her quest for accountability for Lethbridge police actions involving her.
That quest began more than eight years ago, when uniformed officers were sitting next to her and guests at a diner in the southwest Alberta city in 2017, and Woronuk surreptitiously photographed her, posted images anonymously online and queried her licence plate in an internal police database.
Phillips said she will proceed with a $400,000 lawsuit filed against several Lethbridge Police Service members for invasion of her privacy, and some details from the ASIRT investigation may inform her case.
While there were no prosecutions, three officers were ultimately convicted of Police Act offences in disciplinary proceedings. Woronuk and Sgt. Jason Carrier were demoted for their surveillance at the diner, and the third, Odorski, received a reprimand last year. (Carrier was not a subject of the ASIRT investigation.)
It’s a “completely unsatisfying” outcome, Phillips told CBC News.
“There was very little in the way of accountability,” the former minister said.
“And the message that that sends to the public is that those systems don't really work. And if they don't work for someone who can talk to the national media, for someone who could stand up in the legislature and give statements, then they're probably not going to work for ordinary people either.”
ASIRT had informed Phillips and Lethbridge police back in May 2024 that the agency had recommended charges but that none would be laid, and that the full report into suspicious database searches of the ex-minister would be coming out soon.
It took almost 18 months for the provincial agency to release the document to Phillips and the public.
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