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WINNIPEG — Former East St. Paul police chief Harry Bakema told a public inquiry Tuesday that he never tried to protect his former colleague, Winnipeg police officer Derek Harvey-Zenk, while investigating a fatal crash in 2005.
But Mr. Bakema admitted the case should have been handled differently, and said he wouldn't be satisfied with the investigation if he were related to the victim, Crystal Taman, a 40-year-old mother of three who was killed when Mr. Harvey-Zenk's truck collided with her car as she waited at a red light.
Mr. Harvey-Zenk had been drinking with colleagues after his shift ended early that morning, the inquiry has been told, and there were no skid marks at the accident scene. Charges of impaired driving causing death were eventually dropped and a controversial plea deal kept Mr. Harvey-Zenk out of prison, which led the provincial government to convene a public inquiry.
The inquiry heard Tuesday that Mr. Bakema, who took charge of the scene that morning, never conducted any of the basic roadside sobriety tests expected of an officer investigating a possible case of impaired driving.
Rather than observing Mr. Harvey-Zenk to see whether he walked unsteadily, Mr. Bakema, a 32-year veteran police officer, draped a supportive arm around him and helped him across the road and into a police cruiser. It was during that walk that Mr. Harvey-Zenk, whose head was bowed and who seemed “distraught,” blurted out, “I'm a cop.” Mr. Bakema recognized him immediately as “Derek,” someone he had worked with before retiring from the Winnipeg police and taking the chief's job in East St. Paul.
Mr. Bakema admitted Tuesday he didn't test Mr. Harvey-Zenk's comprehension or patterns of speech because he quickly concluded Mr. Harvey-Zenk was uncommunicative. He didn't take note of whether his face was flushed or his eyes were glassy. He never stuck his head inside Mr. Harvey-Zenk's truck to see whether it smelled of alcohol because there was only one door, he said, and a colleague was in the way. Other witnesses have told police they smelled alcohol in the vehicle.
As the days passed, a member of the Winnipeg police professional standards unit, who was brought in to help with the investigation, wondered why Mr. Bakema did not seem concerned about establishing how much Mr. Harvey-Zenk had been drinking
Mr. Bakema was also criticized for keeping two sets of notes: one that he made at the scene, and which he never disclosed, and one he made later.
The second set of notes closely resembled the notes made by another police officer, and contained at least six identical errors and omissions, according to commission counsel David Paciocco.
Mr. Bakema denied collaborating on the notes several times, before finally admitting that there may have been some sharing of information.
“It's pretty obvious this investigation was botched up by East St. Paul pretty big time,” Mr. Paciocco said.
The inquiry also heard that in the middle of the investigation, several calls were made to Mr. Harvey-Zenk's superior officers at the Winnipeg Police Service. One call was to Keith McCaskill, who was division commander for north Winnipeg at the time, and who is now the Winnipeg police chief. Mr. Bakema said he made the calls to warn the commanding officers that Mr. Harvey-Zenk was the subject of a serious investigation and shouldn't be called in to work that evening.
Gene Zazelenchuk, a lawyer for the Taman family, had a different interpretation.
“I'm going to suggest to you, officer, that what you did is you said words to this effect: ‘One of your boys was on a drinking spree and got in an accident. I'll clean up this end, you clean up the other end,'” Mr. Zazelenchuk said.
Mr. Bakema denied that was the case, and the remark was disregarded by inquiry commissioner Roger Salhany.
Mr. Salhany was puzzled to hear that in the middle of the investigation at the scene, barely two hours after the crash, a call was made from Mr. Bakema's cellphone to a local Dodge Chrysler dealer.
“You called them, in the middle of an investigation, about your vehicle?” Mr. Salhany asked. Both Mr. Bakema and Mr. Harvey-Zenk owned Dodge or Chrysler vehicles, but Mr. Bakema said he couldn't remember why he called the auto dealership.
