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4

Traffic Division, 1979–81

After about three years of patrolling District Three I was ready for a change. I applied for a transfer to the Coordinated Law Enforcement Unit (CLEU), a provincially funded, integrated team responsible for the investigation of organized crime. When Crowther heard about my application, he urged me to apply instead to the Traffic Enforcement Unit as he had. I couldn’t imagine two entities more diametrically opposed than these two divisions. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll ride those beautiful Harleys! It will be great and we won’t have to take any more reports.” Crowther had ridden bikes before he came onto the job. I was thinking that the only time I had ever ridden a motorcycle was when a friend lent me a Yamaha 250 that I promptly rode into a ditch near Tannery Road in Surrey.

Fast-forward six months and I was sitting in the personnel inspector’s office to talk about my transfer. “I can see that you have applied both for CLEU and the Traffic Division. As it happens, we have openings coming up in both. Where do you want to go?”

I chose Traffic because I thought it would be a lot more fun, and two weeks later I was being fitted for custom-made Wellington-style motorcycle boots.

Motorcycle Training

In 1979 Vancouver’s police motorcycle training was done in-house on the grounds of the Pacific National Exhibition in East Vancouver. Eight new members of the Traffic Division arrived for training; along with Crowther, they included two of my academy classmates, Dan Dureau and Christopher Shore. We had all joined the force as nineteen-year-olds. When we were ushered toward a row of intimidating 1200cc Harley-Davidson motorcycles, I asked the instructor, “Where are the smaller bikes that we are going to train on?”

“These are the bikes we train with,” he said. “Pick one and get on it.”

We started by learning how to coordinate clutch and brake movements and stopping and starting from a straight line. Then cones were set up, and we practiced riding in circles that got tighter and tighter as the course progressed. At the end of the two-week-long course, we headed over to the government facility off Willingdon Avenue in Burnaby, where we all passed the test and received our Class 6 motorcycle licences.

Junior members of the squad were assigned the oldest bikes. In that era Harley-Davidson had been bought up by a recreational equipment manufacturer where quality control was so poor that when the bikes were displayed new in the showroom, sales personnel left sheets of cardboard under the engines so the dripping oil wouldn’t stain the floor. So not only did we have the oldest bikes, they were also the worst motorcycles Harley-Davidson ever produced. I chose to work in the northwest sector of the city because traffic congestion there was so bad that I knew I would routinely be the first officer at the scene of a crime. But when I rode out of the Cordova Street garage to begin my shift, rather than ride west to my assigned sector, I would ride south toward the motorcycle repair shop at Manitoba Street and Marine Drive because by the time I arrived there, something on the bike would have broken and needed fixing.

Cruising northbound on Marshall Street towards Trout Lake on my police Harley-Davidson 1200. These bikes were so poorly made that you could never be sure you would be able to start the engine again after turning it off.

The purpose of having a Traffic Division is to move traffic safely through the city, and that mandate is fulfilled by punishing those who refuse to drive safely. And yes, we did have a ticket quota: fifteen tickets per ten-hour shift. The four of us routinely wrote thirty tickets each shift, and this took three or four hours of focused effort. The rest of our time was spent riding through the sector, showing the flag, doing informal enforcement, crime prevention and covering calls.

Our sergeant was Derek Edwards, a large, powerful man, and at one meeting he became completely incensed at those constables who consistently refused to meet our ticket quota or any other reasonable work standard. Frank Nordel, attempting to justify his own lack of productivity, stood up and expounded on the importance of writing quality tickets, not just a quantity of them. “You should be able to write two to three quality tickets in a shift,” he said, suggesting that to write more would be counterproductive. Edwards admonished him, saying that two to three tickets was not going to cut it, and he walked out, completely frustrated by the demonstrated lack of work ethic. I developed my own rule about writing tickets: leave the humans alone. So regular taxpayers got warnings. Scrotes, drunks, criminals and gangsters got tickets. And I’ve maintained that rule for more than thirty-four years of policing.

