|
Scenario
sting victims: Clayton Mentuck
| Atif Rafay and Sebastian
Burns | Kyle Unger | Keigo
Glen White: Judge orders cops to tape confessions | Wilfred
Hathway | Christine
LePage | Gordon
Strowbridge | Terry Arnold:
end of a snitch?
Other stories by Brian Hutchinson
: Frozen Ghosts |
Richard Klassen wins civil claim
|
Police illegal
tactics
RCMP turns to 'Mr. Big'
to nab criminals: Shootings, assaults staged in elaborate stings
Brian Hutchinson, National
Post, December 18, 2004
On Sept. 16, 1995, a boy went
for a walk through the woods near Hope, B.C., an hour's drive
east of Vancouver. He made a gruesome discovery. Bill Bedford,
a local cocaine dealer, had been taped to a tree and then shot
in the head, execution-style.
Aside from the body, there
was no evidence left at the scene, nothing that could help police
with their murder investigation.
The RCMP had cellphone receipts
for the area; investigators believed that an alleged crackhouse
operator named Kevin Simmonds had been around the crime scene
when Bedford was murdered. Simmonds was questioned but denied
any knowledge of Bedford's demise. The police investigation stalled,
and the case soon went cold.
Four years later, Simmonds
walked into an elaborate police sting, one of a series of controversial
but increasingly common undercover operations developed by the
RCMP in B.C.
The police call it role playing:
they pretend to be criminals. Twenty to 25 times a year, with
little notice, selected undercover operators are sent into the
criminal netherworld to make friendly contact with a murder suspect,
and then lure them into a fantasy world of cash, booze and crime.
Each meeting, called a scenario,
is predetermined and planned. The ultimate goal is to elicit
from the suspect a murder confession.
It is dangerous, demanding
work. The officers must develop different criminal identities
and dress the part. They then approach the suspect and curry
favour with him. Soon enough, in all likelihood, their "target"
will be put in front of "Mr. Big."
Simmonds met a tough-looking
biker in early 1999. The guy trash-talked and knew all about
guns. He said he was an enforcer. He invited Simmonds to assist
him in what appeared to be criminal endeavours. Simmonds was
paid small amounts of money. Once, he helped his new friend count
out $970,000 in cash. He was told he could make $15,000 to $25,000
in a pending deal, if he played his cards right.
Simmonds suspected nothing.
In April, 1999, he was introduced to the organization's "boss,"
Mr. Big. The encounter was secretly videotaped.
Mr. Big was another undercover
RCMP operator. He told Simmonds he was very connected, that he
even had police sources. He said knew Simmonds was getting "heat"
for something that went down near Hope, years earlier.
"Well, what the f--- happened?"
Mr. Big asked.
Simmonds gave him a few details,
about a guy who'd been shot, how the RCMP were once all over
him for it, and how things had cooled down.
"Why did you whack him?"
Mr. Big demanded.
"He owed ninety grand
[and] he wouldn't pay the ninety grand," Simmonds said.
"I shot him once underneath the eye and once in the chest,
yeah... I didn't lose any sleep over it."
Simmonds' damning statement
led to a first-degree murder conviction. He is now behind bars.
Al Haslett is an RCMP sergeant
based in Kelowna, B.C. He helped develop the unique criminal
role-playing techniques 14 years ago. "I was probably the
one who started it," he says. "I was just thinking
outside the box, trying to see how far we could go."
They go further than you might
imagine. Assaults and kidnappings are staged, and shootings sometimes
faked, to win a target's confidence. Luxury vehicles and jet
aircraft may be engaged in a bid to woo a suspect. Alcohol is
considered an important prop. Once, an undercover officer was
"prepared to drink and drive," to maintain his criminal
persona.
Such investigations may last
months, and more than a dozen undercover officers in a variety
of settings may take part.
