Manitoba Newsmakers of 2008 Crystal Taman

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/12/2008 (6284 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The inquiry into the death of Crystal Taman ended in October, but the shock waves from it will be felt in Manitoba for years.

 

The inquiry’s report was a stinging indictment of the botched police investigation into Taman’s death and the poorly handled prosecution of ex-police officer Derek Harvey-Zenk that followed. Pretty much everyone involved, save for few exceptions, came out of the Taman case whipped and broken. For some, it ended their careers.

And while the inquiry is over, what was learned from it is only about to begin.

"It highlighted the needs for better police accountability in the city and the province," University of Manitoba criminologist Rick Linden said. "It doesn’t do police any favours to investigate themselves."

Linden said the Taman inquiry contributed to a new Police Act for the Province of Manitoba, which will contain a seismic shift in how police investigate themselves. Simply, they won’t: In cases of serious police wrongdoing an outside, independent agency will do the legwork. The legislation will be tabled by Justice Minister Dave Chomiak this spring.

"Hopefully they’ll come up with a creative solution and one that’s not driven by the bottom line," Linden said. "I also think now there’s an acceptance by police. They realize it’s a good thing."

Crystal Taman was killed early Feb. 25, 2005 as she waited for the light to change at Lagimodiere Boulevard and the north Perimeter Highway. She was rear-ended by Harvey-Zenk, an off-duty Winnipeg police constable who apparently fell asleep behind the wheel of his pickup truck. Harvey-Zenk had been up all night drinking with fellow officers and was on his way home.

Although there was evidence he might have been impaired, it was never properly collected by officers with the now-disbanded East St. Paul Police Service. An internal investigation done by Winnipeg police of the officers who were drinking with Harvey-Zenk also fell flat, as did the prosecution of Harvey-Zenk. In a controversial plea bargain, he pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death in exchange for no jail time.

The inquiry was held last summer to find out what went wrong with the case through the mouths of those involved. It wrapped up in early August and by the end of September the inquiry commissioner, retired Ontario judge Roger Salhany, had finished his report.

Salhany said, among many things, that the process within the Winnipeg Police Service of how officers investigate other officers is counter to anything having to do with truth.

"The picture that is painted is one of an incestuous process that is incapable of uncovering the truth," Salhany said in his report, which is available for download at www.tamaninquiry.ca. "While I do not find bad faith, it is understandable that there has been public suspicion that the investigation was not intent on disclosing facts that would embarrass the Winnipeg Police Service.

Chomiak has agreed to Salhany’s recommendation that a special investigative unit, independent of all police agencies in Manitoba, be created to investigate alleged criminal activity by a police officer.

An independent investigative unit was first proposed in 1991 by the aboriginal justice inquiry, which examined how Winnipeg police handled their investigation into the killing of J.J. Harper by Const. Robert Cross.

Chomiak has not commented on how the unit will be set up, or what it will look like.

"It will be a made-in-Manitoba solution," is as far as the minister has gone.

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca