(CBC News) – The RCMP are using extraordinary measures to silence a critic who outed an officer posting naked bondage photos of himself online, according to the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.
Grant Wakefield says he and his wife were terrorized by police during a raid on their home this past August. The raid was executed after Wakefield provided police with evidence RCMP Cpl. Jim Brown had posted several bondage-type photos of himself on social media websites for people with sexual fetishes.
In some of the photos Brown was wearing RCMP riding boots while posed in sex acts with women in submissive positions. That eventually triggered a code of conduct investigation of Brown.
But after the story broke in the media in July, instead of searching Brown’s home, the RCMP turned their focus on Wakefield and obtained a 71- page search warrant alleging Brown was the victim of defamatory libel.
Using the warrant they raided Wakefield’s home and seized his computers and cellphones.
Now the B.C. Civil Liberties Association is accusing the RCMP of misusing their powers to silence critics.
BCCLA executive director David Eby points out any private citizen who has been defamed must sue in civil court, but only police can use the rare criminal charge of defamatory libel.
“They’re using this very rare provision, they’re using such extraordinary measures that we don’t see in other situations and he’s a critic of the RCMP, and we say it’s a fair question to ask,” said Eby.
Last month the RCMP did release a version of the information filed to obtain the search warrant, but significant parts of the information were blacked out on 55 of the 71 pages released.
Now Eby is asking the court to release an uncensored version of the document.
“The RCMP should be extra transparent in a situation like that and instead they’re being extra secretive,” said Eby.
Both the CBC and the Vancouver Sun newspaper were also in court this week seeking the release of the full document, arguing the case begs for public scrutiny as to whether the RCMP acted appropriately.
What the censored version of the information used to obtain the search warrant does reveal is that Wakefield was working with the RCMP to provide photos and information to police about Brown’s online activities and photos posted on sexual fetish websites.
But then after Brown’s activities were revealed in the media, the investigators turned their attention to Wakefield, accusing him of defamatory libel after he posted comments and tweets critical of Brown and the RCMP on a Twitter account that had only 13 followers.
The document says many of the online comments and tweets alleging criminal and other inappropriate behaviour by Brown are false.
It also says as of August there was no evidence of any criminal wrongdoing by Brown, but there was new evidence of professional misconduct.
Specifically, it says a woman came forward to complain about an encounter with Brown while he was on duty in his police car, and that they went to her home, and he returned to work after a two-hour lunch break. But details of the encounter and the alleged misconduct are all blacked out.
The document also says a third code of conduct investigation was launched after an inspector found a CD full of sexually explicit photos of Brown in the officer’s briefcase along with condoms and handcuffs in July.
The document says RCMP senior management was aware of the explicit sexual photos of Brown back in 2010 but chose not to proceed with any discipline.
The investigations continue, but so far no one has been charged in the case and there have been no findings of misconduct against Brown.
[Source]
Police ‘agent’ in RCMP erotic photo probe wants to go public
Ian Mulgrew
Vancouver Sun
October 18, 2012
A man who claims he was an RCMP agent says he collected information and sexually explicit photographs that Coquitlam Mountie Cpl. Jim Brown posted of himself on the Internet.
In an affidavit filed in court describing himself as “not a mere informant” but “an agent” directed by the force, Grant Wakefield says he provided the RCMP with that material and accused Cpl. Brown of engaging in sex while on duty and being involved in bondage- and domination-themed websites.
The RCMP found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing, but concluded “allegations of professional misconduct appear to be supported.”
The RCMP said Cpl. Brown has been suspended since July.
On Aug. 18, the Mounties raided Wakefield’s home and seized his computers.
Along with the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and media outlets, the New Westminster man is asking the court to unseal the information police used to obtain the controversial warrant to invade his apartment.
He portrays himself in his affidavit as a police agent whose message the RCMP has gone to great lengths to suppress.
A vetted version of a 71-page document sworn by Surrey RCMP Const. Phia Huffman to obtain the search warrant was released Sept. 21.
The vetting was done in part to conceal the identity of a confidential informant labelled in the document as “Informant A.”
But Wakefield wants to see an unedited version because, among other things, he believes he is the person referred to as “Informant A” in that material who is used to buttress the request for the search warrant.
Wakefield’s affidavit and the full day of arguments before Judge Peder Gulbransen laid out an extraordinary sequence of events focused on Cpl. Brown and the response of the national police agency.
Wakefield said in his affidavit that he believes he was “erroneously characterized” as a confidential informant though “I was acting at the direction of the RCMP at all times relevant to this proceeding and was not a mere informer.”
Liliane Bantourakis, a lawyer representing the RCMP, maintained that the RCMP does not consider Wakefield an agent.
In January or February, Wakefield said, “a distant family friend” contacted him after meeting a man who called himself the “Kilted Knight” on a dating site, Plenty of Fish.
She asked Wakefield to make inquiries.
Trolling Internet sites such as Twitvid, Twitpic and Fetlife.com, Wakefield said he found a number of disturbing images depicting a man called the Kilted Knight wearing the high brown boots of the traditional RCMP uniform and little else.
He said in the affidavit that the pictures “were obscene and depicted many sexually violent and graphic BDSM (bondage, domination and sado-masochism) …(and) gave me nightmares …”
At first, Wakefield said he believed the man was only posing as a police officer and so he contacted RCMP commercial crime Sgt. Tim Forestell, “a colleague and a friend” for 20 years.
In his affidavit, Wakefield said he sent pictures to Sgt. Forestell, who putatively referred the material to senior officers “for their feedback.”