RCMP in B.C. say their role-playing
scenarios, while highly unconventional, are effective. About
180 of the stings have been conducted in B.C. since 1997. According
to Peter Marsh, the RCMP's director of undercover operations
for B.C., about 80% were considered successful, by which he means
they either produced evidence for the prosecution or eliminated
a target as a suspect.
The latest sting concluded
three weeks ago, with the arrest of a man in the interior of
B.C. Timothy Dean Easthope, 29, was charged with second-degree
murder in the 1995 death of Matthew Hobbs. His lawyer, Paul Danyliu,
says his client is innocent and will plead not guilty. "He
is very susceptible to a sting operation, because he has a severe
head injury," Mr. Danyliu says. "These sort of sting
operations are just asking for false confessions."
Canadian courts have repeatedly
ruled that undercover police officers may resort to "dirty
tricks" and "deceit" to apprehend suspected criminals,
if their techniques do not "shock" the community's
sense of decency. That is the line that has been drawn.
Lawyers for Sebastian Burns
and Atif Rafay argued unsuccessfully that RCMP undercover operators
went too far when they launched a Mr. Big-style investigation
against their clients in Vancouver 10 years ago.
Burns and Rafay were suspected
of killing Rafay's father, mother and sister in Bellevue, Wash.
With no physical evidence linking the two to the murders, Bellevue
police asked for help from the B.C. undercover unit.
A series of Mr. Big scenarios
was launched in 1995; Burns, then 19, was the primary target.
An undercover operator approached him outside a Vancouver hair
salon, and introduced him to his "boss." They soon
had Burns "steal" a car, and to "launder"
money.
At one point, Burns tried to
wriggle free. "I don't know if I'm gonna have time to do
what, you know, you might think is appropriate for me to do,"
he told the two RCMP operatives, according to recorded transcripts
entered as evidence in court. "I guess, the thing is, [I'm]
almost not that motivated right now, because like as I said,
right, I just got things to do.... I sort of have things on my
plate.... Like I say, I'm totally busy."
The "crime boss"
did not accept this.
"Don't take me for a f---ing
stupid man," he told Burns, during a videotaped meeting
in June, 1995. "I f---ing uh, I got your f---ing, uh, basically
your f---ing future in the palm of my hand if I want it anyway
but you're gonna make money for me.... Don't ever let your f---ing
friends sell me short, 'cause if they start selling me short,
you being in the middle is gonna get hurt."
Staff Sgt. Marsh says his officers
"don't make a habit" of issuing direct threats to targets.
In the Burns and Rafay case, he says, threats were merely implied.
The suspects came to "believe" they might be killed
if they refused to confess. This, Staff Sgt. Marsh concedes,
is "probably" what the RCMP wanted them to think. "That's
different than telling someone he will be killed," he says.
In a meeting with Burns, Mr.
Big claimed to have knowledge of explosive evidence that he said
police in Bellevue planned to use against Burns. He produced
a memo on Bellevue police letterhead that said hair matched to
Burns was found at the murder scene; the hair, the memo said,
was mingled with the blood of one of the Rafay murder victims.
"The police f---ing know
you killed these people," said Mr. Big. The f---ing DNA
is being cultured right now and they're puttin' together a big
f---ing case against you. So I'm not gonna have this bullsh--,
you lying to me now...."
Mr. Big said he could have
the DNA destroyed by sources inside the Bellevue police, but
only if Burns confessed to the murder. Details were needed, said
Mr. Big, so that his sources knew what to look for when they
went to destroy the DNA evidence.
It was all a ruse. The memo
was fake. But Burns haltingly confessed. Atif Rafay was soon
introduced to the big boss; prompted by Burns, he confessed as
well. Their statements sealed their extradition to Washington.
In the United States, police
may not issue threats or offer suspected criminals promises,
money or alcohol in exchange for confessions. Such techniques
are considered coercive and an infringement of an individual's
rights.
False confessions expert Richard
Leo, a criminologist at the University of California, says that
if Burns and Rafay had been U.S. citizens, their confessions
would not have been admitted as evidence at their trial in Seattle.
