Barry Bradley’s Old Newspaper Clippings

Throughout his career in the Force (1960 – 1995), Veteran Barry Bradley developed a newspaper scrapebook containing notable news stories about the RCMP in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.

Each week, we will post three or four of these old newspaper clippings for the interest of Veterans and their families. This week’s webpage includes some interesting stories reflecting different aspects of activities in the RCMP. These stories would have been forgotten if not saved by Barry and to be shared with others.

DRUG CORRUPTION SHAKES RCMP FROM INSIDE OUT

Photograph of RCMP Sergeant. Paul Sauve (Source of photo – Vancouver Sun Newspaper).

May 30, 1985 (Vancouver Sun Newspaper) – MONTREAL – The two apartments were inside the 20-storey Peel-Plaza just above Sherbrooke St. One was on the sixth floor, the other directly above on the seventh.

In the lower one, S/Sgt. Paul Sauve, 49, chatted with an RCMP informant. They didn’t know it, but somebody was listening.

Tiny electronic devices positioned just inside the plaster picked up their conversations and transmitted them to the apartment above where two agents from RCMP internal affairs sat taping and listening.

They were trying to catch a bad cop.

“Let’s work for another f——-g six months the way we are and we won’t have to work for five more years,” they heard the informant propose.

“Might as well invest it, I won’t need it,” Sauve replied.

This was good stuff. Better proof was to come. They heard them talk of recruitment and even greater riches:

“You know something, Paul?”
“What?”

“If we had a guy like Ross (Ross Graham another senior RCMP narcotics agent) or somebody like that, between the f——-g three of us we could have made millions.”

“Without end,” Sauve concluded.

Then there was the conversation about their partnership.

“You’re a partner that you can trust, believe in, talk to,” the informant said.

“Well, this is, well, you’re more into it,” Sauve replied.

CHANGES PROMPTED

Insp. Al Breau, internal affairs director, and his assistant Walter Wafer had been listening for a month. Their secret work would be such a shock to the department that it would change forever the way the Mounties catch drug dealers.

The conversation about profits were dynamite:

“Here is what we made this week, my friend – $40,584,” they heard Sauve say.

“If we do 10 tomorrow with Charlie, that will be plus 10 pounds, it will be $29,000, this will be plus 290 which will be plus 29,000, this will be 69,600,” the informant replied, calculating mounting profits from hashish deals.

At another point, the informant said:

“This week, last week, it was more than $40,000. A $40,000 week.”

Breau and Wafer had what they needed. Now all they wanted was to bust in and catch them red-handed.

Sauve wasn’t just any cop. He was a 25-year veteran, and as No. 3 man in the RCMP’s Montreal drug squad, he was knowledgeable about every RCMP operation in town.

The cop Breau and Wafer were out to catch had helped bust mobster Frank Cotroni and break up the French Connection. He had put heroin dealer Conrad Bouchard of the Louis Greco gang and Lucien Rivard behind bars.

Sauve’s background looked good, but his colleagues knew better. They never considered him as initiator. He was better at paper work than street work.

Working with and recruiting informants – a two-faced group that included the very best of con men – was not his strong point. His personality was not considered strong enough to handle the duplicitous world of informants, veteran drug agents said.

So, veterans were surprised when in 1977 he was promoted to staff sergeant and made director of operations, which put him in charge of 12 major informants – the force’s lifeline to the underworld.

DISCREET INQUIRIES

Everything seemed to be going fine until one day in late 1979 when a Montreal city police detective spotted Sauve with an RCMP agent from another department. The detective approached the agent, and they had a short conversation about some things the detective had heard lately about Sauve.

The agent made a few discreet inquires and several days later reported to his commander that there could be a problem with Sauve. His commander reported to Insp. Gilles Favreau, head of the drug squad, and Favreau called in Al Breau. He in turned called in Wafer.

Special I, the force’s electronic surveillance division, had done a thorough job. It had tapped everything in sight, including squad headquarters. In this investigation, few were safe. The force didn’t know how far the corruption had penetrated.

