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Toronto police
Toronto Police Board
chair Alan Heisey maliciously attacked by OPP Project P fanatic
OPP Project P fanatic Paul
Gillespie is at it again. You will perhaps recall last January
when Detective Sergeant Gillespie was all over TV and radio touting
Project Snowball, an undercover operation which he claimed had
ensnared thousands internationally, and hundreds in Canada.
Several U.S. cases arising
from the same investigation were thrown out because of violations
of the accused persons' constitutional rights.
Paul was a busy guy, looking
everywhere for child porn sympathisers as well as for lookers
and downloaders. Lawyer Alan Heisey made a comment that there
were a distintinctions to be made among different ages of children
portrayed in this pornography. Or something along those lines.
We don't know exactly what Mr. Heisey said, but Paul Gillespie
took note of the comment and filed a memo insinuating Heisey
was a child porn symp.
When Heisey became Chairman
of the Board of Police Commissioners, the memo suddenly surfaced.
Heisey was outraged and indicated
in some detail just how damaging such a characterization can
be.
 That this is occurring at the same
time Richard Klassen is on the
way to collecting damages for having been targetted by Saskatoon
Police Superintendent Brian
Dueck is interesting. While Gillespie and Dueck were working
on schemes to criminalize all manner of innocent people by convicting
them as child sex offenders, the targets have been fighting back
and exposing their illegal tactics.
On January 17, Rosie DiManno
came to Gillespie's defence. Among other things, she said it
was improper for Heisey to express any opinion regarding his
son's teacher who was facing child porn charges. (DiManno's column
is at the bottom of the page)
In 1992, when the accused from
Martensville were brought in to the Saskatoon Police station,
police officer John Popowich expressed to colleagues that he
really didn't think they were guilty. The next thing he knew,
he, Popowich found himself charged as being part of the same
Satanic cult. As we all learned eleven years later, Popowich
was right and he received a $1.3M setlement underscoring how
right he was.
If members of the police community
are not allowed to raise doubts, even among themselves, how on
earth can we expect there to be any checks and balances on a
police service?
As this story unfolds, Jim
Coyle from the Toronto Star has written a column expressing what
we hope is a general reaction. We go one step further and call
on Fantino to stop any investigation into the propriety of Heisey's
actions and launch a full investigation into Gillespie.
Memo smear: Judge
Report clears police board boss
By ROB GRANATSTEIN ,
TORONTO SUN, March 26, 2004
A smear campaign could not
overthrow Toronto Police Services Board chairman Alan Heisey.
Heisey, 49, was completely exonerated in a report released yesterday
by Justice Sydney Robins into private comments the lawyer made
to members of the police sex-crimes unit.
Robins wrote in his report
he found it "troubling" a confidential e-mail sent
to Police Chief Julian Fantino about Heisey's comments was leaked
to the media, fueling a firestorm.
"The leak of the confidential
police memo was manifestly calculated to damage Mr. Heisey's
reputation and undermine, if not destroy, his ability to continue
as chair of the Toronto Police Services Board," Robins wrote,
adding Heisey suffered a "grave injustice."
The board continues to back
Heisey as chairman.
"The conclusion (Robins)
came to was the only reason this went out was to smear a very
upstanding citizen," board vice-chairman Pam McConnell said.
Heisey said he is pleased with
the judge's conclusions.
"The past three months
have been a horrible and trying time for me," Heisey said,
adding he will stay on as chairman.
"It's been so much fun,"
he said with a forced laugh.
At a September, 2002, sex-crimes
conference, Heisey subbed in for then-board chairman Norm Gardner
at a banquet. In a hotel suite before the event, Heisey ended
up in a conversation with a lawyer and three police officers,
including Det.-Sgt. Paul Gillespie.
In the five- to 10-minute chat
Heisey, a father of four, chatted about the case of a private
school teacher who was charged with child pornography offences.
Heisey's son was a student
at the school.
He asked Gillespie, who investigated
the case, his opinion, and indicated he hoped the teacher would
not go to jail.
Heisey also commented: "I
understand how one could be attracted to the beautiful young
body of an 8-year-old, but not children in diapers."
Robins reported a number of
officers who heard Heisey's comments felt they were "inappropriate"
and "offensive," but found no evidence they interfered
with the case.
Gillespie reported the conversation
to a senior officer who told him to note it on paper so it could
be put into the police computer system. That report was then
e-mailed to the chief.
Fantino's investigation into
who leaked the e-mail is also nearly done. The story broke on
CFTO, but a few media outlets had seen the memo and not written
the story. The chief called the leak unacceptable, but would
not go as far as saying the person who gave it out should be
fired.
- Probe clears police
board head
Target of smear campaign: Judge
Leak of police memo `calculated'
CATHERINE PORTER, CITY HALL
BUREAU, The Toronto Sta, Mar. 26, 2004
Toronto Police Services Board
chair Alan Heisey has been cleared of any wrongdoing after an
investigation into a controversial conversation he had with a
police detective 18 months ago.
Retired judge Sydney Robins
also found that Heisey was the target of a smear campaign, and
that his comments to a veteran sex-crimes detective at a party
were "grotesquely misconstrued" in an internal police
memo. The memo was leaked to the media more than a year later,
a week after Heisey was named chair of the board.
"The leak of the confidential
police memo was manifestly calculated to damage Mr. Heisey's
reputation and undermine, if not destroy, his ability to continue
as chair of the Toronto Police Services Board," Robins wrote
in his 28-page review released yesterday.
