Too many questions, no answers

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/01/2017 (3476 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The story began last March on an icy street in what was initially only vaguely identified as a residential street.

That’s not where it really began.

It was 3:20 a.m. on March 12 when the 911 call was made about a suspected intoxicated driver.

That was right after the 2010 Chrysler 300 had clear-cut its way through three front yards, shearing off a fire hydrant, crashing over rocks, knocking down and uprooting small trees, and turning itself and a rusty van parked in a driveway into writeoffs. Neither the person who made the 911 call, nor any of the primarily pensioners who live on that block, could have suspected who was behind the wheel and in the passenger seat.

After all, what would two off-duty cops be doing getting into an accident like that — at an hour like that?

Basically, that’s what I asked the Winnipeg Police Service nearly a month later, after finally learning about the accident from a provincial government news release that also mentioned one of the officers was treated at the scene while the other was taken to hospital by ambulance for what turned out to be a minor injury.

What I asked police back then was the obvious question given previous Winnipeg police history: did the timing of the accident coincide with a platoon shift change?

The police service knew what I was really asking. Had the two cops in the Chrysler been driving home after a “shifter”? The kind of end-of-shift-drinking gathering like the one in 2005 that led to another traffic collision involving an off-duty city constable, the tragic death of wife and mother Crystal Taman and the creation of Manitoba’s Independent Investigation Unit (IIU).

Winnipeg police didn’t answer my question directly last April.

Instead, they said the investigation had been referred to an “outside agency.”  Normally, that would have been the IIU, but this was far from a normal case.

It took police five days to contact IIU director Zane Tessler, a time delay that, on its face, doesn’t comply with the call he’s supposed to get immediately after an incident in which police could be charged criminally. It would be another five days for Tessler to determine his unit couldn’t take the file.

It shouldn’t have taken that long for Tessler to figure out there was a  conflict.

John Stevenson is a retired city detective and the father of Andrew Stevenson, the cop at the centre of the case. The elder Stevenson was also a member of the IIU investigative unit. That’s why Saskatchewan RCMP assumed the investigation. Last October, the Mounties charged Andrew Stevenson with dangerous driving, which is a criminal offence. 

Then, earlier this month, Stevenson appeared in court and Grant Hughes, a Crown prosecutor from Brandon, filled in some details.

“The estimated distance travelled off road was over 52 metres,” Hughes told the judge.

That’s half a football field.

“The crash dash recorder recorded a speed of approximately 127 km/h an hour for a period of five seconds.”

Hughes suggested that might not be an absolutely accurate number because it was calculated from the wheels and it was an extremely icy road.

“But,” he added, “it does indicate a significant rate of speed.”

That’s not how Stevenson recalled it though, when he spoke to Manitoba Public Insurance. He estimated he was travelling 55 km/h in the 50-km/h zone and claimed he swerved to avoid someone on the street.

Hughes also reported Stevenson’s police pal passenger, Elston Bostock, was intoxicated. It was what was missing from the Crown prosecutor’s reading of the “facts” that stuck out. There was no evidence that police had demanded a breathalyzer from Stevenson. 

“According to Mr. Stevenson’s statement, he hadn’t had any alcohol to drink since earlier that evening,” Hughes said. “And there was absolutely nothing… any witness evidence to suggest that Mr. Stevenson was intoxicated whatsoever.”

In the end there was a plea bargain. Hughes, Stevenson’s lawyer and the judge agreed the criminal charge be reduced to careless driving; a highway traffic offence with a fine of $500.

But that wasn’t really the end.

I was hoping there was going to be a mention in court about where Stevenson and his intoxicated passenger were coming from that morning. Or where they were going. But Hughes didn’t say.

If Chief Danny Smyth knows, he isn’t saying either. When I persisted via email to ask whether police were doing an internal investigation, a police spokesman said they have requested a copy of the Saskatchewan RCMP investigation.

“Once that is reviewed it will then have to be determined if any further investigation is warranted.”

There was something else that was finally revealed in court. 

The neighbourhood and exact location where Stevenson began his off-road romp by taking out the fire hydrant.

On Thursday evening, I drove out to North Kildonan and interviewed several homeowners in the 400 block of Bonner Avenue. One of them was a police officer and former traffic cop with a front window view of the accident who, after I introduced myself, kept his comment brief: “Get off my property.”

Then he went across the street to tell the woman who lives where the Chrysler finally stopped that I was on my way to ask her some questions about the accident. 

I spent three hours on the block speaking with three other homeowners who had their front yards clear cut, as well as others nearby. The most revealing part of what they said wasn’t about what they witnessed — it was that police have never asked them what they witnessed.

That brought on a flashback.

Of another event on an early March morning nearly 30 years ago, when a police officer shot a 36-year-old aboriginal leader walking home on Logan Avenue and the cops weren’t curious enough to properly canvass for witnesses in that neighbourhood.

The death of J. J. Harper wasn’t my only flashback. Before driving over to Bonner Avenue, I checked for directions and was reminded of another tragic death. The location where the two off-duty officers crashed last year is 3.5 kilometres and mere minutes from the intersection of the Perimeter Highway and Lagimodiere Boulevard where Crystal Taman was killed by another off-duty officer who plowed into her car.

Apparently, at its cultural core, the Winnipeg Police Service still hasn’t learned from what should have been two of its most important teaching moments.

That’s why what happened last winter on an icy street in North Kildonan wasn’t the beginning of the story.

And that’s why it’s not the end, either. 

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca