Former Alberta NDP cabinet minister says officers who followed, photographed her should be fired

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The police officers who surreptitiously photographed and conducted surveillance on a former provincial cabinet minister meeting with Albertans should be fired, according to the politician who was the target of the rogue operation in Lethbridge.

Shannon Phillips, a member of the legislature with the New Democratic Party, has appealed to the Law Enforcement Review Board (LERB) to throw out temporary demotions against two members of the Lethbridge Police Service in favour of relieving Sergeant Jason Carrier and Constable Keon Woronuk of their duties. The officers were sanctioned last month after targeting her and people meeting with her in a diner in 2017.

The police abused their power as uniformed officers, investigators bungled the review, and officials handed down inappropriately light punishments, Ms. Phillips argues. The officers, according to documents related to the case, disagreed with Ms. Phillips’s politics when she was the environment and parks minister. The pair admit they took photos of Ms. Phillips and her breakfast companions on Good Friday in Lethbridge in 2017; Constable Woronuk, without reason, also conducted a licence-plate search on a vehicle belonging to one of the meeting’s participants.

He later posted photos and the names of some of the participants on Facebook, using a pseudonym and accusing Ms. Phillips of being a lying hypocrite. He spread the post further under his real name.

“This is an egregious and serious matter and should have been dealt with in that way,” Ms. Phillips said in an interview. “The sanction that is commensurate with the seriousness is termination.”

Barb Newton, the LERB secretary, said the organization could not comment on the case because it is “before the board.” The Lethbridge Police Service did not return a message seeking comment. Lawyers for Sgt. Carrier and Constable Woronuk did not return messages.

Ms. Phillips met with four people at Chef Stella, a diner in Lethbridge, on April 14, 2017. Three uniformed officers were at an adjacent table, and a fourth later joined. Constable Woronuk, under the name “Mike Corps,” later posted some of the photos and a note with comments Ms. Phillips considered libellous. She filed a complaint with Lethbridge’s then-police chief Robert Davis on April 25, 2017. The Lethbridge police brought in Calgary Police Service to investigate and CPS officials spoke with the then-minister, Ms. Phillips said.

A year later, then-chief Davis sent her lawyer a letter that said Sgt. Carrier and Constable Woronuk acted in a way that could discredit the police department, according to the report obtained by The Globe and Mail. Constable Woronuk sent information gathered from his rogue operation, as well as pictures, to a conservative operative in hopes the Ethics Commissioner would investigate Ms. Phillips, the letter revealed.

Constable Woronuk received an “official warning,” which would stay on his record for one year, the document said. Sgt. Carrier also received an official warning, but his warning lasted two years because he already had a warning on his record, the letter said, without providing further details. Then-chief Davis dismissed most of Ms. Phillips’s other allegations.

The letter said the decisions were final and not subject to appeal. Ms. Phillips thought she had no other avenue for recourse.

However, the letter said the investigation found “possible misconduct” by at least one of the officers, “unrelated to the conduct outlined” in Ms. Phillips’s complaint. Then-chief Davis said in the letter it launched an internal investigation. Ms. Phillips is appealing the decisions linked to this second investigation, which she said she knew nothing more about until a reporter reached out to the NDP for comment.

The Medicine Hat Police Service joined the second investigation in March, 2018. It focused on Constable Woronuk’s failure to tell CPS he unlawfully performed a licence-plate check on a vehicle he followed from the diner. Further, Sgt. Carrier did not report Constable Woronuk’s actions once he realized what his colleague had done. The pair were temporarily demoted for their misconduct, according to disciplinary documents released last month and first reported by Medicine Hat’s CHAT News Today.

Paul Manuel, the retired superintendent who oversaw the second disciplinary penalty as the presiding officer, declined to comment.

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