The former Ontario Court of
Appeal justice was appointed by the board to investigate the
conversation documented in a leaked memo, dated September, 2002.
It was written by Detective Sergeant Paul Gillespie of the sex-crimes
unit to his supervisor, Staff Superintendent Rocky Cleveland.
In it, Gillespie states that
Heisey - then a member of the police services board - approached
him at a cocktail party during a sex-crimes conference.
During the conversation, he
mentioned the case of a teacher from his son's school charged
with possessing child pornography.
Gillespie wrote that Heisey
told him he hoped the accused "did not go to jail."
He also quoted Heisey as saying, "I understand how one could
be attracted to the beautiful young body of an 8-year-old, but
not children in diapers."
In his report, Robins concludes:
"In no sense was this
a statement of his personal beliefs or an indication of sympathy
toward child pornography or abuse." The statement, as reported
in the memo, was taken out of context. It was part of a five-to-10-minute
conversation, in which Heisey was trying to fathom the mind of
a pedophile - a seminar topic - "so as to comprehend how
one could engage in such behaviour."
Heisey was not trying to influence
the police investigation into the teacher at his son's school.
He was simply having a casual "cocktail party" conversation
with an officer he had just met. Heisey didn't know the teacher,
nor did he "have any interest in his case beyond that of
a parent" of a student.
Nothing Heisey said compromised
the board's integrity nor damaged public confidence in it, so
he did not break the board's 15-point code of conduct.
An emotional Heisey said yesterday
he was happy the matter was resolved.
"It's been a very difficult
time for my family and me," he said, going on to chair a
board meeting. "We should get this behind the board and
behind the police services."
Police Chief Julian Fantino
said the police investigation into the source of the leak was
almost complete. "The leak was totally inappropriate and
unacceptable," he said. "I take exception to it every
bit as much as Mr. Heisey."
Lambasting the media for publishing
the document, Fantino stated flatly that there was no smear campaign
against board members by the police.
"I don't have any agenda
of that nature and I would be very surprised if any of our people
did as well," he said.
Fantino said he gave the memo
to then-chair Norm Gardner shortly after it was written for him
to deal with it. Gardner filed the document and never brought
it up before the board.
Then, 15 months later, in January
- just after Heisey was named to head the board - the memo was
leaked to the media. That same week, Gardner was appearing before
a public inquiry to determine whether he breached the Police
Services Act by accepting a handgun from a firearms manufacturer
and ammunition from the police. Gardner denied he was the source
of the leak.
Heisey, a veteran lawyer, has
set a progressive record during his three years on the police
services board. One of his first steps as chair was to call for
a review of the internal police complaints system, and since
then he has led the charge to open the police budget to greater
public scrutiny.
Board vice-chair Pam McConnell
said the experience would not shake the board's progressive agenda.
"In a sense, it makes
us even stronger in our right to do our job and our resolve to
do our job," she said. "It's a very good ending to
a very bad two months."
She said the board plans to
set guidelines for its members in holding conversations with
police officers, separating "appropriate discourse"
from "when it crosses the line," as suggested by Robins'
report.
Mayor David Miller called the
leak "absolutely unacceptable" and a danger to civilian
participation on civic boards.
"I hope this is the end
of it and we don't see these kinds of leaks and smears ever happen
again," he said. "Recruiting for the police services
board is going to be extremely difficult when people are under
the threat of things like what happened to Mr. Heisey."
Although Robins was not charged
with investigating the source of the leak, he noted the "troubling
way" the memo and its contents were handled.
Officers are required to record
"for possible future reference ... any concerns he or she
may have about conversations with board members or others,"
he noted.
These memos are then "entered
into the system," without a strict procedure to ensure their
confidentiality, he wrote. "To truly maintain confidentiality,
and ensure fairness, more needs to be done.
"There are few more effective
ways of damaging a person's reputation than by the circulation
of unfounded rumours of sexual misconduct involving children."
Detective Sergeant Gillespie
could not be reached for comment, but Toronto Police Association
president Rick McIntosh said the officer followed the correct
protocol in writing the memo to his supervisor. "You can't
lose sight of the fact that many of our members were offended
by Mr. Heisey's comments and that they thought they were inappropriate,"
he said.
In other business, the board
asked the province yesterday to indefinitely extend the life
of 12 red-light cameras in Toronto. The program, expected to
end this November, is intended to reduce the number of motorists
speeding through red lights.
Fear and loathing on
the police board
By John Barber, Feb.
7, 2004
It won't be long before retired
Judge Sydney Robins reports to the Toronto Police Services Board
on what really happened when board chair Alan Heisey discussed
pedophilia with Detective Sergeant Paul Gillespie in the fall
of 2002 -- and how Mr. Gillespie's "internal correspondence"
on the matter, along with another high-level e-mail straight
out of Chief Julian Fantino's inbox, became public 17 months
later, a week after Mr. Heisey was elected police board chair
and the same day a judicial hearing on the conduct of his predecessor,
Norm Gardner, began.
Judge Robins's report will
be interesting reading even if it doesn't sort that mess out.
As similar informal inquiries into civic sleaze have shown, one
pass is never enough to sweep it away.
That's one reason why Mr. Heisey,
not waiting for the judge's report, is already musing about stepping
down when his current appointment to the board expires later
this year. Like so many other frustrated appointees before him,
many of whom have fled the board after suffering from bruising
personal attacks and whisper campaigns, the latest chair is having
trouble seeing the upside of life at 40 College Street.
