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The documentary the Calgary Police doesn't want you to see
88 Plays4 years ago
That headline is not hyperbole, a Calgary Police officer sued to try and stop the documentary No Visible Trauma from being screened. Thankfully the filmmakers won and we have Marc Serpa Francouer and Robinder Uppal on to talk about their case as well as their documentary that examines several cases of police brutality and explores just how broken of an institution the Calgary Police Service really is.
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Transcript
Introduction to The Progress Report and Guests
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to The Progress Report on the Harbinger Media Network. You can listen to many other incredible left-wing podcasts on Harbinger, like Big Shiny Takes, one of our favorites. Their latest podcast features a thorough and hilarious examination of a couple of characters in the Jordan Peterson Extended Universe. And at Harbinger, we're building something that's challenging right-wing corporate media dominance from coast to coast. So you get access to exclusive shows and other supporter-only content at harbingermediainetwork.com. Now, on to the show.
00:00:27
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney. We're recording today here in Amiskwetchiwiskeigen, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta, here in Treaty 6 territory. And today we're joined by Mark Serpa Frankur and Ravinder Upple, who directed and produced a new documentary that is hitting the film festival circuit really hard right now, and which actually just opened up last week at the Calgary Underground Film Festival, and it's called No Visible Trauma.
00:00:51
Speaker
You may have also seen a 44 minute version that these two folks produced. They covered a lot of the same material. Uh, and it was on CBC and it was called above the law. And we're very happy to have them on the show. Mark and Ravinder, welcome to the progress report. Thank you so much for having us. Pleasure to be here with you. Yeah, thanks.
Legal Challenges and Filmmaking Struggles
00:01:09
Speaker
And so before we get into chatting about your documentary and what it's all about, uh, you were making news last week. You are, uh, you've made a documentary that the Calgary police service is specifically, uh, one particular member of the Calgary police service doesn't want anyone to see, or at least they tried. Uh, what can you tell us about the injunction that Constable Chris Harris filed? Uh, that was where he was trying to stop the screening of your movie.
00:01:36
Speaker
Yeah, so last Monday, there was an emergency injunction filed by Constable Christopher Harris, employee with the Calgary Police Service, which sought to prevent the further screening of our film and which would have applied our understanding both to Cuff Docs and then, you know,
00:01:52
Speaker
beyond, without any particular limit, on the grounds of what he claims is defamation. There's sort of two elements to his complaint, which essentially boils down to the accusation that we have mistranscribed
00:02:09
Speaker
The word should as did we are of course confident and adamant that we in fact got that right and The other is just that broadly speaking that we have sort of miscontextualized his role In in the Clayton Prince incident, which we can I think discuss in a little bit more detail down the line again, we are confident that
00:02:32
Speaker
that we got that right as well, and there's a fair bit of evidence to support it, including his own sworn testimony at court. So the injunction was filed on Monday, and we were up all night preparing an affidavit and a bunch of other stuff, and then Tuesday we went into court.
00:02:52
Speaker
And when I say went into, of course, this was virtual. And in the end, the judge ruled in our favor and rejected the injunction. But it was, you know, this is our first time facing legal action, and it was definitely a sort of high octane week or so for us and just a little bit bewildering. We were very surprised that this was something that had materialized. I mean, this is the conversation in question is about 20 seconds of
Misconduct and Violent Arrest Incidents
00:03:19
Speaker
97 minute film. And Harris is never named in the film. So I think that was sort of doubly surprising to us because the minute he filed the injunction and the lawsuit on Monday, everything became public and obviously far, far more attention brought to Constable Christopher Harris than ever would have been if he'd never brought this to light. So it was a real surprise to us that it went forward.
00:03:49
Speaker
Congratulations, Constable Harris, you Barbara Streisand yourself, I think. That would be my analysis of it. Congratulations on winning your injunction as well. That would be an extraordinary decision by a judge to restrict the screening of a movie for an apparent mistranscription of one word in an otherwise 97-minute film.
00:04:12
Speaker
absolutely wild case. And again, I'm glad, glad that you won. Glad that your movie was able to be screened. The defamation lawsuit is obviously another huge fucking headache. And we will, we can talk about that at the end of the pod.
00:04:25
Speaker
But as someone who is facing a similar suit, I just want to say that we absolutely need anti-slap legislation in this province. And it's quite clear that powerful people and institutions are using the courts in order to silence speech that they don't like.
00:04:42
Speaker
But that is a podcast and a conversation for another day. I think since we're in the audio form here, I think we should definitely take a quick listen to the clip that caused all of this in the first place. Can you give us the context of where this clip is in the movie? What's led up to it? What's about to happen? What people are about to listen to?
00:05:00
Speaker
Sure, so the clip in question is actually a recording from the in-car video system of Calgary Police. You're hearing this is in the aftermath of the violent arrest of a young indigenous man named Clayton Prince back in 2016.
00:05:18
Speaker
Very, very briefly, he had been pulled over. And this is, for those who know Calgary, this is sort of right off of Glenmore and McLeod Trail. There's sort of a sushi restaurant and then a diamond store, I believe. So basically, he had been pulled over and he initially sort of got out of the car, was standing there, and then at some point chose to run away and ran around the building.
