Canadian cops held in Cuba need justice

Like many of you I was gripped by the testimony last week of Christine Blasey Ford who accused US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault way back when the two were teenagers and high school students, in what we think was the summer of 1982. 

But even that’s not clear. 

She doesn’t remember a date. She doesn’t remember a location. She seemingly doesn’t remember much other than what she says Kavanaugh did to her. The four people she said were present at the gathering all say they have no recollection of anything similar to what she described including her BFF.

As an investigator, there is so much wrong with her story. As an example, she claims she went to a social gathering at this house but she doesn’t remember where, when or even whose house it was after an afternoon at her country club. She claims when she went to an upstairs washroom she was grabbed by Kavanaugh and his friend and steered into an adjacent bedroom where she was held down and Kavanaugh tried to remove her clothes. 

She claims they turned up music in the bedroom all the while saying there was no music playing downstairs where the others were.  And nobody heard anything including her BFF. 

She then claims she fled after she escaped the two boys but doesn’t remember how she got home. Implicit in this is she left her BFF in the house with two predators, older teen boys and doesn’t remember how she got home. 

Well, I call bulls**t.

I have investigated many complaints over the 40 or so years of my career and I have never heard a less credible story. A 15-yr-old girl goes to a party with older high school guys and leaves her BFF and doesn’t remember how she got where she was, how she got home, where the home was or whose home it was? Nonsense. 

Now I don’t want to diminish any woman who is a victim of any sort of sexual assault. I have investigated and prosecuted many such cases. But please, don’t strain my credulity with nonsense. 

But, and this really must be stated in this Me Too era, just because a woman says something occurred doesn’t mean we have to automatically believe her. 

About 10 years ago I had a conversation with the person in charge of the Sex Crime Unit in one of the Big Five Lower Mainland RCMP detachments and she told me that she estimated approximately 90% of the complaints she investigated were unfounded. I was stunned. 

So, I called the then head of the Sex Crime Unit for a major municipal police department and asked her the same question. She said, and this quote is indelibly etched in my mind, “No, I don’t think it’s as high as 90%. Maybe 85%.”

There are many reasons why a woman might allege something occurred that didn’t actually occur. In the case of Judge Kavanaugh it seems more politically motivated than anything else. Especially given the timeline of the complaint, the lack of questioning by the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Diane Feinstein when she had the opportunity, the dramatic leaking of the identity of the complainant especially in view of the fact she prepared for that weeks prior  by scrubbing her social media, hiring a lawyer referred to her by Feinstein and taking a private polygraph that she doesn’t know who paid for it. 

All of which brings me back to the two Vancouver area police officers being held, since mid-March in Cuba after an allegation of sexual assault by a fellow tourist they encountered in a poolside bar at a resort in Cuba. 

In any such case an investigator looks for evidence of corroboration to give credibility to one party or the other. 

In the Cuba case, the female involved claims she was dragged, at 4:30 in the afternoon, in peak season, from the poolside bar to and through the lobby of the busy resort, up three flights of stairs and held down and raped in a room occupied by the two cops. 

Above is a screen shot of the resort with the location of the bar and the distance to the resort lobby:

Does this even seem remotely plausible? During peak season with a very busy resort, 500 metres to the lobby, past stores, the lobby bar, the front desk and no one noticed? How is that possible?

Well, it isn’t, and that’s why we can say the complaint doesn’t hold water. Why won’t the Cuban authorities see the blindingly obvious? Why won’t the Government of Canada see it as well and intercede on behalf of the two police officers? 

The complainant and the two officers are Canadians. No Cubans were involved in any part of this. If an investigation is required into this, and I would argue that the complaint simply doesn’t pass the sniff test on the surface of things, why shouldn’t that investigation occur in Canada by competent Canadian investigators and make the two officers subject to Canadian law?

Finally, it must be said that I expect little out of the government of Justin Trudeau. He has been a Castro sycophant his whole life. The Minister of what is now Global Affairs, Chrystia Freeland is over in her head with the NAFTA negotiations and the Minister of Public Safety, Ralph Goodale has been a Trudeau lackey since he was first elected as an MP when Trudeau the Elder was the Prime Minister. He has never held a real job or achieved anything in his whole  adult life. Sad, but we cannot really expect much of anything from this lot. 

Erin O’Toole, the opposition critic for Global Affairs, has been made aware of the situation but has yet to do much of anything as far as I can tell. What he should do is raise the matter in Question Period which will get the attention of the parliamentary press gallery and may actually cause the government to do something.

In the meantime, the two police officers languish in Cuba, paying to stay in a hotel with the support of their family and they are struggling emotionally and financially because even though they are not in jail, the Cuban government won’t let them leave. They really need to see something resembling justice and the only way that will happen is if the Canadian government gets seized with their responsibility for their citizens being held in a foreign, communist country. 

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Leo Knight 

@primetimecrime