Daily BrewB.C. woman cleared in dramatic Vancouver drug raid fails to get her job back
How much sympathy do you have for Marilyn Thep-Outhainthany, who lost her new job with WestJet Airlines after failing her security screening because of an apparently innocent connection to a drug raid?
On the surface, what happened to her seems unjust but as you read about it, keep this word in mind: trust.
According to the National Post, Thep-Outhainthany was sitting in the passenger seat of a car in Surrey, B.C., one day in 2007 while her husband went inside a house to "run an errand."
Just then, RCMP swooped in to conduct a drug raid on the suburban Vancouver home, arresting several people at gunpoint, including Thep-Outhainthany and her husband. Police said she and her husband tried to flee.
Their car, registered to her mother but listing Thep-Outhainthany as the principal driver, was searched. Police turned up a secret compartment that held a loaded handgun and a large stash of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and ecstasy.
The couple was charged with four counts of possession for the purposes of trafficking and one count of possessing a loaded prohibited firearm, the Post reported.
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Thep-Outhainthany's husband pleaded guilty to involvement in a sophisticated "dial-a-dope" drug-dealing ring but the Crown stayed charges against her. She denied any knowledge of her husband's activities, split with him, changed her name and found a job with WestJet.
However, the Post said, the position depended on Thep-Outhainthany successfully passing a security screening under the federal Transportation Security Clearance Program to be able to work at Vancouver International Airport. While the record of her arrest had been purged from the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) database, the RCMP still had her case on file.
The federal transport minister last year denied Thep-Outhainthany the security clearance based on the unanimous recommendation of an advisory board, which decided she "may be prone or induced" to become involved in a criminal act, the Post reported.
Thep-Outhainthany appealed the decision to the Federal Court of Canada but lost the case last week.
In his reasons for judgement, Justice Donald Rennie appeared simply not to accept Thep-Outhainthany’s protestation of complete innocence.
“The fact that the charges were stayed against the applicant is not determinative. Prosecutions proceed, or do not proceed, for a variety of reasons; hence the absence of a conviction is not determinative,” Rennie wrote, as the Post noted.
“A criminal conviction is sustained on proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Denial of a security clearance requires only a reasonable belief, on a balance of probabilities, that a person may be prone to or induced to commit an act that may interfere with civil aviation.”
Rennie said that while there was not enough evidence to convict her, the fact was that the drugs and gun were found in a car she was the principal operator, and that she may have tried to flee.
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"While there may not have been sufficient evidence to convict the applicant, the facts reasonably support a belief she was either closely connected to this activity or willfully blind to it," Rennie wrote.
The cocaine and heroin were imported into Canada, Rennie said, which made Thep-Outhainthany's potential access to restricted areas of the airport and her ties to her husband or his criminal associates problematic even though they were separated.
The lawyer who represented Thep-Outhainthany wouldn't tell the Post if an appeal was being considered, but given Rennie dismissed her challenge with costs — considered unusual — it seems unlikely.
It's not the first time Rennie has rejected an appeal of a decision under the airport screening program under such circumstances.
The Toronto Sun reported last April that the judge dismissed an appeal by a cargo handler employed by Federal Express at Toronto's Pearson International Airport who failed his background check because he was once charged in connection with a bank robbery.
The charges against Jason Pouliot were withdrawn after police apparently believed his story that he drove a friend to a Toronto bank unaware he was going to rob it. Pouliot became the inadvertent getaway-car driver, the Sun said.
But Rennie upheld the advisory board's ruling that Pouliot was “closely associated to an individual who is known or suspected of being involved in acts of serious violence against persons or property.”
So it seems to boil down to this: Do you give someone the benefit of the doubt when they claim innocence or is that benefit trumped by security considerations in such crucial facilities as airports and seaports?