00:05:40
Speaker
officers descending you know multiple cars sort of arrive on the scene and Constable Harris is actually the officer who sort of came out of his car with drew his gun and you know and told Prince to get on the ground at which point in time we can see in video from a different car that several officers jump on him and basically begin to pummel him he was left with punctured lung
00:06:07
Speaker
Uh, I believe fractured ribs. Is that right bob? Yeah, so I quickly he had gotten down on the ground and put his hands behind his head That's what the video shows and then the officers land on him and he did uh suffer broken ribs and a collapsed lung and then uh Had this key shove behind behind his neck and at a known pressure point and that's what the judge found
00:06:31
Speaker
Yeah, so he spent five days recovering in the hospital, it's worth noting. The charges, and also keep in mind, the charges against him were dropped as a result of the sort of extrajudicial punishment, presumably as a result of the extrajudicial punishment that he'd received. So Constable Harris was a witness to this. He was not involved in the beating. He is heard on the video and this came up in court yelling, among other things, YouTube alert, YouTube alert.
00:06:57
Speaker
Apparently, you know, trying to call attention to the fact that, you know, these officers were in public and that might be a problem. In any case, after the incident, he at the time was training a recruit.
00:07:13
Speaker
and a young woman and they're standing around talking and they have sort of a lengthy conversation and he sort of starts it out. He says, well, what you saw here did not happen. Or as he contests, what you saw here should not happen. And then the conversation goes on from there. There's a number of troubling aspects to it. He states that, you know, had this guy in the white van been filming, that wouldn't be very good.
00:07:34
Speaker
We hear that and we're like, what do you mean it wouldn't be very good? Like if somebody was filming this clear case of criminality, which again was later proven in court as an assault, why would that be not good that somebody would watch
00:07:50
Speaker
and have a record of this inappropriate behavior that's happened. And there's a number of other troubling aspects to that conversation. And then subsequently the choice that after this had happened, while Constable Harris, to be fair, did eventually testify against the other officers, and kudos to him for that, he certainly in the wake of the incident did not say take the recruits and say, okay, well, we're going directly to professional standards. We're gonna file a complaint. What we saw here was totally inappropriate and presumably illegal.
00:08:20
Speaker
So yeah, so that's sort of part of the broader context in which Harris was involved in that incident. And he, again, basically appears very briefly in the film, in the video. And it's worth pointing out that there's so many aspects to this incident and partly why we wanted to focus on it, including the fact that the main camera that was focused on, that was showing the beating was turned off mid
Police Accountability in Calgary
00:08:45
Speaker
-beating. It's hard to imagine that that wasn't
00:08:48
Speaker
done on purpose. Just an incredible malfunction. Really unfortunate. Yeah. So here is the clip in question. So if you do have headphones, put them in. Uh, yeah, let's listen to it. All right. Now what you saw here.
00:09:29
Speaker
Just a little light street justice.
00:09:34
Speaker
Just the best kind really. I mean, I hear did, you know, it is low quality. It is some shitty like dashboard mic or whatever. You know, I can see why Harris would, would maybe dispute it, but then I don't understand why he would bring attention to himself in the case of filing a lawsuit. Now we all know who he is and whether he said should or did, I think it's relatively immaterial considering all the things you mentioned. He's barely in the movie.
00:09:59
Speaker
I mean, the giggling response by the recruit is also a huge red flag to me as well. I don't know how you feel about it.
00:10:09
Speaker
I think it's very revealing, right? And it really gives you the sense that there's nervousness there, but also it doesn't seem like anyone is really particularly surprised or thrown off at this kind of thing. And the way that Harris talks about the whole incident as well, you really get the sense that this isn't the first time he's seen something like this. And the way he does talk about it, that
00:10:33
Speaker
this is this is an occurrence that he's witnessed before and that he doesn't like it because you know it it causes problems and maybe somebody would you know the longer conversation itself is actually quite horrifying in some ways because of how
00:10:49
Speaker
work a day it all sounds as though somebody were driving a forklift improperly as opposed to just very badly beating a human being and also applying to quote them pain compliance techniques which is if you've seen them do it it looks something like torture because you're you're twisting limbs and you're really putting people in an extreme amount of discomfort so that they they do what you're trying to make them do but
00:11:14
Speaker
Again, Prince had already surrendered at that point. So it just seems totally gratuitous. And the fact that that would be talked about as though it were just another day is pretty disturbing. Well, and I'll just point out, I think that like, it's so easy to sort of, again, the normalcy of this, of this type of, uh, I mean, excessive force, it's just, but like, you know, again, the guy is on the ground. He's surrendered. There's no indication of a weapon or anything face down on the ground. Like,
00:11:40
Speaker
The notion that only one of the, at least four officers that jumped on him, or at least three, you know, was eventually convicted. It's just like, what is the need to all like, you know, dogpile this guy? And then, oh, and then you're pointing out the fact that after you've all jumped on him, that he is sort of like, you know, squirming or physically reacting. Might it be because you're on him, like beating him? Like, again, the notion that this is even remotely acceptable.
00:12:09
Speaker
really, I think, beggar's belief and, you know, points us to, and these are some of the questions that we're interested in, too, is just sort of the broader, you know, issues around use of force and what is and isn't, you know, because a lot, there's a lot of defenses offered by, say, you know, the Calgary Police or whatever that, oh, well, these are sort of standard, you know, these are standard compliance techniques. It's like, OK, well, maybe we need to like have a conversation about like what are appropriate compliance techniques and how they're being applied.
00:12:37
Speaker
So yeah, fair enough. I think while the lawsuit and dealing with the injunction and all that was, I mean, I don't know, imagine it was very fun. It did get you a bunch of free earned media. So I mean, for your documentary. So thanks for that. At least Constable Harris.
00:12:55
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I mean, obviously, I mean, that's I mean, look, it's I don't you know, we just got our first bill for legal fees and it's a whopping 18 grand, you know, so we're not it's like that's you know, you could also buy a lot of advertising for that. You know, as a side note, you know, we're doing a GoFundMe campaign that we made our first target already and under three days of 10 grand. And we've just opted to reflect the the specific dollar amount of the bill in question, which is eighteen thousand and seventy three dollars.