"Mr. Big scenarios do not occur in the U.S.," he says.
Because they are Canadians,
and because they had confessed to Canadian police in Canada,
a Seattle judge allowed their confessions into evidence.
This year, a Seattle jury convicted
them on three counts of first-degree murder. They were each sentenced
to life in prison. They are preparing an appeal.
Staff Sgt. Marsh confirms his
B.C.-based undercover unit has exported the Mr. Big scenarios
to other regions of Canada. Undercover operators have given role-playing
training to the Ontario Provincial Police, he says. OPP officials
refused to confirm or deny this. RCMP officers in Manitoba are
known to have used the method, with mixed results.
In 1998, Manitoba-based undercover
officers launched a Mr. Big-style investigation directed at George
Mentuck, a man suspected of killing a 14-year-old girl. Acting
as a member of a criminal network, an RCMP constable recruited
Mr. Mentuck into a variety of scenarios, paying him $1,800 over
seven days and offering him alcohol.
The officer told Mr. Mentuck
that his organization "knew" he had murdered the teenaged
girl, Amanda Cook. He insisted Mr. Mentuck confess. Doing so,
the officer said, would not only establish a sense of trust between
Mr. Mentuck and the organization, but would lead to benefits
worth at least $85,000.
Mr. Mentuck denied the allegation
at least 12 times.
In one meeting, the officer
complained that his "boss" had given him "sh--"
because Mr. Mentuck had not confessed. "My ass is on the
f---ing line here," groused the cop. "I could lose
my f---ing job."
"Let's go have that beer,"
Mr. Mentuck said.
"What are you tellin'
me," snapped the undercover officer. "Tell me, George,
huh?"
"I guess I did then,"
Mr. Mentuck said. He then offered up a vague confession, riddled
with inaccuracies and contradictions.
Two years later, a trial judge
acquitted Mr. Mentuck. "I conclude that the confession,
if not false, was certainly too unreliable for acceptance as
an admission of guilt," noted Mr. Justice Alan MacInnes.
"In my view, the police must be aware that as the level
of inducement increases, the risk of receiving a confession to
an offence which one did not commit increases, and the reliability
of the confession diminishes correspondingly. In this case, in
my view, the level of inducement was overpowering."
Another Manitoba man convicted
of murder following a Mr. Big-style sting may soon be free. Kyle
Unger has always maintained a 1991 murder confession he gave
to RCMP officers posing as criminals was false. Three months
ago, DNA testing concluded a strand of hair found on a murdered
teenager did not come from Mr. Unger, as had been believed.
Mr. Unger's lawyer, James Lockyer,
says his client's experience shows Mr. Big stings "are dangerous
to rely upon. They require substantial corroborative evidence
to be considered reliable."
In this case, there was none.
There was only a confession extracted by undercover officers
who had offered Mr. Unger a lucrative-sounding job in exchange
for "the truth."
The case has been referred
to Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, who has been asked to consider
whether Mr. Unger was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
Despite the controversies,
the RCMP in B.C. will continue to employ their aggressive undercover
methods, Staff Sgt. Marsh says. They will also continue to pass
along the technique to police from other countries. "We
invite foreigners to our training courses in Vancouver,"
Staff Sgt. Marsh says. Recently, one officer from Belgium came
to Vancouver for role-playing lessons.
The RCMP's undercover scenario
techniques have also been exported to the Australian state of
Victoria. Sgt. Haslett helped train officers there a decade ago.
The techniques have only recently
become public knowledge Down Under; Australian trial lawyers
and civil rights activists have condemned them. They "completely
short-circuit the safeguards that operate within our system to
protect people charged with crimes," Chris Dale, president
of the Victorian Law Institute told reporters in September.
Until lawmakers decide otherwise,
however, the techniques will remain in play, in Australia, and
in their country of origin, Canada. bhutchinson@nationalpost.com
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