The security service, the force’s former espionage branch, had been called in to conduct surveillance. Normally the criminal investigation branch would have taken care of it, but their surveillance people were too well-known within the drug squad.

The Mounties couldn’t take the risk of being seen so they took over the apartment above the target’s.

They drilled through the ceiling of each room below, planting bugs just inside the plaster. Then they drilled through the outside walls and planted more bugs.

On May 21, 1980, the agents picked up a conversation between Sauve and the informant to the effect that they planned to be in the apartment that evening to cut, weigh and wrap several kilograms of hashish for sale to a dealer the next morning.

At 7 p.m., Sauve’s own men stood outside the apartment building waiting. The delay was Insp. Favreau’s. The big boss wanted to be there when his right-hand man was arrested. In the apartment above Sauve’s, agents listened as Sauve and the informant chatted and prepared the hashish.

The sixth-floor Peel-Plaza apartment ws rented under the name of Sauve’s informant, a CP Air employee who had a criminal record for fraud dating back to 1968.

He earned about $20,000 a year hauling baggage and cargo on and off airplanes at Dorval, where he had worked for about 20 years.

Peel-Plaza was not the informant’ home. It was just a place for Savue’s meetings.

The informant Sauve met had worked for the police for many years, first for the former Dorval police force and then for the RCMP.

He worked both sides of the law, had contacts at Dorval airport and was in a position to ensure the right cargo or bag bypassed customs.

“He’s very intelligent and shrewd criminal,” a police officer, who once covered for him said. “But he was very dangerous. Everything the man ws doing I had to look at with a microscope, I was scared of him. He needed a man who was very strong to handle him.”

KEEP CASH

It’s not certain who instigated the conspiracy, Sauve or his informant. Nor is it certain the part the informant played in Sauve’s demise. To protect the names of informants in the trial, the court sealed all the testimony.

The court documents that are available indicate that the conspiracy grew out of an attempt to infiltrate a drug network.

Informants, who earn cash payments of as much as $50,000 for their information, are also allowed to keep their part of the drugs shipment. Watched by the RCMP, the informant sells his narcotics to a known dealer. The agents then arrest the dealer and the informant keeps the profits.

Agents said the process is necessary to retain the credibility of the informant in the underworld. It’s called legal lawlessness and is recognized by the courts as an important route to catching drug dealers.

Sauve told one of his subordinates, Sgt. Ross Graham that he had an informant who was trying to get rid of some hashish and could Graham help out.

Arrangements were made through another narcotics agent, Cpl. Charles Lablance, that one off his informants would help in the sale.

As the security service watched, as many as 12 sales were made. Sauve’s informant pocketed the profits.

They didn’t know the motherlode of hash was as much as 90 kilograms and that Sauve was also pocketing the profits.

Favreau gave the order and Sauve’s own men busted in on him. They found hashish in the kitchen ventilator. They found $206,990 in a briefcase in a bedroom, $20,000 in $100 bills in an envelope in the kitchen, $2,965 in a wardrobe and $1,500 in the informant’s clothes.

They raided Sauve’s Laval home and found $78,310 in a safe recently built into the floor of his furnace room.

Sauve and his informant were charged and last month were convicted of conspiracy, possession of drugs and trafficking. They will be sentenced on June 19. The Crown is asking for from five to eight years for Sauve and three years for the informant.

Within the tight brotherhood of the RCMP, some officers criticized Favreau for “giving Sauve the rope to hang himself,” as one source said.

“When they began to suspect that Sauve couldn’t handle this informant, they could have hauled him out of there,” the source said. “Instead, they let him hang himself and then they went in there and picked up the body.”

Other argue that Sauve was treated like any other potential narcotics target. He was watched and, after he committed the crime, arrested.

After Sauve’s arrest, internal affairs interrogated many other narcotics agents about their cases and how they handled informants.

Fresh rules were drawn up and for the first time put in writing. RCMP national headquarters issued a manual that included detailing regulations on dealing with “confidential human sources” – informants. For the RCMP, going by the book” took on a new meaning.

