From drugs and drunk driving to hooker sex: Review details B.C. police caught on wrong side of law

We endow police officers with a lot of power over us, including life and death, so we tend to hold them to a higher standard of behaviour than the rest of our fellow citizens.

But they are all to human, as we repeatedly discover.

The B.C. Office of the Police Complaint Commission's latest annual review offers a picture of the kinds of wrongdoing cops get up to.

As the Vancouver Province put it, the result looks like a composite sketch of Harvey Keitel's character in Bad Lieutenant: drunk driving, cocaine snorting, sex with hookers and hanging with drug dealers.

The complaint commission office opened 1,091 files in 2013, though some of the complaints date from the previous year. Complaints against police must be filed within a year of the alleged transgression.

Of those, 36 per cent found no evidence of misconduct, while 49 per cent were deemed admissible for investigation. Not surprisingly, more than half the complaints stemmed from the province's biggest municipal departments — 546 from Vancouver, 157 from Victoria and 46 from New Westminster.

Complaints against the Mounties go to the Ottawa-based Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP, whose most recent annual report was last June. The most common complaints had to do with an officer's attitude (20.3 per cent), the quality of an investigation (17.8 per cent), improper arrest (8.6 per cent) and physical abuse (6.2 per cent).

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Of the admissible or investigated complaints by the B.C. commission, the lion's share (268) involved abuse of authority, while 143 centred on neglect of duty and 59 were for discreditable conduct. Four involved corrupt practice, which includes unauthorized use of police databases.

The commission completed 51 investigations resulting in discipline for the officers involved ranging from reprimands to suspension and including some who were fired. Many cops were facing more than one complaint, the Province noted.

One New Westminster officer was fired after being caught possessing and using cocaine, hanging out with a drug dealer and owing him money for drugs, the Province said. Another New West cop was turfed for doing unauthorized searches on police databases and sharing the information outside of work.

A Vancouver officer was also dismissed for tapping into police databases for personal reasons and having a relationship with someone he knew was connected to criminals, as well as having sex with a prostitute both on and off duty.

Drinking seems to figure into many incidents. A Victoria officer was suspended and ordered to undergo alcohol and psychological counselling after sending an image of a nude male from his departmental email address.

A drunk off-duty officer was arrested after starting a fight and then assaulting an officer after being put in a cell. He resigned before the investigation finished but still got a five-day suspension and was demoted, the Province said.

Two officers were also suspended for being caught drunk at roadside checks. One announced he was a cop, hoping to be let off, but it cut no ice with the Mountie who stopped him.

And a Transit Police officer got a written reprimand for taking a selfie with a "severely intoxicated male" for no good reason.

The most recent report by Ontario's Office of the Independent Police Review Director noted incivility remains one of the biggest causes for complaints against police in that province. Though they might seem minor, they are legitimate and should be taken seriously, the report said.

"In our society, many people have grown up believing that they can turn to the police for help when they need it," the report stated.

"In order to do that, they have to place a lot of trust and confidence in police officers. And they have to believe, in turn, that they will be treated with respect."

[ Related: Toronto police accused of excessive force in arrest ]

The other dominant themes in the Ontario review were unlawful or unnecessary exercise of authority, making up about a thousand complaints in 2012-13, neglect of duty which added up to about 460 complaints.

"Many of these were allegations of use of force," the report said. "An example of a fairly common use of force complaint is in the context of officers executing a search warrant.

"Complainants have alleged that officers kick doors in, break furniture and take complainants to the floor with excessive force. They say officers punch them, kick them, or knock their heads against walls or floors, put handcuffs on too tightly and hit, threaten or frighten family members."

A large proportion of Ontario complaint allegations were unsubstantiated but more than 300 were investigated, with about 200 serious enough to merit a hearing.