00:13:26
Speaker
We're also, we do have errors in emissions insurance, but this is also, we're waiting on confirmation as to what that'll cover. There is at minimum a $10,000 deductible. And again, this is very unusual. It's very rare that anyone actually has to go down this road. Maybe when you're making documentaries about dogs and cats and lighter subject matter, it's not such a concern.
00:13:51
Speaker
Anyways, it's a strange. The case is that we could spend all day talking about this lawsuit, but there is a documentary here and it is a good documentary.
00:14:00
Speaker
It's one that I wouldn't say enjoyed is probably the wrong word because I got mad a bunch listening to it, or sorry, watching it. But it's incredibly well done. It's an incredibly important document about how broken the institution of policing is in Calgary, as well as how broken all of the other institutions that revolve around the police are that are supposed to keep them accountable. You know, the Crown Prosecutor's Service, ASEARCH, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team,
00:14:30
Speaker
even the government. And so I could read the promo copy, but you have spent years making this documentary. Why should people watch this film and what is this film all about?
Human Impact of Police Misconduct
00:14:45
Speaker
Yeah, so very briefly, I mean, it's a film that's looking at, broadly speaking, police brutality and accountability at the Calgary Police Service. We look at several incidents of excessive force, including fatal shooting, a wellness check gone very, very wrong.
00:15:02
Speaker
We also look at, like you said, more broadly speaking, at the accountability mechanisms, which in Alberta includes ASERT, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team. We look at the Crown and some of the problems in terms of, or parent problems in terms of what's been pointed to as double standards at play in terms of the prosecution of police officers.
00:15:22
Speaker
We also sort of give a very brief window into the quagmire that is the professional standards process at the Calgary Police Service, basically the responding to complaints, the internal sort of discipline side of things, which is quite important as well.
00:15:42
Speaker
So it's a film, I think it's obviously of keen interest to Calgarians, to Albertans, but a lot of the issues that we're looking at are certainly by no means endemic to Calgary or to Alberta. There's a ton of similarity across our country and beyond. So we think that there's certainly a local appeal, but a very broad relevance as well.
00:16:03
Speaker
And to add to that quickly, I think the thing that we're able to do in a documentary that's really important is actually track over a period of time the impact on real people, specifically Godfred, the Heffernans who have, you know, their family has been very damaged by this whole, by the shooting and the killing of their son, Anthony, and also the Haworth family.
00:16:29
Speaker
The impact on real human beings, not just that there's a bureaucracy and that there's this whole broken process, but also how does that damage or affect people's lives? And what are the consequences of this kind of lack of accountability on a human level? That's part of what makes, I think, the film work and makes it impactful.
00:16:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, God For To Die is one of the protagonists in your piece. And his story is, you know, an incredibly arresting one, right? A young man who was essentially kidnapped by the police, dropped off in a massive construction site in minus, you know, 28 weather. And then when another officer showed up, had the shit beaten out of him and then was charged with assaulting a police officer. And this guy is still not right physically, mentally, years later. Right.
00:17:24
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I mean, it's and this. So the film all started with us when we met Godfred. We were introduced to his case by his then defense attorney shortly after he had been acquitted of assaulting an officer. But, you know, this was for us what what really threw us down this whole this whole path that we've been on for the last five years, just the multiplicity of things that went wrong, both from the initial interaction with the
00:17:51
Speaker
The officers, who, given this kind of detain him apparently without any sort of due legal process, claim without any evidence that he was drunk, he maintains that he had not been drinking, given this kind of urban starlight tour, and then of course calls for help. 911 officer, another officer arrives and it beats and tasers him.
00:18:10
Speaker
And then moving on also to the prosecution, the fact that the Crown had seen fit to prosecute this man. It's amazing. If you actually look at the investigation prepared by CPS and Tom Engel, his now attorney points out in the film, he says, well, this is an investigation. An investigation would have looked at the broader context of what had happened.
00:18:34
Speaker
you know, the footage, it would have looked at the different notes and the reports. What is the investigation said? It's one page with one line. It says, Constable Trevor Lindsay can testify to having been assaulted by the officer. Now, the amazing thing is that Lindsay actually didn't even
00:18:49
Speaker
claim and you know in retrospect maybe he regrets this but didn't even claim that Godfred had in any way physically assaulted him that it was a gestural assault which in Canada is also a type of assault like if you sort of get in somebody's face and make a bunch of threatening gestures like that can be an assault so that was the claim was that Godfred had sort of somehow lunged or otherwise been threatening without actually having touched him in any way
00:19:14
Speaker
Um, so the fact that, you know, that the crown saw fit to, to prosecute this, I mean, it also speaks to the, the, the high esteem that officer testimony is held in that this would have seemed like a, a, in the public interest to prosecute this man based on this.
00:19:29
Speaker
this claim. So that was very disturbing for us and that's really what started our interest in the case. Jump ahead to early 2017, CPS announces charges have been filed against an officer. In a different case, at first the officer hadn't been named, but it was leaked to the media that the officer was the same officer that had
00:19:50
Speaker
beaten Godfred and accused him of assault this constable Trevor Lindsay. And that was the point when we really sort of sat back and said, wait a minute, we need to look at the broader accountability infrastructure here, because how is it that Godfred, who filed a very serious formal complaint with the Calgary Police Service within a month of the incident, so back in January
00:20:09
Speaker
How is it that this officer, unheated, continued to work the streets and was able to go on, and in this case, another man also in handcuffs, also caught on video, threw him head first into the ground after punching him repeatedly, punches that he neglected to mention in his notes for some reason, leaving him with a permanent brain injury that his family believes was intricately tied to his death of a
00:20:36
Speaker
of an overdose some months later. So that was just this clusterfuck of horror that I think, you know, kind of forced us to expand the scope of our investigation.
