OPP officer unimpressed with city cop

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This article was published 13/08/2009 (6142 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

LONDON, Ont. — Ontario investigators landed in Winnipeg just days after eight slain Toronto-area bikers were found near Shedden, Ont., anxious to talk to a witness to the shootings.

But first, they had to get past a Winnipeg police officer who used the man as an informant.

Ontario Provincial Police Det.-Sgt. Mark Loader testified Wednesday he wasn’t impressed with the conduct of officer Tim Diack when trying to arrange a meeting with M.H., a police informant.

M.H. is a former Winnipeg Bandido who has already testified at the trial of six men accused of first-degree murder in the biker deaths.

He’s in the witness protection program and his identity is protected by court order.

Loader, a former member of the Ontario Biker Enforcement Unit, testifying for a second day, confirmed through a question by defence lawyer Michael Moon, that Diack wouldn’t let them near the informant until they took Diack out for dinner.

Then, he ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, Loader said.

The suggestion of the steak dinner was in previous evidence reviewed by Moon, who represents accused Dwight Mushey.

Loader also confirmed he told Diack if he wasn’t going to co-operate, the Ontario officers would confront M.H. on their own — based on their own intelligence.

The jury has already heard it was Diack who suggested to M.H. that his information could be worth $750,000.

Loader confirmed he was told M.H. would be making the request, along with relocation for he and his family.

But he said again that M.H. was given no promises and no money for his information.

He was told repeatedly that he could go to jail for his involvement, Loader said.

Diack did arrange for the Ontario officers to meet with M.H. and also rattled off some of the information M.H. had told him — specific details about the killings and some of the biker politics that led to the shootings.

But Loader said Diack told them detailed information off the cuff and without relying on a notebook.

Loader said during cross-examination by defence lawyer Clay Powell, who represents accused Wayne Kellestine, he had two of Diack’s supervisors in the meeting when Diack relayed his information. Then Loader had the officers sign his notebook to make sure what Loader had written down was accurate.

He said he was concerned that Diack’s “information was not reliable.”

He also wanted the Winnipeg officers to sign off that they had told him they had “taken care of” the investigation into an alleged plot to kill Winnipeg Bandido chapter president and co-accused Michael Sandham by three other Bandidos — two sent from Toronto — while the Winnipeg bikers were in Ontario.

At the first interview with M.H. at a hotel room on April 16, 2006, eight days after the bodies were discovered, Loader went over Diack’s information with M.H. to test its accuracy, before M.H. told his story to them for three hours.

Powell asserted that technique was “ass-backwards” and allowed the police to lay out a scenario for M.H to follow.

But Loader disagreed, pointing out M.H. corrected some of the information and then gave a detailed account of what happened that night at Kellestine’s southwestern Ontario farm.

“It was quite successful,” he said of the interview.

Once M.H. became a police agent, he wore body packs to gather audio-taped conversations.

— The Canadian Press