OTTAWA — Only in a town like Ottawa could you lump together two figures as incongruous as a National Capital Commission director and a crack-smoking OPP officer. While their transgressions are not even in the same ballpark, the philosophical response has been the same: those around them have closed ranks, making their own judgment calls about the individual in question’s integrity instead of following the rules.
And that’s just not right.
Take the case of the NCC director Robert Tennant who placed himself in a conflict of interest when, last week, he debated the merits of the city’s western light-rail extension. The problem was that Tennant’s urban planning firm, FoTenn Consultants, does work for a property owner who stands to benefit from the second phase of the city’s LRT.
When contacted by the Citizen, NCC chair Russell Mills vouched for Tennant: “I know him to be a man of great integrity. I trust him personally and in a business sense and in every other way.”
To be fair to Mills (a former publisher of the Citizen), when he made those comments, didn’t know that Tennant had those conflicts at the time because Tennant didn’t declare them. Why not? Because, says Tennant, he didn’t know who all his firm’s clients were. Considering that FoTenn is the city’s premier private planning firm, and that it is involved with Ottawa’s largest developers on projects rights across the city, it would have occurred to Tennant to check. But he didn’t.
Tennant has quickly recused himself from future discussions about the LRT extension — although only after the Citizen’s story was published — but the National Capital Commission Act says any board member who has a direct or indirect conflict of interest has to disclose it in writing and stay out of any debate. Board members violate the rule “on pain of forfeiture of office.” There is nothing in the act about excusing such action if the board member didn’t bother to find out about the very real possibility he had a conflict.
So much for the rules laid out in the act.
But much more startling is the news reported by the Citizen’s Gary Dimmock that a probable crack-smoking officer with the Ontario Provincial Police was never charged, although he admitted to a disciplinary hearing that he did in fact use crack cocaine.
What we know — what all the parties have acknowledged in an agreed statement of fact — is that the Ottawa police officers found an off-duty Constable Darren Zorn in an apartment with a woman “known to police to have engaged in illegal conduct” back in February 2012. Police “formed the belief that he may have been smoking crack cocaine,” according to the statement.
But he wasn’t charged because there wasn’t sufficient evidence, says Ottawa police Insp. Chris Renwick.
“Appearing under the influence of drugs is not a chargeable offence.”
Instead, police officers — recognizing Zorn as an OPP officer — reported the incident to the provincial force, which began an internal investigation.
Just three months later, OPP investigators found Zorn had given that same woman $100 for crack, but they intervened before Zorn actually got his hands on the drugs.
Why did those investigators interrupt the transaction? Surely, if Zorn had completed his purchase and he took possession of the illegal drug, that would have been cause for a criminal charge. But OPP investigators jumped in before the transaction was complete — and again, Zorn wasn’t charged. It’s still unclear why the OPP interfered with the drug purchase.
But ask yourself this: If you were found to have possibly smoked crack, even if you weren’t in possession of any illicit substances, would you be hauled into the station?
More to the point: Would an OPP officer interrupt a drug deal in progress to prevent your being in possession of an illicit substance, which would be a chargeable offence?
Exactly.
For his misdeeds, which no one disputes, Zorn was demoted and will have to submit to random drug testing throughout his career with the OPP, which is the result of an internal disciplinary procedure where the officer admitted to having a years-long drug problem (which is a whole other issue).
Although the offences perpetrated by Tennant and Zorn are clearly not comparable, the reactions by those around them is pretty much the same. Sure the rules say one thing, but in both these cases, personal relationships trumped procedure.
And that’s a problem. Because this tribal mentality, this culture of protecting your own, breeds cynicism in public institutions and, far worse, distrust in our law enforcement system.
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