The various miseries of Judy
Sgro, Olivia Chow, Arnold Minors, Bas Balkissoon, Susan Eng and
Laura Rowe all tell the same basic story. Its themes are confrontation,
intimidation, fear and -- yes -- loathing. As Globe reporter
Katherine Harding discovered in this week's eye-opening analysis
of police budgeting, fear keeps many experienced municipal politicians
off the civilian oversight board altogether.
Mr. Heisey is just the board's
latest victim, caught in a cleverly laid tabloid trap from which
there is little hope of escape, no matter what the learned judge
may say about whodunit and why.
Although the controversies
always vary -- Laura Rowe was the last to suffer from sex-related
whispers and leaks -- there is a clear consistency in the policy
positions held by all the police board victims. They needn't
be leftists -- neither Ms. Sgro, Mr. Balkissoon nor Mr. Heisey
is that -- but their views on what needs to be done with the
board and the service are consistent.
Following his abrupt resignation
from the board in the spring of 2002, Mr. Balkissoon wrote a
letter that expressed concerns and frustrations almost identical
to those Mr. Heisey included in a much more cautious letter to
council following his first term on the board.
Both complained that the effectiveness
of individual board members is severely hampered by requirements
to attend an excessive number of ceremonial events. Mr. Heisey
praised the board's cautious progress toward a new civilian complaints
process; Mr. Balkissoon criticized the inadequacy of the existing
process. Both shared worries about the lack of experience among
board members.
The Scarborough councillor
also criticized the board's propensity to conduct public business
in private, a complaint the new board under Mr. Heisey -- at
least until it was sabotaged by the release of the dubious sex
memo -- was moving to address. Mr. Balkissoon expressed the need
for much greater rigour in the process that produces annual police
budgets, and Mr. Heisey's board has announced its intention to
apply it.
That alone -- a move on the
budget -- would be enough to inspire an anti-Heisey smear campaign,
according to some city hall insiders. This is not a sex story,
they say, it's a budget story. But you could just as easily say
that any board member who dares criticize any operation of the
Toronto Police Service comes to grief.
Although there is no conclusive
evidence that anybody directly connected to the police leaked
the memos -- and there may never be, despite the current investigation
-- their very existence is telling enough.
Superintendent "Rocky"
Cleveland's sarcastic e-mail to Chief Fantino on the matter,
in which he speculates that Mr. Heisey is about to extol "the
benefits of mind expanding LSD and heroin," is just silly.
"Where do they find these people???" he concluded,
presumably referring to board members.
The question goes both ways,
obviously, but more forcibly backward.
Nobody who reads Det. Sgt.
Gillespie's memo "RE: Conversation with Board Member"
will ever dare chitchat with that guy in a hotel-room hospitality
suite again. His suspicion, his contempt and his resentment of
"Mr. A. Milliken Heisey," as he refers to him repeatedly
-- six times in one five-line paragraph -- is merely chilling.
But to think that anyone's opinions on anything are a matter
of official interest to police -- to be memorialized in a leak-prone
file, no less -- is repulsive.
Mr. Gillespie has become a
celebrity in his pursuit of pedophiles who use the Internet to
lure children. He is credited with personally inspiring Microsoft
magnate Bill Gates to develop what is now the leading software
tool for tracking Internet pedophiles, and Toronto Life magazine
recently celebrated him as a city hero.
Fewer people know that last
summer Mr. Gillespie made a plea to the House of Commons to raise
the age of consent for sex crimes, thus criminalizing a vast
amount of what is now perfectly legal, perfectly human activity,
and also to "eliminate the offence (sic) of artistic merit
from the Criminal Code."
What that means is that he
doesn't want accused pornographers to be able to defend their
work as art, even when it is. He wants his crusade against child
porn to reach into every art gallery -- and potentially every
front parlour -- in the country. Whatever he thinks is porn will
become porn. Those little Cupids will disappear from the Old
Masters and, it stands to reason, there will be a vastly expanded
class of criminals to pursue. But until that day arrives, there
is plenty of time available to monitor the suspicious opinions
of those who -- if only Ottawa could get its act together --
might well become criminals one day.
Leaked as it was by persons
unknown, the Gillespie memo became just another dirty trick aimed
at the police service's civilian overseers. In itself, though,
it is a persuasive argument for stricter civilian oversight.
- Judge to investigate
Heisey
Police chair denies any wrongdoing
By Rob Granatstein, January
23, 2004
The Toronto Police Services
Board has called on retired Justice Sydney Robins to investigate
controversial remarks board chairman Alan Heisey allegedly made
about pedophilia. "We're exceedingly happy that Justice
Robins has agreed to do it," board vice-chairman Pam McConnell
said.
Robins, who was a member of
the Ontario Court of Appeal for 17 years until he retired in
1998, will look in to whether Heisey breached the Police Services
Act's Code of Conduct.
Heisey is under fire for informal
comments he allegedly made about pedophilia to two officers in
a hotel suite during a sex crimes unit seminar in September 2002.
The comments ended up in a
confidential police memo that states the father of four spoke
about a private school teacher who was charged with child pornography
offences.
The memo, leaked to the media,
says Heisey indicated he hoped the teacher would be spared a
jail term and commented: "I understand how one could be
attracted to the beautiful young body of an 8-year-old, but not
children in diapers."
Heisey insists his comments
were taken out of context and represented a discussion about
sex crimes -- not any personal beliefs.
Heisey was a board member at
the time, but not chairman.
McConnell said Robins understands
a quick resolution is necessary.