Ongoing Officer Misconduct and Fatal Incidents
00:20:50
Speaker
I mean, this reveal of Constable Lindsay, you know, whose name was initially protected and then eventually revealed
00:20:56
Speaker
as the same person who had assaulted God for to Die. I was the same person who fractured Mr. Haworth's skull while he was handcuffed. It literally had me swearing at my screen and gasping out loud. I don't know what it's like in the movie theater when that's revealed, but it's like, oh my God.
00:21:14
Speaker
Uh, a moment that definitely stuck with me coming out of, uh, of watching this documentary. And I mean, that, that through line, you know, with Constable Lindsay and, and God for it. And then Daniel Haworth is an incredibly important one, but there's another. A thread in that movie that you pick up that's incredibly important as well. And that's the story of Anthony Heffernan.
00:21:38
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Anthony Heffernan's story is also just completely devastating. And to put it briefly, in March 2015, he was having a relapse. He'd struggled with cocaine addiction and was relapsing in a hotel room, Super 8, up by the airport, and was in his room using drugs, overstayed his rental. So it was well past the 11 o'clock checkout time.
00:22:08
Speaker
And the hotel staff was concerned about what was going on in the room. He wasn't responding to the knocking on the door. And so they decided to call the Calgary police for a wellness check. And they just wanted to make sure everybody was okay and that
00:22:24
Speaker
you know, there was nothing going on in there, etc. And so the police show up. And I think there's some details that actually don't even make it into the film that are so troubling. So one of them is that when the police show up, they are given a tool by the hotel staff that would have let them
00:22:41
Speaker
open the door with the safety latch. So they would have been able to get around the safety latch and open the door, not kick it in and go in sort of calmly. But it's unclear what happened exactly, but at some point they abandoned trying to use this tool and decided, five officers, that they would kick in the door and go in what's called a military style.
00:23:03
Speaker
Screaming and yelling two of the officers had their guns drawn and Within 72 seconds of kicking down that door These five officers enter this like very very small hotel room and that's actually a part of the film too is just seeing like how small this room is but they
00:23:18
Speaker
They they barge in and they're screaming and yelling at the top their lungs to somebody, Anthony, who's there with his hands up and apparently in some sort of drug induced state. And according to the officers, he has a lighter in one hand and a syringe without a needle tip as it turned out in the other hand.
00:23:38
Speaker
They're screaming and yelling at him and within 72 seconds one officer constable Maurice McLaughlin shot him four times three times in the head and once in the chest and including Bullet trajectories that are almost straight down at the floor. So meaning he shot down at him when he was already on the ground and yeah, Anthony Anthony died on the scene and The the Heffernan family is still
00:24:06
Speaker
totally, they haven't received any sort of justice in their view. And I don't know if, Mark, if you want to pick up sort of what happened after Anthony was killed. Sure. I mean, and there's just, you know, I mean, there's a lot of details and a lot of ins and outs and what have yous. I mean, there's just so many disturbing elements to the case. You know, our phrasing is that this is, you know, now everybody, I think, in Canada, at least people that are interested in these issues are familiar with the concept of a wellness check.
00:24:34
Speaker
And with a wellness check gone wrong, this is a classic in the sense of classically tragic example of that. And there's many elements that are particularly disturbing. One is the fact that you had five officers in there, including a sergeant. At no point in time did the sergeant instruct anyone to fire, to shoot Anthony also. And there is some
00:24:58
Speaker
There's some conflicting elements to the testimony as we have access to it in the ASERT report from the officers, but several of the officers had already holstered their weapons and tasers and were very close to Anthony, apparently intending to just grab him.
00:25:13
Speaker
So this was not a universally threatening situation, certainly to all the officers in the room. And what's amazing is that when it... So there's a whole lengthy process that goes to ASERT. There's a number of issues with the ASERT investigation that Tom Engel, for example, speaks to in the film that you can see in the film, just basic issues to do with quality. In Alberta, basically, ASERT doesn't have its own forensics
00:25:39
Speaker
uh team they're relying on the team of the uh you know the local entity so in this case it was you know the Calgary Police Service uh forensics team that are that are doing the the uh you know the the crime scene investigation so that's something that he takes issue with uh there's also a challenge in the sense that you know uh Maurice McLaughlin the the shooter you know was never uh never sort of uh
00:26:02
Speaker
our understanding you know was did an interview or provided notes or any of that there's he has the right not to incriminate himself but it's also I think it's very hard for the heifernans to you know to sort of accept that that's you know the way our system is declined you know is designed you have this officer who's serving the public they shoot and kill somebody and then they have no obligation to sort of like
00:26:24
Speaker
even present however stilted their side of the story I think is also, I just think that's like a hard thing for them to wrap their head around. In any case, Acer does their investigation. They, and in the film, you know, there's several recordings that are released for the first time. There's an initial sort of conversation with one of the investigators when the Heffernan sort of first learned the details of what happened, you know, and it's just, it's a, oh boy, like I just remember the first time hearing that just the chills
00:26:53
Speaker
uh you know and actually tears like it's just a very very very uh
00:26:57
Speaker
you know, powerful power, like it's a tragic interaction where they're learning about what had happened to their son and their and their brother. There's also a recording of a meeting that was had with a assert executive director, Susan Houston and others, you know, in which she told them that she would be, you know, likely be recommending charges to the crown, several different charges up to it, including second degree murder. Now, had that gone forward, this would have been theoretically sort of the most serious prosecution of a police officer.
