RCMP Watch

Ben Gelinas (Edmonton Journal) - The responsibilities and conduct of off-duty RCMP Const. Gord Kroeker were questioned today after St. Albert officers alleged he tried to interfere in their investigation of a bar bathroom mugging.

An internal disciplinary hearing was told that Kroeker was with friends April 1, 2006 at a St. Albert bar called the Beer Hunter when a waitress Kroeker knew was robbed of her purse and beat up by three girls in the bathroom.

Officers were called out. Over the course of their investigation they arrested one of the victim’s male friends. Kroeker, who worked in Sherwood Park, went out to explain what happened to the officers.

St. Albert RCMP Const. Yannick Hamel testified that Kroeker came up behind him in the parking lot outside the bar, grabbed his arm and pulled it behind him.

“I turned around and Mr. Kroeker was a few inches from my face,” Hamel said.

The officer, whose first language is French, said he smelled alcohol on Kroeker’s breath.

“I ordered Kroeker, because I didn’t know him, to back up because we were doing an arrest,” Hamel testified.

Kroeker told Hamel that the man they were arresting was his friend. “You can’t do that,” Hamel remembers Kroeker saying. “I am a member. You’ll be in trouble.”

Hamel testified that they had handcuffed the man Kroeker knew because he had allegedly punched the bar’s bouncer.

Hamel asked Kroeker again to back up.

“You are scum. You can’t do your job right,” Hamel remembers Kroeker saying. “He didn’t assault anybody.”

Kroeker allegedly called Hamel a “junior member” and put him down for being French. “You’re going to lose your badge,” Kroeker allegedly told Hamel.

Susan McCarthy was the waitress who was robbed in the bathroom. She told the hearing panel another responding constable held her against a cruiser when she approached to tell him they had the wrong guy in the car.

“I don’t understand why you arrested this guy,” she remembered telling the officer. “You’re here to help me.”

Kroeker testified he went outside and approached Hamel “hoping to render some type of assistance.”

He said McCarthy was the victim and four girls were suspects. The officers responding didn’t seem to realize this.

“If they would have given me a notepad I would have done the investigation,” Kroeker told the board. “At least I knew who the players were.”

Kroeker testified that Hamel told him to go back into the bar or he would be charged with obstruction.

“I went up to him and identified myself as a member,” Kroeker said. “I am under the impression that I am a member of the RCMP 24/7.”

Kroeker said he had been an officer for more than 18 years at that point. And he said he had initially approached the officers in a courteous manner. “It wasn’t until I was told I was being unprofessional by insisting I knew information that they didn’t” that things escalated.

“I indicated to them: ‘You don’t know what’s going on here,’” Kroeker testified. “My voice raised to the levels they used.” He said he wasn’t the only officer using profanity. The hearing is expected to wrap up Thursday.