Cop told woman to lift shirt: witness

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This article was published 22/11/2017 (2887 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A 43-year-old Winnipeg Police Service officer accused of using his position to sexually assault and victimize vulnerable women is on trial in provincial court.

Remi Van Den Driessche is accused of sexual assault, eight counts of criminal harassment and two counts each of extortion and breach of trust from 2011 to 2013.

The allegations involve five women, some of whom had been involved in the sex trade.

The officer is accused of using his position as a police officer to coerce the women and force them into sexual acts. He pleaded not guilty, and the court began hearing evidence in the case last fall after a preliminary inquiry turned into a trial.

The trial continued this week, with testimony from a former hotel manager who told court he saw a uniformed police officer harassing a woman who lived at the Sutherland Hotel on Main Street.

Robert Henry, 56, was manager of the Sutherland Hotel and a caretaker for its upstairs rented rooms before he was arrested in 2014 and convicted on drug offences.

Currently an inmate at Stony Mountain Institution, Henry testified Tuesday he was serving customers in the downstairs area of the hotel when two WPS officers came in one day and went upstairs. The hotel’s upper level was home to several long-term renters, and had a locked door to prevent entry by people who didn’t live there, Henry said.

He testified he heard a bang, and went upstairs to see the officers had busted the door open.

“He ripped open the door,” Henry said of one of the officers, whom he couldn’t identify.

He testified he watched from around the corner as one of the officers, with the other standing a few feet away, knocked on a female resident’s door and asked her to lift her shirt so he could see her breasts.

“She asked if he was serious,” Henry testified.

“He said if she didn’t do it, he would charge her,” he said in response to questions from Brandon Crown attorney Richard Lonstrup.

“She asked what he was going to charge her with, and the officer said, whatever he could.”

Henry said he saw the officer reach out his hands toward the woman before she slammed the door. After the police left, Henry said he knocked on the woman’s door and asked her what had just happened, and if he’d heard what he thought he heard.

“She was scared she was going to get in trouble,” Henry said.

She was crying, and told him this had been going on for months, he said. Henry said he told the woman she should “charge him,” and advised her to tell the police officer “she has AIDS,” so he’d leave her alone.

Henry testified he later witnessed an interaction between the woman and the officer when he went looking for her at her boyfriend’s suite, and said she yelled at the officer to go away, telling him she had AIDS.

One of Van Den Driessche’s former co-workers testified about an incident in which they went to the Sutherland Hotel together to meet Van Den Driessche’s “informant.”

Const. Percival Tabing testified Van Den Driessche was his secondary field trainer in November 2011 when they parked in front of the Main Street hotel and Van Den Driessche asked him to wait outside while he talked to a female informant in the back of the cruiser. The woman later came forward as an alleged victim.

He took his supervisor’s word the woman was an informant, and recalled Van Den Driessche sending a message to a police sergeant about going to meet with an informant, Tabing told court.

Tabing said he spent five to 10 minutes outside in the cold while the two talked.

“I don’t see any problem between them,” he said under cross-examination from defence lawyer Richard Wolson.

During the 11 occasions he and Van Den Driessche worked together, Tabing said, he saw “nothing unusual” in how Van Den Driessche interacted with women, including sex workers on the street.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @thatkatiemay