"I would expect by the
next board meeting we'd have a resolution," McConnell said.
The board meets next at Toronto
city hall on Feb. 26.
A separate investigation is
under way under the leadership of Chief Julian Fantino to find
out who leaked the internal memo.
"We're working on it,"
Fantino said. "At the end of all this we'll know."
Judge to probe comments
by police board head
By Katherine Harding,
Jan. 23, 2004
The Toronto Police Services
Board has hired a judge to conduct an investigation into alleged
comments chairman Alan Heisey made about pedophilia.
"We want this to be over
as quickly as possible," Pam McConnell, the board's vice-chair,
said last night. She would not give an exact timetable, but said
the probe is likely to wrap up next month.
The controversy erupted recently
when a confidential police memorandum, containing Mr. Heisey's
remarks that were allegedly made more than 15 months ago, was
leaked to the media. Judge Sydney Robins will probe whether Mr.
Heisey breached code of conduct rules or any other provisions
spelled out in Ontario's Police Services Act.
© 2004 Bell Globemedia
Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Alan Heisey set up in
worst possible way
JIM COYLE, The Toronto Star,
January 17, 2004
- "Want to see the hanging!
Want to see the hanging!" chanted the little girl, still
capering round.
- -George Orwell ,1984
.
Well, you should have come
to Toronto, dear, circa 2004. For it looks like someone fitted
Alan Heisey for a good old-fashioned, low-tech lynching.
Heisey, only one week on the
job as chair of the Toronto Police Services Board, is under the
gun for comments he allegedly made to a police officer, at a
social event during a sex-crimes seminar in September, 2002,
about a child-pornography case then under investigation. The
board decided this week to have an independent lawyer investigate
the matter.
In much of life, timing is
everything. And in this case, timing would appear to be all.
How else to explain that for
15 months, the weapon of massive destruction that was the memo
written by Detective Sergeant Paul Gillespie of the sex-crimes
unit about a conversation he had with Heisey sat harmlessly in
various files?
Apparently no one who saw it
- including the supervisor to whom it was sent, or Chief Julian
Fantino, or Heisey's predecessor as police board chair - concluded
that it warranted pursuit, either as evidence of Heisey's (then
a police board member) trying to influence a police investigation,
or of any troubling sympathy on his part for sexual deviance.
The power of that memo was
always political - the merest suggestion of a sympathy for pedophilia
being enough to undo most careers. So it was only after the reform-minded
Heisey was made chair that the missile was launched.
To all appearances, the leak
was motivated by malice. Heisey is also being publicly humiliated
in one of the worst possible ways on what appears to be the flimsiest
of evidence.
There is no tape of the exchange.
The officer did not make notes as Heisey spoke. Rather, he wrote
his memo later - reconstructing the exchange after the fact.
What is almost invariably lost in that kind of note-taking is
both accuracy and context - the preambles, the qualifiers, the
attributions, the hypothesizing.
As a result, Alan Heisey finds
himself in the preposterous position of having to defend - 15
months after the fact - remarks that were quite conceivably misconstrued
in the first place, and quite possibly inaccurately recorded
afterwards.
But despite their dubious genesis,
these remarks are surrounded by quotation marks in newspapers,
as though they came straight from Hansard, and sourced, in ever-escalating
degrees of authority, from first a "memo," then "a
document."
It is a flimsy reed on which
to hang someone with a long record of integrity and public service.
And it is not to condemn the officer to say that his notes are
perhaps being invested with more clout than they merit.
Even contemporaneous note-taking
is difficult. In a break in any courtroom, you will find even
experienced reporters comparing scribblings, trying to confirm
that they heard what they thought they did, and that they got
it down accurately.
It is not for nothing reporters
do this. One of the few published assessments of note-taking
by journalists was done by the University of Regina after Colin
Thatcher's murder trial in 1984. The school compared quotes used
in media reports with court transcripts and found that almost
half were inaccurate and almost half of the inaccurate quotes
sufficiently erroneous as to distort meaning.
Even, however, if the remarks
attributed to Heisey were made largely as reported, it is not
difficult to imagine the innocuous sentiment behind them.
It is not uncommon, when something
as shocking as the pornography charges are laid in connection
with a school, for those with children in attendance there to
want to discuss it, to try to understand it. When a similar thing
happened two summers ago to a circle of my acquaintance, it was
practically all the parents could talk about.
It seemed also fairly common
for those parents to cut the benefit of the doubt to an accused
who was familiar to them - as opposed to the scruffy sorts easily
labelled "perverts" by the tabloids. I heard many parents
say they hoped the allegations were not true, and that if they
were that the accused they had known and liked got help.
Moreover, it is hardly evidence
of sexual deviance to react with different magnitudes of revulsion
to the abuse of ever-younger children. Pedophilia of any sort
sickens and appalls. The abuse of diapered infants is off the
charts of comprehension.
There's little doubt Heisey
would have been wiser to have refrained from discussing a matter
under investigation with police. But at least as troubling as
anything he allegedly did or said is the fact of the memo leak,
a culture that appears to condone this kind of covert monitoring
by police of their civilian masters, and the suggestion that
such practices are not extraordinary.
Chief Fantino seemed this week
to understand that the embarrassment spread beyond the new board
chair.
"I feel badly for him,
I feel badly for all of us, really," he told reporters.
"I feel very disappointed that the document would have been
made public. It's created so much harm."
That's a comforting observation.
Less so was the comment of police association president Rick
McIntosh that the memo-filing was fairly routine.
