Ben Gelinas (Edmonton Journal) – Assault charges have been laid against a Thorsby RCMP officer.
Const. Chad Haggerty is facing two counts of assault against a Leduc woman for an incident in April 2004.
Earlier this year, Haggerty was charged with an unrelated assault against a woman in Fort Saskatchewan.
Both incidents took place when the veteran officer was off duty.
The RCMP said Haggerty remains suspended with pay.
The 37-year-old officer was previously reprimanded by RCMP for improperly handling a drug file, banging a suspect’s head into a cellblock wall and slapping another man’s cheeks to force him to take a breathalyzer test.
People certainly have some interesting perspectives. One colleague of mine says his first interaction with a Mountie was when he was in is early teens and skulking around the neighborhood doing mischief and looking for another bike to steal and joyride with. As he was climbing through a bush for his latest snatch he got this boot to the rear end. When he looked around he saw two big brown leather boots with spurs. Hauled up by the scruff of his neck he was admonished to never engage in such activity again or the Mountie would be back. According to him that was the end of his “criminal” career, as the fear of the Mounted was upon him. Not a speeding ticket to this day. His take was that that would have been what his father would have done if he had caught him. When the incident was relayed to his father (at the direction of the Mountie), his father replied he was lucky not to be in jail.
I would posit that if such an event would occur today, the officer would be charged with assault, be the subject of internal proceedings and would be reading about it in the papers for months. The view of whether or not we are better off than in past decades is a debatable point. The results of various “systems” and “procedures” is worthy of discussion.
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Sounds like policing in the 60’s and 70’s.
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Ain’t that the truth … and the 80s. My first couple of years in the force in the early 80s featured a few eye-opening incidents where members should have been investigated and criminally charged but that never happened. People were occasionally transferred but mostly everything just quietly went away. A lot of people who are appalled at what some members are getting up to these days seem to believe that the good old days were much better. Not so.
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This guy assaulted two members of the public between 2001 and 2004. The RCMP apparently preferred to call them “discreditable conduct”. I would love to know why assault charges weren’t also laid and what happened to the impaired driving case as a result of Haggerty slapping the breathalyzer testee. Now he’s charged with two more assaults. The RCMP really seems to have a problem with identifying and dealing with their problem children early. Its Cst. Sandboe all over again. There were red flags in both cases.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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