No thorough probe into 'racist' email, hearing learns

A thorough internal investigation was never conducted into an allegedly racist email written by an Edmonton police officer, a police detective told a Law Enforcement Review Board hearing Wednesday.

The 2002 email, titled, "Mr. Socko 's 10 Principals of Downtown Policing," was characterized as "racist, discriminatory and disgusting" by former acting police chief Daryl da Costa, who was made aware of it in 2005 by an officer in the police department.

Da Costa ordered an internal investigation into the email, which had been circulating among officers for several years.

Along with statements parodying some policing procedures, the email, whose title was a nod to the belligerent sock puppet used as a prop by wrestler Mick Foley, makes several references to aboriginal people. One suggests that the police van used to transport suspects "should always be referred to as the Mobile Native Friendship Centre" while another states, "An 'aboriginal' is actually just an Indian."

Following the internal investigation, the officer who wrote the email, Const. Scott Carter, and his partner, Const. Dave Radmanovich, who forwarded it to his computer at home, received official warnings.

But in his testimony at the hearing Wednesday, the officer who conducted the investigation, Det. Terry Briscoe, said he never interviewed Carter or Radmanovich.

The email accounts of other officers who received the email were not examined to see whether they forwarded it to anyone else, and the investigation wrapped up within weeks, Briscoe told the inquiry.

The review board is examining how police handled the investigation into the email. On Wednesday, more internal emails were released at the hearing.

In an email exchange from June 2005, Briscoe tells a manager in the professional standards branch of the police department that he is "scared to death" that defence lawyer and well-known police critic Tom Engel might obtain a copy of Carter's email.

"The media circus will be unreal," he writes.

The public got to see Carter's email for the first time Monday after it was released at the hearing.

Although Da Costa spoke publicly about the email issue in 2005, he did not make its contents public, because, he said at the time, he felt it would re-victimize aboriginal people. Engel and the Criminal Trial Lawyers' Association felt the public had a right to see it and launched an appeal with the review board.,

Carter told the hearing on Monday that the email was meant to be satirical and was intended to be a commentary on complaints from the public about how downtown division officers were doing their jobs. 

Carter apologized to aboriginal leaders at a closed door meeting in 2007.