"You put things down on
paper all the time. This would have been submitted as information
and passed up the line."
Just as they did in that Orwell
novel with the little girl and the hangings.
Jim Coyle usually appears
Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday in The Toronto Star
That corrosive memo
Globe and Mail , editorial,
Jan. 16, 2004
For someone in the public eye,
showing sympathy for pedophilia is akin to committing professional
suicide. You might as well leave town, change your name and start
fresh somewhere else.
To some, that might seem the
only choice for Alan Heisey, the new chair of the Toronto Police
Services Board. In his first week, he has been subjected to a
public shaming over comments he apparently made 16 months ago,
when he was an ordinary board member. Detective Sergeant Paul
Gillespie, a sex-crimes investigator, wrote a memo on Sept. 23,
2002, saying Mr. Heisey told him that, while he did not understand
how adults could abuse babies in diapers, he could understand
"how one could be attracted to the beautiful body of an
eight-year-old."
That memo was leaked to CFTO-TV,
which aired a report this week. Compounding this alleged comment,
Mr. Heisey sought to discuss with Det. Sgt. Gillespie a pornography
case involving a teacher at his son's school. The teacher had
been charged, and the case was before the courts. This showed
poor judgment, but there is no evidence Mr. Heisey tried to influence
the officer or interfere with the administration of justice.
The public is right to insist
that pedophilia be treated as the abhorrent crime it is. But
the flip side is that its very seriousness demands that accusations
not be tossed around lightly. That is the way to destroy lives.
As well, if the fight against child sexual abuse is identified
with a witch hunt, it may itself be compromised.
Mr. Heisey says that, far from
expressing understanding for pedophiles, he was talking about
the pathology of sex crimes: He can understand one type of evil,
but not another.
No one felt the matter important
enough to raise at the time, but now that Mr. Heisey is the board
chair, and showing an interest in reforming Toronto's archaic
police complaints system, the memo has taken on new life. The
police board, whose members chose Mr. Heisey for the $90,000
top job and yesterday decided to hire an investigator to look
into this matter and report back in three weeks, should stand
up against the flimsy suspicion about pedophilia. And Mr. Heisey
should apologize for his indiscretion in raising a specific case
with the officer.
- New police board chair
Alan Heisey is under fire for discussing a child porn case.
Lawyer
to probe Heisey's comments
Background of memo at issue
Police board decision attacked
CATHERINE PORTER, STAFF
REPORTER, The Toronto Star, Jan. 16, 2004
The Toronto Police Services
board will appoint an independent lawyer to investigate whether
its new chair acted improperly at a sex crimes seminar more than
a year ago.
The board's vice-chair, Councillor
Pam McConnell, announced the move after a three-hour meeting
yesterday at city hall. The chair, veteran lawyer Alan Heisey,
did not attend.
McConnell's announcement drew
approval from political leaders and criticism from legal experts
who said it falls short of what's needed. At least one board
member also disagreed publicly with the decision.
"We need an independent
lawyer to come in and investigate what was in the leaked memo,
the circumstances surrounding it, as well as the discussion around
that," said McConnell (Ward 28, Toronto Centre-Rosedale).
"From there, we'll have a much better view of whether or
not the code of conduct was or was not breached."
McConnell said the board is
satisfied that police Chief Julian Fantino will "fervently"
investigate the source of the leaked internal police memo at
the centre of the controversy.
Surfacing last week, the 15-month-old
memo alleged that Heisey, then a board member, had approached
an officer and mentioned the case of a teacher at his son's school
arrested on child pornography charges. The memo quoted Heisey's
remarks about the case.
Heisey, who denounced the memo's
statements as "deeply offensive," did not return calls
from the Star yesterday.
The board has not asked Heisey
to step aside or resign during the investigation - expected to
last three or four weeks.
Civil rights lawyer Clayton
Ruby denounced the decision as "amateur night."
"How is a lawyer to judge
credibility any better than they can?" he said last night.
"They should make a decision and get on with it. The bigger
question is, why are we letting police officers snoop on board
members? What kind of atmosphere has allowed this to happen?"
Police board member Case Ootes
(Ward 29, Toronto-Danforth) disagreed with the decision. He said
Heisey should step down as chair during the probe, and it should
go to the Ontario Civilian Commission on Police Services (OCCOPS).
Howard Morton, former director
of the province's Special Investigations Unit, favoured an investigation,
but wondered whether an independent council would get co-operation
from the police officers involved.
"There should be a criminal
investigation either by an outside force, the Mounties or the
OPP, or internally," he said. "Someone has stolen a
document and leaked it with something other than good intention."
Mayor David Miller approved
the probe as "appropriate."
"Mr. Heisey has a very
long record of public service. There's never been a hint or a
question about his integrity or his ability," he said. "For
somebody with that kind of record of public service, much of
it on a volunteer basis, I think he deserves a proper hearing."
The Sept. 23, 2002, memo was
obtained by CFTO News late last week and made public in a report
this week. It was written by Detective Sergeant Paul Gillespie
of the sex crimes unit and addressed to his supervisor.
In it, Gillespie states Heisey
approached him at a social event during a sex crimes conference
and mentioned the case of a teacher from his son's school who
was charged (and later convicted) with possessing child pornography.
Gillespie wrote that Heisey
said he hoped the accused "did not go to jail." It
also quoted Heisey as stating: "I understand how one could
be attracted to the beautiful young body of an 8-year-old, but
not children in diapers."
