City cop accused of sex assault referred to alleged victim as informant

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This article was published 28/11/2017 (2881 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg police officer accused of using his position to harass vulnerable women didn’t tell the police force about any informants he had, even though he claimed to be meeting a female informant at her home and would go there in uniform, court heard Tuesday.

Remi Van Den Driessche, 43, was a Winnipeg Police Service officer for eight years before he was accused of sexual assault, eight counts of criminal harassment and two counts each of extortion and breach of trust from 2011 to 2013.

He has pleaded not guilty and is on trial in provincial court, where Judge Sandra Chapman heard from some of the officers who were tasked with investigating the allegations four years ago.

Retired sergeant Barry Pennell, formerly the head of the WPS secure operations unit, testified Tuesday he searched police databases for any confidential informants linked to Van Den Driessche and found none. A search for one of Van Den Driessche’s alleged victims revealed the woman was not listed as an informant, Pennell said.

The woman previously testified Van Den Driessche asked her to show him her breasts, in lieu of him charging her for a prostitution-related offence while she was walking along Jarvis Street in an area where her court order prohibited her from being.

For months afterward, Van Den Driessche would “just randomly drop by” the Sutherland Hotel on Main Street, where she lived, wanting sexual favours, she alleged. She said Van Den Driessche stuck his finger down her throat and reached up her skirt, despite her refusals.

The woman told court Van Den Driessche was with a partner when they drove up to her and offered her a ride home one day. When they pulled up in front of the hotel, she said Van Den Driessche asked the other officer to get out of the car because he needed to talk to his “informant.”

While the other officer waited outside, “He basically had asked me when he was going to see me, when we would be making arrangements for an encounter. At that point, I told him it wasn’t happening,” the woman testified.

“I just, I wanted to get out of that police car so badly.”

Const. Percival Tabing, Van Den Driessche’s partner that day, also testified in court about waiting outside the car while the senior officer spoke to someone he referred to as his informant.

Pennell said Tuesday confidential informants have to be registered in a WPS secure operations database in order to receive payment or “judicial consideration” in exchange for information. The database keeps track of who the informants are, who their police “handlers” are, and logs any payments they receive and notes any issues with them or their information.

Pennell said the database’s purpose is to make sure informants are trustworthy and aren’t giving several different police officers the same information.

“The main reason is for the Service. They want to ensure that this person isn’t talking to four different officers and giving four different officers the same information and trying to gain advantage – monetary or judicial consideration from that… You want to ensure that they’re suitable for handle, that they’re not somebody that’s going to cause problems, make false allegations, have lied about different instances (and wouldn’t) put anybody in danger, and not to reveal any undercover officers,” Pennell said.

Defence lawyer Richard Wolson suggested an officer would need to know a potential informant would give reliable information before registering them in the database.

Pennell responded an attempt to register a confidential informant would show if the same person had already been found untrustworthy.

“But there’s always a first time, right?” Wolson said. “And you want to make sure if you’re going to be using somebody and the city’s going to be paying them, that they can deliver the goods, so as to speak.”

“Yes,” Pennell replied.

The judge also heard Tuesday from professional standards unit officers who were in charge of the investigation into Van Den Driessche’s conduct.

Before charges were laid related to five female victims, the investigators were responsible for tracking down which cruisers he had used and which officers he’d been partnered with, seizing his Motorola cellphone and phone records that showed calls between Van Den Driessche and an alleged victim’s phone. They interviewed one of the victims and showed her a series of 10 mugshots, from which she selected a photo of the accused.

One of the officers agreed with Wolson under cross-examination questioning Tuesday the assortment of mug shots was “not ideal” because Van Den Driessche was the only one pictured wearing a tie.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay