Ryan Ross, Charlottetown, P.E.I. (The Guardian) – Another Island RCMP officer is facing the wrong side of the legal system after he was charged with assault last month.
RCMP Staff Sgt. Ken Paul Spenceley, who has served with the RCMP for about 24 years, was also charged with breaching an undertaking.
Deputy police Chief Gary McGuigan said Spenceley was off duty on May 23 when he assaulted a man at a Charlottetown residence.
The second incident was two days later when Spenceley violated an undertaken by breaching one of the conditions for his release, McGuigan said.
“We’re not identifying the victim, but the victim was known to him.”
Spenceley is scheduled to appear in court July 23 to enter pleas on the charges.
McGuigan said although Spenceley is a police officer, Charlottetown police are treating the case like any other.
“There is no special treatment,” he said.
RCMP Sgt. Andrew Blackadar said he didn’t have much information about the investigation because it’s a city police matter.
“In fact they called us to tell us it had been done,” he said.
Spenceley has been placed on administrative duty and the RCMP have launched an internal disciplinary investigation, Blackadar said, although Spenceley was not a front-line officer prior to the alleged incident.
“Until this allegation he would have been available for operational calls, but at this point it just means he’ll be doing administrative duties,” Blackadar said.
As for how long the disciplinary investigation will take, Blackadar couldn’t say because the process has just begun and it will depend on when an adjudication panel can deal with it.
“It could take six months or more to get this done,” he said.
Montague RCMP Const. Darren Doucette is also dealing with an internal investigation after he was charged and convicted of assault and unlawful confinement.
Doucette appealed his conviction and appeared in court Thursday.
[Source]
It is indeed regrettable that the media has a long broken acquaintance with journalistic ethics. Simply a feeble extenuation of “tabloid” journalism that seems to increasingly pervade our present societies information mandarins.
Whether the issue is fraught with criminality, amoral instances or not, it behooves the media to at least provide a balanced account of any situation. In absence of facts, investigative journalism practices should be employed to avoid the meandering and feckless pap we are constantly subjected to.
Here is another case of a senior RCMP member being transferred to coverup wrongdoing.
Ken Spenceley was transferred out of NB after he was involved in some dodo there. Any other member would have been criminally charged for what he did, but he was part of a management inner circle, an advisor to the Commanding Officer.
One of Spenceley’s duties while he was in NB was to do the CO’s dirty work. I witnessed him take down some very good members simply because they were not “one of the boys” and they would rather “do the right thing” instead of play the internal political game.
So when Spenceley was in trouble for the 3rd or 4th time (this time for being caught having sex in his office with another RCMP employee’s wife) and it was getting harder to cover up his activities, the Commanding Officer had him transferred to another province.
It was only a matter of time before some of this started spilling out as Spenceley was sure to mess up again.
If it wasn’t for an outside agency laying the charges, I’m sure this too would have been swept under the rug.
Interesting. It is also a fact that the two officers involved in the latest incident have had previous trouble in the last couple of years with each other.
I seem to think there might even have been charges laid. But it ended up with some sort of stay away order or smething same as that.
RCMP officer charged with assault
CBC News
June 14, 2012
A member of the Prince Edward Island RCMP is facing assault charges.
The incident allegedly occurred May 23 in Charlottetown.
According to court documents, Staff Sgt. Kenneth Spenceley was off duty at the time.
He is alleged to have assaulted a man in a residence at the edge of the city.
Charlottetown city police laid the assault charge, and issued an order to stay away from the victim.
Spenceley is alleged to have broken that order a day later.
RCMP have launched an internal investigation, and assigned the 25-year veteran officer to administrative duties.
Spenceley is scheduled to appear in Charlottetown provincial court July 23.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/story/2012/06/14/pei-officer-charged-584.html
I am sick and tired of the media such as the PEI Guardian newspaper and the local CBC making sensationalistic stories by not reporting accurately or representing both sides of a story. I have had questions about the practices of some of their reporting before, but nowthat a story hits close to home I see they don’t care to share both sides, but want to simply run down an RCMP officer to make a story to grab some airtime and get people talking. How about covering the fact that the other party involved is also an RCMP officer who is now in a common- law relationship with Ken Spenceley’s exwife, and that the breech was a call from out of province to speak to his daughters. The story makes it sound like Ken beat a man up and went back two days later for more – definitely not the story but what a lot of the public have been led to believe. How proud these reporters must be of their good work gossip mongering – way to go.