00:27:27
Speaker
In certainly that we're aware of in Alberta recent Alberta history perhaps ever And you know, this is major spoiler alert all over the place, but that prosecution never happened perhaps surprise surprise and the You know the decision of the crown why not to do that is I think also riddled with with
00:27:48
Speaker
with issues. And as you'll see in the film, a lot of sort of double standards are pointed to by several folks, the Heffernans and Tom Engel, the attorney, just in terms of what had happened there.
00:28:02
Speaker
No, I mean, there's a lot in that you just I mean, we're talking about a film that you need to go see. But so there's a lot that we're not going to cover in our talk about what's in the movie. We don't have to cover everything because, again, you should go see this movie. But I think one thing that comes up and is very obvious in watching this is just like the uselessness of body cams, the uselessness of dash cams. You know, multiple instances of these being turned off
00:28:31
Speaker
or malfunctioning. How many times did that come up in reporting out this documentary that these things were just proven to not be useful for police accountability reasons? Well, I think it's the body camera and the camera issue in general is one that's really, it's complicated. I think the notion that now Calgary is the first major police department in the country to have body cameras, but
00:28:55
Speaker
I think what we have to say is that they're not a panacea. They're not going to solve the problems of accountability. And they're just one possible tool. Now, despite what you said, Duncan, I think there are issues, I mean, several cases in this film where if there had not been video, it's very unlikely that anything would have gone in the favor of justice.
Evaluation of Police Accountability Measures
00:29:15
Speaker
In Godford's case, without the video, he may have been convicted of assaulting a police officer, which would have been tragic and terrible and just totally unjust.
00:29:24
Speaker
And in the Haworth incident, without that video recording from an adjacent to the Cal Republic Library building, if we hadn't had that security camera, it's hard to believe that Constable Trevor Lindsay would have been convicted of aggravated assault in the Daniel Haworth incident had it not been for that camera. So I think there is a reality where video is
00:29:47
Speaker
valuable. But the notion that we can just equip officers with body cameras and then we're good to go is false. And I think the the Clayton Prince incident where you have some very damning video that gets turned off in the middle of this incident
00:30:03
Speaker
points to that very clearly and then we've also seen other instances in Calgary even recently where there's a tragedy at Eau Claire, there was a young woman in a, I believe, fourth, fourth story apartment building and officers were outside her apartment and
00:30:18
Speaker
She fell to her death. The officers were supposed to have body cameras, three of them. And according to what we've read, all three body cameras were malfunctioning. I mean, how is that possible? How is it possible that all three body cameras would be malfunctioning? But more importantly, I think the question that we have to ask ourselves is, OK, you've given people body cameras. Now, what are the consequences if you misuse these things? And what are the consequences if, for example, like the Baltimore PD has been caught doing multiple times, you plant evidence?
00:30:46
Speaker
actually planting evidence and get it gets caught on body camera like what are the The policies around these body cameras and is this this footage is as important as the cameras themselves and I think we have to be really vigilant that They're not being abused or sort of turned backwards back on the public as a as a use of pressure as a tool of oppression and Yeah, it's very you know, it's a complicated issue, but I don't think it's it's it's a solution to the accountability problem at all and
00:31:14
Speaker
So and just to relate specifically to, you know, the content of the film and kind of ongoing events back to the Clayton Prince story. So the as per our most recent response to a request for information from the Calgary Police Service, the professional conduct hearings around that incident are yet to be complete, which again is amazing. So we're in the end of 2020. That incident was in summer 2016.
00:31:39
Speaker
There is the claim made oftentimes by the Calgary Police Service and other departments that oh well we can't proceed with the professional conduct complaints process until the criminal charges and the process and all the appeals which all can drag on for years and years are resolved. We are working on sort of a piece or you know we're looking at that issue. We've been told by a number of sort of
00:32:07
Speaker
High-level players in this in this field that that's you know There's actually not really any basis in law for that claim that that's really sort of a question of convenience and a delay tactic and Not actually sound that this claim that we can't proceed with professional conduct hearings has no basis pending the criminal investigations being resolved Specifically in terms of the Clayton Prince case. There's several things that go on one is as I mentioned, you know is the officer who turns the
00:32:34
Speaker
you know the camera and you know it's like pretty clear contravenience of policy to have done that there is also there is at least at least five cars that were on scene now each car as this is sort of what was communicated to us by Calgary police service should have uh at least one officer wearing their mic and that mic should be turned on recording so a mic this at the time was just audio that's tethered to the
00:32:57
Speaker
vehicle. Now, again, kudos to Constable Harris. He was the only one of that whole gaggle of cops who was actually wearing a miker at the very least had it turned on. Now, albeit he was training a recruit and I was on best behavior, I'm sure, but the other officers
00:33:14
Speaker
Very curious to see when this professional, these conduct proceedings go through, is that addressed? And if so, what is the consequences for that? What are the consequences for really just very strongly breaking these departmental policies? And I think that a big part of the problem is that if there aren't serious consequences, and this of course applies to body cams moving forward, to me it's just such a violation of the public trust and such a violation of just the whole
00:33:42
Speaker
you know, just the whole goal of policing, of, you know, the presented goal of policing and criminal justice, if there isn't, in fact, any basic level of accountability for these officers. And I'm not saying they all need to be, you know, sent out, you know, to the Gulag or whatever, but, you know, I mean, these are serious, serious things going on. And to me, too, I don't know, this is, I just think this is something that has not, we are not aware of any sort of
00:34:07
Speaker
criminal charges or even any like substantive professional standards and love to be corrected and informed by the Calgary Police Service or ASERT that this is the case but not aware of any incidents of sort of serious consequences or even modest consequences resulting from a failure to follow policy around cameras or other types of recordings.
