Police officer accused of lying promoted: lawyer
Mountie concocted ruse about unattended child to enter home, according to report
Evan Kiyoshi French
Northern News Services
Friday, March 11, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
An RCMP officer accused of making up a story about an unattended child to gain access to a Yellowknife family's home has been promoted to supervisory position in Calgary, says the lawyer who represented the family in a lawsuit against the police.
Tom Engel, an Edmonton attorney reputed to have brought more cases against police officers than any other lawyer in the country, said RCMP member Chris Kosmenko has been promoted to corporal from constable since making his call to social services in 2003 to justify entering the home without a search warrant.
"He's working in Calgary now and he's been promoted to corporal so he is supervising other officers," said Engel.
Engel said the RCMP is not doing itself any favours by promoting officers found to have broken rules.
Documents obtained by Buzzfeed Canada in January 2016, revealed the findings of the vice-chair's interim report for the Commission For Public Complaints Against the RCMP. The report states Kosmenko used "extremely poor judgment" and "flagrant abuse of authority" in entering the home. The officer had visited the home seeking a teen who had breached his bail conditions by getting into a fight at school.
When the boy's father told him he wasn't home, the officer threatened to charge him with obstructing justice if he didn't produce the boy immediately, according to the report. The father soon left the home but Kosmenko and another officer remained and peered through a window. Kosmenko claimed to have seen children in the house alone but the other officer said he also saw adults.
The officer said Kosmenko then turned to him and said, "No, you didn't," according to the report, and then called social services to alerted them that there were unsupervised children in the home. When social services and an officer entered the home through an unlocked back door, they found children being supervised, and social services and the officer left, according to the report.
Engel said the family does not want to comment on the case. They were seeking $147,000 in damages but ultimately settled out of court last year, netting $24,000 from the RCMP. The report went on to recommend that Kosmenko apologize to the family but no other disciplinary actions were mentioned.
Kosmenko did not have to apologize, however, because then-force commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli asked the Yellowknife detachment commander to patch things up with the family.
"In the event that Constable Kosmenko is unable of unwilling to apologize, I will ask the commanding officer, 'G' Division, to apologize on behalf of the RCMP," he wrote.
Asked how the RCMP disciplined Kosmenko, NWT spokesperson Const. Elenore Sturko stated in an e-mail, that the detachment won't be releasing information "with regard to the complaint against Const. Kosmenko."
Yellowknife defence lawyer Peter Harte said the case affects the RCMP's credibility because the public doesn't have any way of finding out what disciplinary actions, if any, were taken against Kosmenko. He said one redeeming factor in the case is that it appears that another officer ultimately reported Kosmenko's actions.
Harte said the other officer wasn't prepared to lie for Kosmenko.
"So presumably, at least one of the members was telling the truth about what was going on in that situation," said Harte. "Other police officers who have ended up getting into trouble for their conduct get ratted out, so to speak, by other members who aren't prepared to see people abuse their positions of power and authority and trust."
Harte said Kosmenko's behaviour amounts to trespassing but the conduct of one officer more than 10 years ago should not colour public perception of Northern police.
"To quote Michael Jackson, 'one bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch, girl,'" said Harte.
Kosmenko could not be reached for comment before press time.