Sometime after March, Wakefield contacted Cameron Ward, a lawyer for more than a score of victims’ families at the Missing Women’s Inquiry.
“I did so because ‘Kilted_Knight’ had stated that ‘the Picktons were well known to him,’” Wakefield swore.
The RCMP asserted when obtaining the search warrant that it had investigated and found no information to link Cpl. Brown to the Picktons or their infamous pig farm.
“A few days later, two RCMP members visited me at my apartment and identified themselves as being from the Professional Standards branch of the RCMP,” Wakefield said in his statement.
The two Mounties, in his account, spoke of an incident involving two USB memory sticks connected to Brown containing “extremely disturbing” material. Wakefield said they told him a senior member had told them to “‘forget what they had seen’ and that this member was a close friend of Cpl. Brown and that member concealed the pictures.”
Wakefield maintained that one of the officers told him the data sticks were “the tip of the iceberg” and that Cpl. Brown’s conduct had been known within the force for a decade.
In the information to obtain the search warrant, the RCMP differs from Wakefield’s account. Huffman swore that the senior officer denied ever making such comments. That officer said he was not friends with Cpl. Brown. Huffman said the RCMP located only a single USB drive and two CDs containing BDSM photographs of Cpl. Brown. The Mounties, in the information to obtain, also insisted that photographs Wakefield described have not been located.
Huffman swore in the information to obtain that Cpl. Brown reported joining the FetLife. Com fetishist community in 2007 and that the first code of conduct investigation into his activity occurred in 2010.
Sometime after the visit from the professional standards branch officers, Wakefield said in his affidavit, Forestell called and told him the DVD containing the photos he had downloaded and mailed to the detachment had not arrived.
“Throughout this investigation,” Wakefield insisted, “I was providing the RCMP with constant updates via email and phone as to what I was doing and (they) were aware of the aliases I was creating to investigate on behalf of the RCMP. Sgt. Forestell and I frequently corresponded by email.”
On July 5, The Vancouver Sun broke the story that Brown appeared online in photographs depicting scenes of sexual bondage and dominance.
The media storm caused E-Division headquarters to go “batshit nuclear,” Wakefield said in his affidavit.
In the weeks following, Wakefield said his wife and he received numerous telephone threats — one he alleges in his affidavit from a Coquitlam RCMP number.
“That threat was to the effect of ‘I’ll cut you up into such small pieces there won’t be enough for the pigs to eat,’” he said.
After a text-message warning, Wakefield added, someone showed up outside his apartment and from the laneway shone a flashlight into the window.
He called the New Westminster Police.
On Aug. 18, at about 4:45 in the afternoon, a knock on the door announced the raid by “seven or eight” Mounties.
“We accommodated the members, even offering them coffee, as we thought there must have been some kind of mistake,” Wakefield said.
But he and his wife were quickly separated.
“Once we were behind closed doors, Sgt. (David) Chauhan became far more aggressive with me,” Wakefield said in his affidavit. “He accused me of lying. He told me he would make sure that charges would be laid against me. He also compared himself to the ‘Big Red Machine.’ He became very angry when I tried to phone Sgt. Forestell.”
He said he has since found out that the RCMP contacted estranged family members and acquaintances — including his parents in Kelowna whom he hasn’t seen in a decade and with whom he does not have a “normal relationship.”
“The circumstances outlined above … disturbs me greatly,” Wakefield concluded.
“It has caused me significant stress, anxiety, and alarm during a time period of extreme health concerns related to complex post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorder, and renal cell carcinoma.”
On Aug. 23, he said, Sgt. Scott Rintoul came to his home and asked him to sign a ‘Termination Agreement.’
“I believe that the RCMP wants to distance itself from its efforts to investigate Cpl. Brown,” Wakefield stated in his affidavit. “Once I had been given the ‘Termination Agreement,’ I called Sgt. Forestell. Upon hearing my voice, he hung up the phone.”
The Mounties said this case was a criminal libel investigation over allegedly defamatory online comments made about RCMP officers, including Brown.
But Wakefield’s lawyer Michael McCubbin said at issue is primarily a Twitter account that was open for three days and had 13 followers.
“It’s not exactly the greatest evil in B.C.,” he scoffed in court. “Is the RCMP legitimately investigating crime or protecting its reputation?”
He wondered why the Mounties didn’t search Cpl. Brown’s home and how they had concluded the pictures Wakefield described didn’t exist.
“This is a case that cries out for public scrutiny,” added Michael Bozic, the lawyer for the civil liberties association.
He questioned why a criminal investigation was needed when defamation issues are normally handled through civil channels.
“The continuing secrecy around this file is unacceptable,” David Eby, executive director of the BCCLA, said outside the court.
“We shouldn’t have to go to court to get this information. Why do we have the police seizing the computers of people who offend police officers? Why can’t the police use the civil trial process like everyone else?”
Sun lawyer Scott Dawson reinforced that message in his submission.
“Citizens want to know the RCMP are not using state powers to silence those whose information is critical or embarrassing to the force,” Dawson said.
“When pieced together, (the materials before the court) don’t present a particularly flattering picture of the RCMP.”
Lawyers for Cpl. Brown and his wife asked the judge to protect the family’s privacy.
Judge Gulbransen said he will issue a decision Oct. 29.
The accuracy of Wakefield’s claims has not been tested and that issue is not expected to form part of the judgment.
The RCMP said although the code of conduct investigation into Cpl. Brown’s behaviour is complete, it remains under review.
Source: http://www.leaderpost.com/news/Police+agent+RCMP+erotic+photo+probe+wants+public/7406734/story.html