Former Victoria police board member files complaint against VicPD amid corruption controversy

A man who resigned from the Victoria and Esquimalt Police Board over ethical concerns has filed a complaint against the Victoria Police Department in response to a corruption scandal.

This week, revelations about misconduct within the department came to light. Charges were stayed in a major drug trafficking prosecution after VicPD allowed an officer who was being investigated by the RCMP to work on the case.

When the officer, Const. Robb Ferris, was arrested for breach of trust and obstruction of justice in June of 2020, a court record suggests other officers tried to conceal his involvement with the investigation. Ferris was not criminally charged, but a disciplinary investigation found 19 instances of misconduct were substantiated.

Paul Schachter, a retired lawyer who resigned from the police board in 2022, filed a Police Act complaint against the department on Thursday afternoon.

“We can’t trust a department that turns its back on corruption. We can’t trust a department that, in fact, files deceptive and false reports to the Crown and to the judiciary,” Schachter told CTV News.

Schachter submitted his complaint to the board, which must forward it to the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner and VicPD’s chief. The board has not responded to a request for comment on this story.

“We deserve to be informed of what caused this fiasco,” Schachter said.

His complaint lays out myriad concerns, targeting leadership, policy and training failures. It also takes aim at a business relationship that a VicPD sergeant maintained with Ferris after he was arrested.

'We're learning from those mistakes'

In an op-ed published on Jan. 4, 2023, Schachter lamented the board’s limited influence, along with limited transparency around officer misconduct.

“VicPD policy requires that they only report the conduct to a supervisor. What happens after that is often unclear, but it is exceptionally rare to hear anything further,” Schachter wrote in The Tyee.

“The general belief is that the police cover up bad behaviour by their own.”

Schacter told CTV News the police board was aware of the disgraced officer and his business relationship with another officer on the force, but it’s unlikely members knew Ferris was working on a major file while he was being investigated by the RCMP.

“This is a very interesting type of (Police Act) complaint because unlike a complaint against an individual, it can be referred back to the police board to do an independent investigation,” Schachter said.

“I believe that the police board should take the responsibility and ask management why all of this happened.”

Police Chief Del Manak said the department changed some internal processes after the drug case collapsed.

“There were mistakes that were made in a number of the processes that we had,” Manak said at a press conference on Wednesday. “We’re learning from those mistakes.”

Officers feeling 'despair' as public image crumbles

A former VicPD officer said the misconduct maelstrom is contributing to feelings of “utter dejection” in the policing community.

“It’s just a sense of despair,” said the former officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to concerns about future reprisal.

“How are you supposed to do your job if there’s no trust?”

The police source said many people in the department were aware of the corruption controversy. That’s a huge problem, according to a criminal justice instructor at Camosun College.

“To have to work with a colleague who… engages in police misconduct? That’s got to be a really tough pill to swallow,” said Eva Silden, who has a doctoral degree and researches women’s leadership in policing.

“There are a lot of very hardworking, above-board, professional police officers who are doing an outstanding job and unfortunately, they are going to have to clean up this mess.”

Manak said he’s “proud” of the officers who told VicPD brass Ferris may have been sharing confidential information with civilians.

“The best path forward at that time was to let him still be involved and to monitor his activity and to gather further evidence (about Ferris), but yet to minimize his involvement so the file would not be compromised,” he said.

The department must redesign its hiring process to weed out bad actors, be it through more extensive background checks or intensive behavioural interviews, Silden said.

“Robb Ferris… not only got through the front door, but was in a significant position of power,” she said. “How do we manage to identify these folks and be able to get rid of them sooner?”