Heisey said earlier this week
that alleged statements quoted in the memo were taken out of
context, and he categorically denounced Gillespie's inference
as "deeply offensive."
Former police services chair
Norm Gardner said he received a copy of the memo from Fantino
in September, 2002, but decided not to investigate it.
McConnell said that if the
board's lawyer finds Heisey guilty of any wrongdoing, the board
will hand the investigation over to OCCOPS. If there was nothing
in Heisey's behaviour that breached the code of conduct, "then
this was one of the best smear campaigns I've ever heard of,"
she said.
The controversy was a hot topic
among police officers yesterday. One said he didn't think it
was proper for a police officer to prepare a memo about a conversation
with a board member. "It doesn't appear to have been handled
fairly," the officer said.
with files from Robert Benzie,
Kerry Gillespie, Cal Millar and Peter Small
Child-porn controversy
hits police board
KATHERINE HARDING, With
a report from John Barber and Jennifer Lewington , Globe and
Mail, Jan. 15, 2004
TORONTO -- The Toronto Police
Services Board is set to hold an emergency private meeting today
to discuss an "explosive" police memorandum that was
leaked to the media on Tuesday about Alan Heisey, its new chair.
The private document, written
by Detective Sergeant Paul Gillespie, a sex-crimes investigator,
outlined an alleged conversation he had with Mr. Heisey, who
the detective said raised a child-pornography case involving
a teacher at the school Mr. Heisey's son was attending at the
time.
In the memo, Det. Sgt. Gillespie
states that Mr. Heisey told him that he hoped the teacher did
not go to jail, and that he could understand "how one could
be attracted to the beautiful body of an 8-year-old."
Mr. Heisey said yesterday the
alleged comments contained in the memo "have been taken
completely out of context -- if I made them."
The veteran lawyer also denied
that he inappropriately asked the police officer about the status
of the child-pornography case. "I didn't make an inquiry.
I expressed an opinion and asked him what he thought," he
said in an interview.
The controversy erupted earlier
this week when contents of the September, 2002, memo were first
reported by CFTO News.
The police services board met
privately last night -- at Mr. Heisey's request -- but decided
after two hours to reconvene the meeting today. The decision
was made to allow the board's deputy chair, Pam McConnell, an
opportunity to attend.
Mr. Heisey wouldn't comment
about whether he thought the leaked memo was part of a smear
campaign to get rid of him. He has been a city appointee to the
police services board, the seven-member civilian oversight body,
since 2001. While he's only been chair of the board for about
one week, he has already called for a review of the police complaints
process.
"I feel terrible for my
family. It's scandalous what has happened here. It's absolutely
outrageous. It's pernicious and evil," he said.
Toronto Police Chief Julian
Fantino has ordered an investigation into how the memo was leaked
to the media.
"I'm disappointed that
the memo has become public and I will look into the matter and
take whatever action is necessary," he said in a brief statement.
He also said that he first
heard about the memo in 2002 and that he gave it to then police
services chair, Norm Gardner, "to deal with as he felt necessary."
Mr. Gardner was forced to step down as chair last June after
it was alleged that he received a handgun from a local firearms
manufacturer. A public inquiry into that matter is now under
way.
According the police memo,
which has been obtained by The Globe and Mail, Det. Sgt. Gillespie
wrote on Sept. 23, 2002, that Mr. Heisey approached himself and
Detective Gary Pincher before a banquet at the Colony Hotel four
days earlier. All of the men were attending a police sex-crimes
conference.
Mr. Gillespie wrote that Mr.
Heisey mentioned to the men that his son attended the school
where a teacher had been charged with possessing pornography
and that he "hoped" the accused didn't go to jail and
"he asked for my opinion."
Mr. Gillespie later wrote that
he said he couldn't talk about the case and he told Mr. Heisey
that "Most people we charge were usually found to be possession
of child pornography involving very young children, and some
in diapers."
To that, Mr. Heisey allegedly
commented, "I understand how one could be attracted to the
beautiful young body of an 8-year-old, but not children in diapers."
The internal memo was sent
to Staff Superintendent Rocky Cleveland, who then e-mailed Mr.
Fantino one day later about the alleged conversation.
"I thought I should forward
the report to you as it came to me. Heisey is obviously a different
sort," Mr. Cleveland wrote in his e-mail, obtained by The
Globe and Mail. "He has expressed his learned views on the
legalization of marijuana and now this, in my view, bent perspective
on child pornography and paedophiles. What next . . . e benefits
of mind expanding LSD and heroin?"
Mr. Cleveland has since retired
from the police force and couldn't be reached for comment yesterday.
Mr. Gardner said that he never
brought the matter to the police services board in late 2002
because of separate conversations he had with two board members,
Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby and Frances Nunziata.
"There didn't seem to
be any interest," he said yesterday, adding both women "shrugged
off" the information contained in the memo.
Mr. Gardner said he then filed
the letter and forgot about it. "It was in my files when
I left the office back in June," he said, adding that he
had nothing to do with the information being made public.
Both Ms. Lindsay Luby and Ms.
Nunziata deny Mr. Gardner's story that they had seen the internal
police document.
"I would have remembered
it if I had seen this memo. It's obviously very explosive,"
said Ms. Lindsay Luby. She added that she is suspicious about
the timing of the media leak.
Mayor David Miller didn't want
to comment about the memo because he hadn't seen it, however
he agreed with Mr. Fantino that there must be a probe to find
out how it become public. He added it was up to the police services
board to decide Mr. Heisey's fate. "I'm sure the police
board will take appropriate steps. It has to be clear what was
said and what was not," Mr. Miller told reporters.