00:34:31
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, the rabbit hole of this debate around body cameras and in Edmonton, the issue is dash cameras. That's what they, that's the big thing that the chief is talking about introducing here in Edmonton, which, which we don't have at this point, but they want to bring in as a police accountability measure is that, yeah, I mean, every once in a while you do get something God awful that happens on tape and there is a reaction and maybe, you know, 40% of the time there is some kind of consequence that happens for the cop. That percentage might be a little lower in actuality.
00:34:57
Speaker
And so you're like, look, here's a way that it helped. But it's like I'd much rather just have that conversation around defunding the police and moving resources and workers away from things like mental health wellness checks, moving those things away from the cops and to other qualified professionals who don't have guns on their hip.
00:35:18
Speaker
to handle those situations because at the end of the day, as we saw in the Anthony Heffernan case, this is a person who needed help. He did not need some, he didn't need five people with guns surrounding him in a tiny hotel room, one of them shooting him to death.
00:35:33
Speaker
And this is the like, we get into the talk about police accountability. It's why I think that Black Lives Matter and the larger movement for Black Lives around this has it correctly where it's just like, go after the structure of it here, the superstructure, which is that these groups are incredibly funded, incredibly powerful because of that funding. And by reallocating that money, you're able to diminish the power of these groups.
Advocacy for Resource Reallocation
00:36:00
Speaker
Well, yeah, I think you're 100% right in the fact that this is sort of part and parcel of a bigger discussion. I think that just before we move on from the subject of video, part of the problem is that as long as we're dealing with a situation where clearly, and I think this is broadly speaking true across the board, the testimony of police officers is held in a particularly high esteem. We also have an issue in Alberta where we have
00:36:26
Speaker
are quite disturbed by and interested in looking in more detail at the policy around judicial criticism of officer testimony. So basically, when an officer testifies and seems to lie or not be forthright or otherwise befowl their testimony of which there are several instances that appear in the film, certainly in the Godford
00:36:50
Speaker
in the Godford trial, you know, that there aren't sort of clear consequences for that. There is a list, a McNeil list, if anyone can get their hands on that and share it, that would be wonderful. That's maintained by the Crown, that list sort of, you know, officers that basically should not be called on the grounds that they have poor credibility. But I'll point out the fact that like, you know, we're in a system where you have this list of officers who apparently are not trustworthy enough to be called to testify,
00:37:17
Speaker
And yet they continue to, broadly speaking, act as police officers, be out on the street. It's really problematic because, again, part of being a police officer is that you then need to be able to go testify if somebody is being charged with whatever the crime is. And you really have to ask how it is that you can have officers that the Crown do not consider credible enough to testify that then continue to be police officers.
00:37:42
Speaker
I would love to hear a response to that that sort of puts my concerns at ease. But then in terms more, again, moving on to the very important discussion of sort of reform, of defunding, of reallocation of resources.
00:37:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think that, you know, we know that and Calgary, Edmonton, these are no exception that by far the biggest ticket line item on the municipal budgets is are the police services as a huge amount of resources that go in things like, you know, social housing and other types of, you know, social housing and then, you know, for other types of sort of income support, et cetera, just a drop in the ocean in comparison.
00:38:19
Speaker
And there's been a whole battle, I don't know if for folks in Edmonton, if they've been following it in Calgary, but the city council in Calgary had originally sort of agreed to reallocate, I believe it would have been 5% of the budget over the course of two years. It's a little bit misleading because that actually like amount of money was, I believe technically an increase to their pre-existing budget. So whether or not that's, there's a semantic issue there.
00:38:44
Speaker
But that was just last week, I was at least partially reversed. In that case, it wasn't the police department. The police department had accepted this and actually it had been the current Chief Neufeld, who had originally made a commitment to participate in this process to some extent. It was actually a city council that basically then, as per the reportage on this, gave them more money than they required.
00:39:06
Speaker
But in terms of alternatives, there's so many different things we could look at. I think a really, really great place to start, and a lot of people are focusing their energy on, is exactly what you said, is non-police responses to people in crisis, be it mental health, be it drug-related, be it housing or homeless, somebody in need in that respect.
00:39:25
Speaker
the preliminary numbers and possibly these are sort of underestimates out of I think Calgary and Edmonton there seems to be an agreement or an acknowledgement by the departments that at least 30 percent you know of all their calls fall into these categories which seems to me you know to make a pretty compelling argument that you know those resources could and should be sent elsewhere now as
00:39:45
Speaker
Mark Neufeld, the chief in Calgary, has pointed out it's like, OK, well, if the resources are being shifted, we actually then like those calls need to actually like be going elsewhere. So what that looks like, there's many, of course, possibilities that could be going to, you know, in Toronto, we have a model where there's sort of a crisis response team that is funded by the province that over the past 30 years has, you know, has it's thousands and thousands and thousands of calls that have been redirected.
00:40:09
Speaker
And they have a specific relationship with sort of hospitals where they can expedite a hospital bed. There's many different ways to go. And I always like, I like this notion. You know, and as a son of a social worker, I grew up hearing a lot of stories of, you know, my mother was involved in for a time, you know, doing like, for example, child apprehension work, you know, where you go with a police officer, essentially, when you're going, say, to a house where there's a bad situation and a child needs to be removed.
00:40:32
Speaker
You know that you actually you know you go with police because it might not be safe because there's some sort of abuse or violence or whatever it is that's going on so to me I always like the ideas that this seems to me a really easy starting point is you know how about we have more teams and this could be actually quite common this could be many of the teams where you're pairing say a conventional police officer or
00:40:51
Speaker
with, for better or worse, their skill set with, say, a social worker. And that would be your team. And I would think those complementary, you would hope, skill sets would have really much better responses than just two cops who don't have that extensive post-secondary training and years of experience dealing with those issues. Yeah.