No longer were agents allowed to aid informants in any degree of lawlessness. Sauve’s defence was that he was attempting to infiltrate drug networks.

INDIAN WAR DANCE WARNS MOUNTIES

Photograph of First Nations protesters in front of the RCMP Fairmount Barracks building in Vancouver (Source of photo – Vancouver Sun newspaper).

April 24, 1972 (Vancouver Sun Newspaper) – The Fred Quilt Committee stated a war dance Saturday on the lawn at Vancouver RCMP headquarters and issued a warning that B.C. Indians may have to resort to violence to protect themselves, Len George – son of Chief Dan George – permed the dance in front of about 20 police officers and 75 demonstrators who had marched through the city to protest the death of Chilcotin Indian Fred Quilt.

After the dance, committee member Clarence Dennis told the crowd: “The oppression of Indians by the RCMP in this province has got to stop now or we may change our non-violent nature and start protecting ourselves.

“I hope it won’t come to that but if things aren’t done about cases like Fred Quilt’s what can you expect?”

Dennis launched an angry attack on the RCMP as demonstrators sat around a black wreath on the lawn of the police headquarters at Thirty-third and Heather.

Fred Quilt, 55, died in Williams Lake hospital Nov. 30 two days after an encounter with Alexis Constable Daryl Bakewell and Peter Eakins.

Members of Quilt’s family claim Quilt died as a result of Bakewell kicking and jumping on him.

A coroner’s inquest decided he died an unnatural but accidental death. Attorney-General Leslie Peterson ordered a review of the case and sent special investigators to seek more evidence, but has made no announcement of findings yet.

Protestors marched Saturday from the Vancouver Indian Centre at Third and Vine to the provincial courthouse an on to the RCMP headquarters.

Dennis, his wife Angie and committee member Yvonne Houze were admitted to the building to put their case before Inspectors J.A. Macauley and D.J. Webster.

After the meeting, Dennis said: “Every day there are cases of the RCMP acting in a bigoted way towards Indian people.

“It’s the same bigotry Indians have experienced for the last 200 years and it can’t be tolerated any longer. We want the matter dealt with right now.

“The white people pass the laws in Ottawa and the RCMP, being unable to think, enforce them. These are officers who went to the same schools as everyone else and got fed the same line – that Indians are a bunch of savages.”

“We’re not. If we were, we would have started shooting 30 or 40 years ago.”

Dennis said the inspectors told the delegation they would send a written report of the committee’s grievances to the attorney-general.

Dennis also said that the committee will soon expose another case of an Indian allegedly being severely treated by the RCMP.

“This is a case of a man being beaten by several RCMP officers,” he said. “He is now in critical condition in hospital.”

Dennis said details of the incident will be released after the committee has made a thorough investigation.

He attacked the RCMP for incompetence in failing to do anything about the Quilt case and said if they wonder why many Indians refuse to talk to them it is a because RCMP is a “dirty word” with Indians.

He also attacked Peterson for stalling in investigating the incident.

“Here’s a man who wants to be premier,” Dennis said. “I say he better start doing his job as attorney-general before thinking about getting votes to be premier.”

He said another investigator, Chilliwack lawyer David Hinds, is being sent to Williams Lake and the Stone Reserve to investigate the Quilt case once again.

“This will be the fifth investigation and we still haven’t got any results,” he said. “If Fred Quilt had been a white man, I guarantee you something would have been done by now. But his was just an Indian.”

Hinds confirmed Saturday that Peterson has assigned him to re-examine carefully the evidence and said he would leave for Williams Lake Sunday.

“I’m afraid I cannot tell you very much because the instructions a client gives a lawyer are confidential,” he said. “But I can say that he asked me to do a thorough re-examination of the evidence and report back to him.”

Throughout the rally at RCMP headquarters, members of the press were barred from RCMP property. A few who slipped in with the demonstrators were ordered out and Channel 8 cameraman Eric Cable was forcibly pushed out of the gate.

There were no other incidents and smiling and whistling Vancouver city motorcycle policemen acted as parade marshals.