Over the Christmas seasons we in the Traffic Division participated in the drinking driver program. We would take out cars and set up roadblocks or cruise the Downtown Eastside looking for drunk drivers. When we made an arrest, we would summon the BAT Mobile (blood alcohol testing unit) and it would arrive with the breathalyzers to process the case. This van was quite cosy inside, having a fridge, soft seats and a sink, and on cold winter nights, in this warm living room setting with its comfortable seats and friends telling stories, what could be more pleasant?

While it was not unheard of in that era to enjoy a warming drink on a cold night, most understood the limits while on the job. Nordel did not. One cold night our crew was working perimeter control on a movie set when one of the production staff approached Sergeant Edwards. He pointed to Nordel, who appeared to be struggling to keep his balance, and said, “Listen, I got nothing against you guys having a drink or two, but that guy is so shit-faced he can’t even stand up.” I thought, thank God, somebody is finally going to do something about this idiot. Nordel was driven home to sober up. The next day we huddled around the Traffic desk, awaiting Nordel’s arrival because Edwards was ready to kill him, but Nordel never showed up for that shift. Or the next shift. He didn’t bother showing up for the whole week. When he finally returned to work, Edward’s fury had subsided. Nordel blamed the incident on the flu and booked off on paid sick leave.

But the most irritating part of Nordel’s personality was his arrogance. Once, when we were standing beside our bikes in Stanley Park, he told us how his class (one of the last classes to have come out of the Vancouver Academy) used to run around the seawall as part of the fitness program and how in those days the academy was a lot tougher than it is now. I looked up and down at his pear-shaped body and offered, “It couldn’t have been that tough. You made it.”

One time four of us were awaiting the arrival of a wagon for a slobbering drunk that Nordel had arrested. As the wagon driver filled out the paperwork, Nordel told us how he had made his big arrest. As he talked, the drunk edged farther and farther away and then finally spun around and ran off down the lane. While Nordel hesitated as if he couldn’t understand how something like this could happen, I said, “Hey Frank, your prisoner is escaping!” Nordel headed off in his riding boots, clompety-clomping after the desperado. And yes, he did catch him.

One weekday I was riding alone in the downtown core at about noon when a call came about a bank robbery a short distance away. Traffic was in gridlock, so I rode my bike up onto the sidewalk and was the first on scene. Over the course of time, bank procedures regarding teller protection, limiting cash on hand and quality surveillance recordings have meant that, these days, a bank is pretty much one of the last places a smart criminal would rob, but in those days there was a real cachet associated with bank robbers. They were at the top of the criminal food chain. In this case, I spoke to the victim, who was still in a state of shock, and I was given suspect details that fit half the men walking in the downtown core. Frustrated, I said, “Okay, what unique thing could you tell me about this guy that, if I walked outside right now, would let me pick him out of the crowd?” The teller thought for a moment, came out of the haze and said, “Oh. Well, he was walking with a really pronounced limp … almost like he needed a cane. And he wouldn’t be walking anyway because he got into a cab right out in front of the bank.” I broadcast the information, and because of the traffic chaos, the suspect was arrested a few blocks away. That really reinforced what I was learning about victims and the information they can provide: never assume that a victim is in shock and can offer only weak information. Always assume the victim has good, accurate information and keep asking until he or she gives it to you.

