If the public wanted to get a sense of how Police Chief Adam Palmer would react to news of an officer getting in trouble on the job, last week’s response to a reporter’s question about the sentencing of Const. Ismail Bhabha provided some insight.
Bhabha, as some of you online and in television land will recall, is the officer who was convicted in August for assaulting cyclist Andishae Akhavan in 2013 in Yaletown. The assault — punches to the face — was caught on tape. The allegation was Akhavan ran a red light and wasn’t wearing a helmet.
Bhabha went to court on the charge and was given a conditional discharge, with six months probation. I didn’t make it to court, but the CBC reported the judge concluded the officer’s actions amounted to a momentary exercise of bad judgment
So what did Palmer have to say about it?
Well, he said, he hadn’t heard the breaking news about Bhabha when asked Nov. 3 at an unrelated news conference at the VPD’s Cambie Street headquarters. But Palmer, who could have parked his opinion in the no comment department, provided a response.
Here’s Palmer:
“I have seen the video, and I’m always the type of person that when issues like that come up, I look at the totality of the circumstances. So, none of us are perfect and all of us have ups and downs in our life and I want to look at the total track record of that police officer’s history. And in this particular case, he’s a good police officer, he’s got a good track record, he’s received commendations, we’ve had no issues with him. And one issue like this — although it may be a blemish on someone’s career — it’s not going to be something that determines the rest of their life as a police officer. I think people can get past issues like this and move on with their life.”
The cyclist, and many others who weighed in on social media since the incident, might think otherwise. As some of those critics stated on Twitter and Facebook, you have to wonder how this case would have gone if no one recorded the incident.
That’s for the critics to discuss.
So how about this then: Why not use body cameras to sort out the fact from the fiction, or — in Palmer’s words — capture “the totality of the circumstances” from beginning to end?
The VPD experimented with body cameras during the clearing of the Oppenheimer Park tent city in 2014, but I haven’t heard whether they were effective. I also don’t know what’s next for the cameras.
So I asked Palmer, who said Public Safety Canada is conducting a review of the need for body cameras. The police services division of the B.C. government is also reviewing policies related to the use of the cameras, he said.
“We don’t have any plans to roll them out immediately. There are a lot of issues up in the air with that right now. I’m not opposed to it, I’m not saying it won’t happen but I can’t give you a timeline for when it will happen.”
Bhabha, meanwhile, remains on duty.
@Howellings