Editorial: A reputation
at stake
The Toronto Star, Jan. 15,
2004
It goes beyond a personal attack.
When someone leaked a confidential
police memo to the media, seeking to discredit Alan Heisey, the
new head of the Toronto Police Services Board, it was a blow
to civilian oversight of the 5,000-member force. And it was a
blow to privacy.
If information about the people
who oversee the police is handled this way, what liberties are
taken with files on ordinary civilians?
Chief Julian Fantino must get
to the bottom of this unethical disclosure, especially its motive.
Reform-oriented Heisey is far
different from Norm Gardner, the blatantly pro-police former
chair. Where Gardner earned notoriety by taking advantage of
free bullets from the police armoury, Heisey supported a review
studying the handling of public complaints against rogue officers.
His reward: Less than a week
after assuming the job of board chair, an 18-month-old memo was
leaked to a Toronto television station in which an officer alleges
that Heisey, in a conversation, made sympathetic statements about
someone charged with collecting child pornography.
Heisey retorts that the memo
doesn't accurately express his views.
It purportedly contains no
allegation of criminal wrongdoing on Heisey's part.It is simply
internal correspondence that may, or may not, be accurate.
But damage has been done.
And Fantino has a duty to answer
questions raised by this troubling incident.
Who leaked the memo? Was it
one rogue insider, or part of an orchestrated effort?
Why now? Is it meant to draw
attention away from Gardner, the subject of an inquiry over accepting
free bullets and a gift handgun?
And what sort of records do
police keep on the board members who are supposed to govern them?
Can the board members see them?
There's a reputation at stake
here. It's that of the police.
Timely change of venue
for meeting
Don Wanagas, National Post,
January 16, 2004
It was no mistake that yesterday's
"emergency" meeting of the Toronto Police Services
Board was held on the 11th floor of City Hall instead of its
usual venue inside the College Street cop shop.
Our municipal politicians are
real big on symbolism these days and there was nothing more symbolic
than the civilian overseers of local law enforcement shunning
police headquarters in favour of 100 Queen St. W. to formulate
a response to yet another controversy involving yet another police
board chair.
This time it's newly appointed
chairman Alan Heisey who's in the hot seat after an 18-month-old
memorandum from a sex-crimes investigator to Chief Julian Fantino
was recently leaked to the media complete with allegations the
once lowly board member raised the subject of a child-pornography
case involving a teacher at his son's school.
According to the memo, Mr.
Heisey used the occasion of a September, 2002, sex-crimes seminar
to tell Detective Sergeant Paul Gillespie he hoped the teacher
would not go to jail and that he could understand "how one
could be attracted to the beautiful young body of an eight-year-old,
but not children in diapers."
On Wednesday, the board chairman
maintained his alleged comments were taken completely out of
context and noted any suggestions he tried to influence the case
against the educator were "totally offensive and libelous."
Yesterday, the police services
board -- minus its chairman -- met for more than three hours
to decide on a response to the controversy. In the end, the four
members present unanimously agreed "to retain an independent
lawyer to conduct a review of the circumstances surrounding the
statements made in the leaked memo."
But their private session was
clearly made all the more intriguing by the fact the pornography
missive came to light just as Mr. Heisey's predecessor -- Norm
Gardner -- was about to sit down before the Ontario Civilian
Commission on Police Services to answer charges he breached the
city's ethical code of conduct by accepting a semi-automatic
handgun as a gift from an arms manufacturer. It also came to
light during the inquiry that Mr. Gardner helped himself to thousands
of free bullets from the local constabulary's munitions depot.
That probe concluded yesterday
with the commission reserving its decision. By the time it comes
down, the former councillor with close ties to former mayor Mel
Lastman may well have been interviewed by the police board's
investigator to help explain why nothing came of the sex crimes
memo before now, when it turns out the former chair had received
a copy from Chief Fantino soon after it was written by Det. Sgt.
Gillespie. Mr. Gardner has claimed he passed the information
on to a pair of councillors who sat on the board at the time.
But both Gloria Lindsay Luby and Frances Nunziata have denied
ever seeing the communication.
This is all a bit much for
Councillor Pam McConnell, who was recently chosen as vice-chairwoman
of the police services board.
"The timing [of the leak]
is very suspicious, because, of course, we have currently got
two [board] issues on the front page," she said. "One
is the conduct of the current chair of the board and the other
one, in a more public arena, is the former chair of the board.
"If, in fact, there is
anything untoward about Mr. Heisey's behaviour, then we will
put it to a public inquiry," Ms. McConnell stated. "If
there is not, this is one of the best smear campaigns I've ever
heard of."
The councillor said Chief Fantino
has been "fervent" with assurances he'll find out who
leaked the memo. And she also expressed concerns about officers
keeping tabs on individual police services board members who
are their supposed civilian superiors.
"I think it's inappropriate,"
Ms. McConnell said.
That's a long-held opinion
she shares with many councillors regarding board meetings being
held at police headquarters.
"Certainly, it has been
my intention, more and more, that we would get out of police
headquarters and come to the centre of our democracy, which is
City Hall," Ms. McConnell said.
Yesterday was a good start.
© Copyright 2004 National Post
Heisey should step aside
ROSIE DIMANNO, Toronto Star
Jan. 17, 2004
Alan Heisey says his disturbing
comments about pedophilia "have been taken completely out
of context - if I made them."
I challenge anyone to make
sense of that remark.
