Before the Hostage Negotiation Unit was formally attached to the Emergency Response Team, negotiations were simply handled by people who had taken the training. In 1982 I took the Crisis Management Instructors Course at the Federal Training Academy in Ottawa, and as a result, I was called in to talk two “jumpers” off of the Lions Gate Bridge, and I persuaded one barricaded gunman to surrender to the police. One of the strategies I used to talk people off of bridges was to tell them that of over 1,500 people who had jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, thirty-two had survived (as of 2013 the total is thirty-four). I would go on to tell the would-be jumper that when each of the thirty-two was interviewed about their suicide attempt, every single one of them said that, as they fell to what they believed would be their certain death, they had changed their minds. On the two occasions that I used this strategy, it planted enough of a seed of doubt that my would-be jumpers also changed their minds and climbed back to the roadway. The truth is, I had no idea whether or not those thirty-two had changed their minds or not. In the case of one of the suicidal males, I promised him that before taking him in for assessment, I would have a drink with him. Once in custody I escorted him to a restaurant on Davie Street, where we each had a beer, which was interrupted when the duty officer attended the location and requested an explanation.
While I enjoy solving serious problems, I didn’t see myself in the role of a hostage negotiator formally attached to the Emergency Response Team, so when the opportunity presented itself to join, I didn’t take it. For the same reason I let my IED (improvised explosive device) credentials lapse. I didn’t want be defined as the VPD’s “go-to guy” for explosives. With the credentials comes a notation on the daily duty sheet that you are the resident expert and that designation results in you being assigned to every associated incident. I just didn’t want my work-life disrupted by being summoned to the scene of every suspicious package or barricaded man.
What does a policeman do when it’s really slow in his area? For Crowther and I the answer was to cross the boundary into Team 35’s area where the provincial government operated a methadone clinic, and check drug addicts. One day we were in Team 35 territory, westbound on 8th Avenue near Quebec Street, approaching a large parking lot to our north, when we saw five drug addicts doing a death march toward us. The one in front had his head down, an apparent captive, his movements apparently being controlled by the addict directly behind him. The three others were just following. We saw each other at the same time. They stopped, and it was like the graveyard scene in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, with the gunfighters Blondie, Tuco and Angel Eyes staring each other down before committing to action. I floored the gas pedal and we rocketed through the parking lot. There was a momentary hesitation, then the fellow in the front ran toward us, the addict behind him tossed down a double-barrelled shotgun, then he and his buddies scattered westbound. We caught the victim and the fellow who had been carrying the shotgun, but the others escaped. This was the last chapter in another drug debt gone bad.
I have many theories about policing. One of these relates to why criminals who don’t hesitate to shoot each other are much less likely to shoot at the police. The theory goes something like this: In western Canada, we have criminals still free in society who have pages and pages of information detailing their criminal convictions because we have the most liberal judges in the civilized world, judges who are incapable of dealing with these repeat offenders who, in a sane world, would never be released from prison. (Not all of our judges, just the vast majority.)
Elsewhere in Canada—and only recently in Vancouver—the definition of a chronic offender was a person who has five criminal convictions in a year. In Vancouver there were so many offenders included in this category that dealing with them was unworkable. Now, to fit the chronic-offender classification in Vancouver the person must have twelve criminal convictions in a year. The Vancouver Police Board was recently told that sixty of these chronic offenders have seventy-five convictions or more, twenty-six have one hundred or more convictions, and the worst four have one hundred fifty convictions or more. So the positive spin on this situation is that criminals generally avoid engaging with the police in violent interaction where injury or death might result, because there is so little consequence when they are caught and convicted.
Liberal judges are not a new phenomenon on the West Coast. When later in my career I was assigned to the Provincial Unsolved Homicide Unit, the Vancouver Police Historical Society asked me to review the evidence in the murder of Constable Ernest Sargent in 1927 in an effort to understand why the person who did it was charged but not convicted. My review concluded that Constable Sargent was murdered while walking the beat at 11th Avenue and Alder, probably by a notorious criminal named Leong Chung. The statement of the hospitalized and dying constable was weak in that he was unable to describe accurately the number of times he had fired his weapon (he thought three when in fact the number was six) and his positive ID of the suspect in a nine-person photo lineup was tainted because detectives had days earlier shown him a picture of the suspect.
Nonetheless, Chung was arrested and at two different jails admitted the murder of Sargent to two different snitches. The first judge cautioned the jury about the danger of believing the testimony of jailhouse rats but, being guided by case law, he allowed the testimony to be weighed. A conviction followed, then an appeal. The Appellate Court judge excluded the testimony of the jailhouse informants and Chung was ultimately found not guilty.
And now to the fastest confession ever obtained. The undercover RCMP member made his initial approach toward the murder suspect with the request to participate in some shady, but risk-free undertaking for some quick cash. The suspect looked over at him and said, “I don’t know if you want to get involved with me, man. I killed a guy a few years ago and the cops are still all over me.” The suspect was assured that his previous malfeasance wouldn’t be a problem.
A Case of Best-laid Plans
A woman in her late eighties lived alone in her family home on 12th Avenue just east of Victoria Drive. Her son had moved to the suburbs and visited frequently, but she wanted to maintain her independence in her own home. Recognizing that she was frail, she had set up a system with her next-door neighbour. Every morning she would lift up the shade in her kitchen, and this would be a signal to the neighbour that all was well. When the shade wasn’t lifted one Friday morning, the neighbour thought, “Oh, she has probably just forgotten,” but didn’t take any action to confirm that theory. But on Saturday the shade was still down and the neighbour called the police.
I was the acting corporal that morning and as Crowther and I rolled up to the scene, so did another constable and a female reserve officer whose day job was practicing medicine. At the time, Crowther and I took turns kicking in doors, which is pretty much the most fun a police officer can have. It was his turn. The neighbour showed up at the door and told us that the woman’s son was on his way and would be on-site with a key in about twenty minutes.
I looked over at Crowther and said, “Kick it in.”
The neighbour said, “But he’ll be here in twenty minutes!”
Crowther gave me the look that said, “We are just going in to find a body so there’s really no hurry.”
I told Crowther, “Kick it in now, or I’ll kick it in, and this one still counts as your turn.”
That old door just exploded in splinters from the frame. I went in first, checking the lower rooms, expecting to find a corpse, but as I went up the stairs, I heard a weak voice calling, “Police, help! Police!” The woman had fallen down between the kitchen table and wall and was unable to extricate herself. Our reserve doctor and I helped the woman up, and she asked, “Why didn’t they call you yesterday? The shade was down.”
4
Traffic Division, 1979–81