Some Nelson police officers sent inappropriate messages and memes to a WhatsApp group, which was looked into
Several current and former Nelson, B.C., police officers have been found guilty of the things that were said about them, according to an investigation by the police in Vancouver.
Some members of the Nelson Police Department are said to have sent inappropriate messages and memes to a WhatsApp chat group between 2018 and 2020. The Office of the Public Complaints Commissioner (OPCC), a civilian group that handles complaints against municipal police forces in B.C., asked Vancouver police to look into the claims.
Last year, Deputy Police Complaint Commissioner Andrea Spindler said that the department’s chief constable asked for an investigation to be done on February 3, 2022.
Investigators are looking into claims that eight officers were in a WhatsApp chat group and shared inappropriate content and messages, including a racist comment.
Nelson police said in a statement on Wednesday that “allegations of bad behavior against both active and retired members of the Nelson Police Department have been proven.”
It went on to say that a claim that one officer had not done his job was also true.
Two of the current members have been found not to have done anything wrong.
It is not clear which allegations have been proven true or how many officers are involved.
‘Only the first step
Spindler said in a statement on Wednesday that an outside discipline authority, in this case a senior Vancouver police officer, decided there was enough evidence to go to a disciplinary hearing.
“After an investigation, this is only the first step in the disciplinary process,” Spindler said.
The external discipline authority will be in charge of a formal disciplinary hearing to find out if the officers did anything wrong. The OPCC said that if misconduct is proven, the authority may take disciplinary or corrective actions, up to and including firing.
Spindler says that the officers can ask for more investigation and make suggestions to the authority in charge of discipline.
“At this early point in the disciplinary process, no final decisions have been made about whether or not any officers have done anything wrong,” she said.
The office said that there are no set deadlines for when the authority in charge of discipline must make a decision.
Donovan Fisher, the chief of police in Nelson, said that the findings come after a hard year for the police department.
Fisher said in a statement, “These findings are troubling, but we are determined to learn from them and grow as a group.”
The City of Nelson has said that it will not say anything else.