The new police services board
chair either made the comments, in which case he should apologize
for uttering such stupidities, which he likely didn't mean in
the way they were absorbed.
Or he didn't make them, so
obviously they couldn't be taken out of context, and he's the
one owed an apology.
In the interim, with the board
now appointing an independent lawyer to investigate the matter,
Heisey should voluntarily step aside.
In this respect, his situation
is not so very different from that of his similarly embattled
predecessor, Norm Gardner, who obstinately resisted doing the
proper thing amidst character-damning scandal - in his case accepting
a discounted firearm from a gun manufacturer and scoring loads
of free ammo from the police department.
Gardner ultimately did stand
down, as his case was turned over to the Ontario Civilian Commission
on Police Services, which this past week convened a public inquiry
to determine whether any misconduct occurred.
I doubt whether Heisey's case
will ever reach the point of referral to OCCOPs.
The reconstituted board, judging
by remarks made in recent days, is sounding more defensive and
aggrieved, on Heisey's behalf, than dismayed about what the man
may have said, even if he said it.
Hence the emphasis on the timing
and motivation of an internal police memo leaked on Wednesday
to CFTO.
So much paranoia sweeping through
the halls of police governance.
"How come this only happens
to board members who are seen as liberal?" asks Laura Rowe,
who was herself the subject of internal police investigations
when she was appointed to the board - a lesbian mother and community
activist who instantly raised hackles, although she grew to earn
respect from cops. (She's no longer on the board.)
"The worst thing you can
say about someone is that they have a warped sexual attitude
towards children," Rowe continues. "How is Heisey supposed
to defend himself against that?"
Actually, he can, though he's
not done a very good job of it so far.
Heisey did not attend Thursday's
board meeting, in which the decision was made to turn the matter
over to a lawyer for review. Perhaps he was asked to stay away.
But he thereby missed an opportunity to explain himself to his
board colleagues and to directly answer pertinent questions.
It's little wonder the officer
was disturbed enough by the encounter that he wrote it down and
passed it on
I suspect, in the original conversation with Detective Sergeant
Paul Gillespie, a member of the Toronto police sex-crimes unit,
Heisey might have been referring to the degree of vulnerability
in sexually exploited children - babies versus young boys, and
how could even the sexually deranged possibly look upon an infant
with lust. There are shadings of wrongdoing and degrees of criminality
- murderer versus serial murderer in Heisey's own clumsy analogy.
Such a distinction would likely
have found little favour with Gillespie, given his job. Little
wonder he was disturbed enough by the encounter that he wrote
it down and passed it on. This, it should be noted, was done
immediately afterwards and the police officer's recollections
would be much fresher at the time than Heisey's are now.
However, armed with at least
that much basic information - Heisey's first-hand account of
the conversation and whatever point he was actually trying to
make - the board members might then have been able to make up
their own minds.
In an investigation that will
clearly come down to he said/he said, the central issue will
be one of credibility and character. An investigating lawyer
is no more fit to judge that than the board members themselves.
Contrary to the published views
expressed by some of Heisey's boosters - and those with a pre-existing
axe to grind against Toronto police - the critical issue is not
the internal memo that Gillespie prepared and how, or why, it
came to be leaked.
What's at issue is whether
there was justification for Gillespie to be so appalled by what
Heisey said - allegedly drawing some kind of esthetic or intellectual
distinction between depictions of 8-year-old boys and babies
in diapers.
And there is also the ancillary
matter of Heisey having raised a case before the courts - a teacher
from his son's school arrested on child-pornography charges -
with a police officer whose department was investigating the
case.
Gillespie most assuredly did
not "snoop" on anyone. Heisey, according to the memo,
raised the subject with him in the hospitality suite of a convention.
A cop in his situation, hearing what he believed he heard, would
have been understandably dumbfounded. It's not in the least bit
peculiar that he wrote a memo about the exchange and passed it
on. In the Julian Fantino era, everything gets written down.
Whatever his other flaws, Chief
Fantino is among the most morally exacting of men. Had he believed
there was anything genuinely objectionable or worrisome about
Heisey's remarks, he would have ordered a further investigation.
Instead, he merely passed the memo on to Gardner, to deal with
as he saw appropriate. And Gardner was not so concerned that
he formally brought the memo to the board's attention, simply
- he says - discussing it with a couple of other members, who
have no memory of such conversations.
Just as beauty is in the eye
of the beholder, an offensive remark can be in the ear of the
listener. Acutely sensitive to the issue of child pornography,
Gillespie may have heard one thing, while Heisey thought he was
saying something else.
But beyond repeatedly denouncing
as "deeply offensive" the memo that, in his view, portrayed
him as even slightly sympathetic to child pornographers, Heisey
has not yet, in my estimation, clarified his remarks. Because,
believe me, there are a lot of people out there who genuinely
hold the view that sex with young boys is okay, not so repugnant,
as if a child can ever form sexual consent.
The memo is offensive only
if it was wrong, although what Gillespie might interpret as disgracefully
soft on porn might not raise eyebrows in other, more hedonistic,
circles.
It is not offensive because
it surfaced now, within a week of Heisey taking over as chair
of the police board.
A smear campaign driven by
a leaked memo is reprehensible. The motives behind the leak are
debatable.
But that doesn't necessarily
make Gillespie wrong, for what he felt in his bones 15 months
ago. Or make Heisey right, about how victimized he feels now.
Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday,
Friday and Saturday. E-mail: dimanno@hotstar.net
|
Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
