The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner is investigating why a police officer from the Vancouver Police Department and an officer from the Port Moody Police Department were arrested by Cuban police while on holiday in Cuba.
Deputy police complaint commissioner Rollie Woods said both male officers have had their travel documents seized by Cuban authorities in relation to a “serious allegation” that occurred last month. Woods would not elaborate on the allegation.
Woods said Vancouver police notified his office March 15 about the allegation.
“The Vancouver Police Department reported this to us because my understanding is the Vancouver police officer was the one that was under arrest,” he told the Courier. “There was an allegation against him. The other officer from Port Moody was being detained because he is potentially a witness.”
The officers spent time in jail but have since been released. They have not been allowed to leave the country. Vancouver police sent an officer or representative from the department to Cuba. But the department would not provide any details on the case, except to confirm a VPD officer was arrested and released while on vacation.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have further information to provide at this point,” said Sgt. Jason Robillard, a VPD media liaison officer, in an email to the Courier.
Sgt. Travis Carroll, a spokesperson for the Port Moody police department, confirmed their officer was on vacation and was still in Cuba. He, too, would not elaborate on why the officers were arrested, despite media reports that a 17-year-old girl was allegedly assaulted.
“This is a Cuban police investigation, so I don’t want to speculate on the specific investigation,” Carroll said. “I don’t want to provide third party information. We’re responsible to the public, we’re responsible to the victim, we’re responsible to our officer and I want to make sure that any information that we release is absolutely correct.”
Carroll said the Port Moody department learned of the allegation after their officer contacted the department’s management team. He wouldn’t elaborate on the relationship between the two officers but understood they were friends.
The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner is involved in the case because it has the authority to investigate officers when off-duty, no matter where an incident may have occurred in the world.
“We would like to know more information as to what happened because police officers in British Columbia are accountable for their actions, no matter whether it be in British Columbia, or another part of Canada, or another part of the world,” Woods said. “They’re still accountable for whatever they do. If their conduct would be a violation of the Police Act, then they’re still subject to an investigation and potentially discipline, if any allegations are substantiated, even though they’re outside the country.”
In 2001, a police officer resigned from the Victoria Police Department after he was found to have taken photographs of an unconscious 24-year-old Inuit woman while on holiday in Greenland in September 1999.
Documents of that case show the officer and victim met in a restaurant, drank alcohol and later engaged in consensual sex in a hotel room on two occasions. When the woman passed out, the officer took 21 photographs of her without her consent.
It wasn’t until the officer returned to Victoria and had his film processed that police learned of the photographs from a concerned lab technician; she thought the woman in the photos was dead.
The officer was not charged with a criminal offence but resigned from the department on Dec. 31, 2000. He had served 35 years as a police officer, including in London, England and in Bermuda before joining the Victoria department in 1978.
The victim was notified by police of the photographs and was “shocked and humiliated” by what she saw, according to documents related to the case heard in Sidney B.C. in May 2001.
“She was further humiliated and upset that people in her small community, by looking at these photographs, had become very knowledgeable about her intimate parts and concerned about the spreading of the word or comments that might be made in the future,” the document said.
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