00:41:16
Speaker
I mean, to go back to your list of untrustworthy cops, I definitely also want that list. So yes, please, folks, if you're a crime prosecutor and you're listening to this and you've got access to that list, please slide into my DMs. I will make sure that your confidentiality is assured. But it also just, as someone who is a proud supporter of unions and the labor movement, and I don't think we have any meaningful change for working people without strong unions, cop unions were a mistake.
00:41:45
Speaker
And there's actually recent research that backs this up that just shows that like with the advent of cop unions in the 50s, that they became more violent and more unaccountable institutions.
00:41:58
Speaker
The final thing, the final way I want to close out this conversation is something that I think I struggle with.
Storytelling and Social Change
00:42:03
Speaker
I write about these issues at the Progress Report. I also write about another giant, venal, impenetrable, violent institution, the Alberta government. The thing about these institutions is that they're just not interested in change. It's the old Upton Sinclair quote over and over again, it's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
00:42:06
Speaker
But
00:42:24
Speaker
And, and so what I struggle with is like, what, what do these stories ultimately do in the context of change? You know, when we've looked to other jurisdictions, when there, where there has been real change, you know, people burned down a police station or they were out in the streets for literally months, like in Portland, setting up their own autonomous zones, or they're creating their own institutions that, you know, have mutual aid, they care for people and keep them safe. Um, you know, I'm ultimately, I'm a storyteller. I'm not.
00:42:51
Speaker
doing that work. And so I do want to feel that this work is important. But help me out here. How do we improve the lives of our social, how do we improve the lives of our fellow human beings through this kind of storytelling? Well, I think for us, there's a real feeling that the only way that this kind of change is going to actually happen but also stick
00:43:20
Speaker
is if you get more people on board with it. And as effective as it might be to burn down a police station or something like that, I don't know that the broader society, certainly in Alberta, would respond positively to something like that. And I don't think that that's where people are at as a general. Having lots of friends and family in Alberta and Calgary, I can attest to this, that this is not the average response. People would look at that as
00:43:44
Speaker
Not a positive thing at all and I or many people would so I think part of it is, you know The the bubbles that we find ourselves in where we are so convinced that this is the right way forward A lot of other people may not be so convinced and so part of our goal with this film is to just make a set of stories and a narrative that really is
00:44:08
Speaker
is translatable to people who aren't interested in these issues. So people who do not care about reallocating funding from police or who do not care about wellness checks gone wrong or accountability and to make them care. And I think that's really part of the value of the storytelling is to just make people care about something that's not on their radar. And I think so far the reaction to the film
00:44:31
Speaker
has been to do that. We're getting all kinds of, and I think that's part of the benefit of Constable Harris is bringing this suit, if you can say that there's any sort of positive side, is that people who would not have been interested in this film, or would not have heard of it,
00:44:45
Speaker
are now getting a chance to see it are now watching that excerpt which has been circulated on the internet and sort of the beginning of this whole thing that uh is very horrifying and the clayton prince incident and I I think a lot of people in calvary would be shocked to learn this is how the police are behaving so in terms of our role it's to I think first and foremost make people aware that these issues are massive that they affect people I think it's sad but there's a reality where people have to see themselves and if you're you know
00:45:14
Speaker
people like them, like the Heffernens, like Godfred, like the Howarts, you know, a variety of people from across different spectrums of society are all negatively impacted by this, by this issue. And so, if you can
00:45:28
Speaker
appreciate that this is a massive problem, maybe we can actually move the needle on where public opinion is around these issues and rather than just having a knee-jerk reaction. By the same token, I think it's really sad what the city council didn't do the right thing and that rebuffed the police's offer to basically reallocate some of this funding. I think it shows you how far we have to go in terms of
00:45:54
Speaker
You know, what's the accountability for those counselors on that vote? And you know, are they actually reflecting what people want out of the police? You know, I'll just I'll just jump in I think that you know, I like we for I'm of the opinion that you know You know as as Ravinder pointed out, you know, there's certain strengths to a long format documentary, you know We the the original this, you know film broadcast in the summer in a shorter version called above the law Which you can find for free online through subi CBC was broadcast then as well I mean there's a value in
00:46:22
Speaker
a film of that length that's on conventional television, etc., that reaches a certain audience. There's a value in the longer version. None of this is a replacement for, say, the hard-hitting investigative journalism and these types of discussions that we're having right now. These, to me, are all
00:46:41
Speaker
a piece of a bigger discussion and a bigger effort, I will say that I do think that having the concrete, and we can see this in the States, and in Canada, that having specific incidents that people understand the stories, they empathize with the people involved, that's really, I think, something that galvanizes a movement.
00:47:01
Speaker
And that seems to me really important. And I don't think that we had, I think in Canada, partly just because these issues have been flying under the radar, we haven't had that kind of attention. So I do think that when we saw this, this was a huge, huge deal in Calgary when there were major, well, and across the country around the world, major protests back in the early summer post the death of George Floyd.
00:47:27
Speaker
you know, that in Calgary, for example, Godford was one of the featured speakers at one of the major rallies, or I believe was billed as a vigil, you know, at Olympic pleasure. And there's thousands and thousands of people there. And you have to, you know, you have to understand that for Godford, who has, you know, for years in relative isolation, and he's very lucky that he has, you know, or he finds himself very lucky, he's had the support of friends, but has really been very alone in this process. All of a sudden, there's thousands of people getting together who want to hear what you have to say, that want to provide him support. I mean, that's a huge, huge
00:47:57
Speaker
That's a huge, I think, step forward in many respects. And the fact that you have sort of specific stories that, you know, the Heffernans, you know, had been the one that had had the most press before. I'll also point out that in the context of sort of the judicial process, so there was a hearing
Documentary's Influence and Police Morale
00:48:15
Speaker
In relation to the, so Constable Trevor Lindsay, who is who is found guilty of aggravated assault in spring 2019, still has not been sentenced. So that sentencing has been delayed several times. It was supposed to be fall of last year. Then it was delayed to the spring and then now it's been delayed again.
