B.C.’s public safety minister said he was upset to hear that criminal charges against some of the top fentanyl traffickers in the province have been stayed due to police actions taken during the investigation, calling it “unacceptable.”
Minister Mike Farnworth told reporters on Feb. 15 that he was as “angry as everybody else when I heard the news about the staying of the charges.”
He also said he would be looking into the matter to prevent it from happening again.
“I also want to know and will be looking into the matter in terms of getting information: what specifically went wrong, how did it go wrong, and what steps are being taken to ensure that it does not happen again,” the minister said.
Mr. Farnworth’s comments came a day after the Victoria Police Department issued an apology about the incident.
“This was an extremely complicated file, with many moving parts and a total of three investigations,” said a Feb. 14 statement attributed to Del Manak, the chief constable on the “Project Juliet” investigation.
The statement says that while the drug investigation was going on, another simultaneous investigation was started into the potential corruption of one of the officers involved. However, the officer, Robb Ferris, was not taken off the drug investigation, and that information was not given to the lawyers in the case.
“The investigative team was headed up by Sgt. Jeff Lawson. He was aware from the inception of the first investigation that Mr. Ferris was under criminal investigation by the [RCMP anti-corruption unit],” Supreme Court Justice Catherine Murray wrote in the court documents. “Despite that, Mr. Ferris was permitted to participate in the investigation on a ‘business as usual’ fashion so as to not alert him to the fact that he was under investigation.”
She said that during his time with the investigation, Mr. Ferris attended three briefings, was twice a member of the surveillance team, and co-handled one of the informants.
After Mr. Ferris was dismissed as a result of the findings of the corruption investigation, police “re-set” the drug investigation, but the court said it could not be sure the investigations were not connected.
“I am unable to conclude that there is no connection between the first and second investigations for several reasons,” she said. “Just four days passed between the termination and recommencement of the investigation. It appears possible that VicPD basically carried on from where they left off. The same investigators were involved.”
In the Feb. 14 statement, Mr. Manack said they “attempted to minimize Cst. Ferris’s involvement while maintaining the integrity of the investigation into his activities.”
Mr. Manack said that the decisions made during the simultaneous investigations were “made in good faith, with the intention of reducing the impact of drug and organized crime activity on our streets.”
Project Juliet
Over 12 kilograms of high-concentration fentanyl was seized in the investigation, along with cocaine and methamphetamine, with a total value estimated at $30 million, police said in 2020.The investigation included members of the Victoria Police Department and the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit of B.C.
Twenty firearms were also seized as part of Project Juliet, which included pistols, shotguns, and assault-style rifles.
Three individuals were arrested as part of the investigation that included searches in Victoria and the Lower Mainland.