00:48:32
Speaker
Only part of that can be attributed to COVID. And now it's been scheduled for next spring. So it's going to be basically almost two years between the verdict and the sentencing, which is just outlandish. But one of the things that came up at the hearing was that the ground prosecutor in that case specifically referenced the film.
00:48:53
Speaker
the CBC version and stated something to the effect that, you know, having seen that film, he became aware of the previous incident with Godford in the video, etc. And he stated at the time that he's exploring whether or not it makes sense to call Godford to testify and to sort of and to include that in the sentencing hearing, which apparently has been booked for something like six days, which is also, I think, quite
00:49:18
Speaker
I've heard of. So I think there's a lot of, and I know in City Council, the film's been referenced numerous times. It's been, you know, that excerpt that Ravinder mentioned has been, that is what sort of sparked the whole Constable Harris suit in the first place, I think has been circulated and used sort of as a tool in City Hall for these discussions. So anyways, I mean, we remain optimistic that
00:49:41
Speaker
you know, that change is possible. I always, you know, like to point out, it's like if, you know, that really the task at hand is in a most basic sense is to, you know, just, you know, our public employees to make sure that they are performing their jobs in a way that is legal and efficacious and that they are held accountable, broadly speaking, if they're not. And like that seems to me something that should be relatively tangible and relatively easy to achieve. Then there's the bigger piece to do with redesigning the system. And, you know, I think that's a longer term project. But I mean,
00:50:11
Speaker
I think as people that care about these issues, it's important for us to be optimistic and to have some degree of confidence that even in a province like Alberta with the kind of government we're dealing with, et cetera,
00:50:27
Speaker
I'll point out that it's not just the public that actually, and we've heard time and again from current former officer, like, you know, current employees of the Calgary Police Service and former officers that we've spoken to, you know, the current system as it's designed and as it's functioning and the kind of antagonism and these kind of, you know, shortcomings. I mean, it's not serving the public and it's not serving the officers either. There's very telling stats that have been released by Calgary Police Service of internal. And we didn't even get to discuss the whole piece to do with
00:50:56
Speaker
HR problems, bullying, harassment, intimidation, invite everyone to watch the film and you can sort of see some treatment of that. But the morale within the police department has just plummeted in recent years. So the officers themselves, it's not like they're all running around with this perfect level of satisfaction as to their jobs. Nobody is being served by the shortcomings in the system as it stands. So yeah.
00:51:20
Speaker
I hear you. I mean, me imposing that question is kind of me at my most depressed, right? When I just see another shoulder shrug about the latest story you write or produce, right? Ultimately, the work is important because you do have to do that narrative work in order to get people to the point where they're like, oh yeah, I guess we should defund the police because the police do all of these terrible things.
00:51:41
Speaker
So I get it, but I think asking that question, having that conversation is important.
Support for Documentary and Podcast
00:51:48
Speaker
Mark and Linda, we got to wrap it up, but what is the best way for people to see this film and support your work? The floor is yours. Go nuts. So depending on when you're listening to this, the film is currently available through Cuff Docs. It'll be through the end of Wednesday.
00:52:03
Speaker
Let me just get the date right. Yeah, Wednesday December 2nd actually, you know what it might be wrapping up tomorrow the first Stay tuned. Basically I would we're actually hoping to start doing some theatrical screenings. There's more festivals coming up All of that will be posted on our socials. We're at above the law doc on Instagram and Facebook or at lost time media at Twitter and also
00:52:30
Speaker
Again, the shorter, so it's 44 minutes versus the 97 minutes, that is no visible trauma. Above the law, the shorter piece is available through CBC. If you have the CBC Gem app, you can watch it through there. You can also watch it online through their YouTube page as well. So if you just search above the law, CBC, it'll come up there.
00:52:52
Speaker
And don't forget your GoFundMe. What's this? Oh, the GoFundMe, yeah. If you search, again, it's through the same socials, you'll be able to find it, but legal fund for filmmakers sued by a police officer is the title of the GoFundMe. So I think if you search No Visible Trauma, GoFundMe, it'll also come up there as well.
00:53:12
Speaker
And we'll put a link in the show notes too, but it's also in case people are listening and want to get those thumbs rolling. That's the best way. And yeah, folks, if you like this podcast and you want to keep hearing more podcasts like it, there's a few things you can also do to help us out. Biggest thing is word of mouth advertising. Tell your friends, tell your family.
00:53:30
Speaker
tell your dog walker, I don't care. Just if you think someone would enjoy listening to this content, tell them about it, send it to them, text it to them, share it to them over Messenger. However you share things, do it. One other thing that helps us real fast is reviewing us on iTunes. It really does help people find the show, five-star only, of course. And the final ultimate thing you can do to help us keep this independent media project going
00:53:58
Speaker
is go to theprogressreport.ca slash patrons, put in your details, donate whatever you can per month. Small monthly donations are what keep this project alive, helps keep me and Jim fed.
00:54:10
Speaker
and in groceries. And yeah, we would really appreciate it if you could do that. Also, if you have any notes, thoughts, comments, things you think I messed up on, things you think I need to hear about, I'm very easy to reach. I'm on Twitter at Duncan Kinney, and you can reach me by email at DuncanK at ProgressAlberta.ca. Thanks so much to our guests, Mark and Ravinder, for joining us. Thanks so much to Cosmic Family Communist for the amazing theme. Thank you for listening, and goodbye.