Welcome to Vancouver

One evening when I was riding alone, I set up radar in Stanley Park, where the only winners of a speeding ticket were motorists caught doubling the limit. Just as I was about to pack up, I looked to the northwest to see the sky quickly turning dark. It was like a blackout curtain was being drawn across the sky from the North Shore Mountains, and I began loading up my gear as quickly as I could. The rain started and it was so heavy that it bounced off the asphalt right back up to my knees. As I was about to get on the Harley, a beautiful Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn pulled in behind me and the driver waved at me through the window. I walked over and spoke to a woman in her sixties, who looked over to her husband in the passenger seat, who appeared to be about forty years older than she was. She was wearing a huge rock on her finger and very expensive clothes. She said, “We’re from California and we’re lost. Can you tell us how to get to the Bayshore Inn?” I figured they were going to get lost in that downpour and said, “No, I can’t. But you can follow me and I’ll take you there.” I turned on the emergency lights and delivered them to the breezeway of the Bayshore Inn as the rain thundered down in a biblical deluge. The doorman at the Bayshore must have thought I was escorting royalty to the hotel and the front desk had forgotten to give him the memo, but I think I left those folks with a pretty good impression of Vancouver.

On another occasion I pulled over a car full of tourists beside the Hudson’s Bay Store on Seymour Street for a minor infraction. The car had California plates and the driver seemed confused as she alternated between fumbling in the glove box for the insurance papers and fumbling in her purse for her driver’s licence. I decided to cut the exercise short because she was taking far too long finding her documents and ultimately I was just going to give her a warning anyway. I asked her name, which she readily provided. The conversation that followed went something like this:

Me: “And Carol, where are you from?”

Carol: “Hwhy?”

Me: “Well, it’s a requirement of Canadian law that you tell me where you are from, so let’s try it again. Where do you live?”

Carol: “Hwhy?”

Me: “Okay, Carol, I think I’ve explained the legal requirements clearly enough. You are required to tell me where you live.”

Carol: “Hwhy?”

Me: “I’m going to give you a few minutes to reconsider your position, then a paddy wagon is going to make an illegal left turn onto Seymour Street—just like you did—then pull up beside us, load you up and take you to jail.”

I left Carol for a few minutes and returned to find that she had started to cry. Finally locating her driver’s licence, she presented it to me. Carol and her passengers were from Honolulu, Hwhy.

Shiny Side Down

I started keeping track of how many times I dropped my bike. The first happened when one of the senior members of the squad had let me borrow his brand new 1980 Kawasaki KZ1000, which was the fastest production bike on the market. This first accident was fairly mundane and involved my dropping the bike while westbound on First Avenue just west of Boundary Road. Nothing spectacular, no injuries. The bike just came out from under me and I was left standing in the middle of the road watching it scraping along on its crash bars as it continued down the road without me. The senior constable was surprisingly understanding.

This Kawasaki 1000 was the fastest production bike model on the road. Ironically, while the Harley had no kick-starter and frequently needed it, the Kawasaki had one but never did.

Number Two happened when I was working alone in Stanley Park and two drug addicts passed me driving an old pickup truck—stolen, of course. A female was driving with a male passenger. I put on the lights and siren and pulled them over just past Brockton Oval on Park Drive. When they pulled over and stopped, I angled my bike away from the curb (just like they taught us at VPD motorcycle school) and started to get off, keeping my eye on the two in the truck. But as soon as the truck stopped, the driver and passenger began trying to switch places—I suppose this was so the male could play the role of gentleman and take the rap for driving the stolen truck. While they were going through this acrobatic manoeuvre, one of them hit the gearshift, putting the truck into reverse. As it slowly rolled over my motorcycle, I stepped away like a matador avoiding the bull. It was evident that the driver had not meant to drive over me, but had the two of them simply driven away at that point, I would have had no way of pursuing. I walked up to the driver’s door, tapped on the window with the barrel of my pistol and said, “Get out.”

Number Three happened when I was in the curb lane eastbound on Robson Street approaching Burrard, and a vehicle in the lane beside me changed lanes right into me. Having pretty fair reflexes, I rode the bike up onto the sidewalk and crashed it into a mailbox. The driver got a ticket. His defence was that I was the one who had an accident, and that it had nothing to do with him.

Number Four occurred as I was southbound on Granville Street near Nelson and heard a commotion—doors slamming, tires squealing—just to the west. I realized a vehicle was rocketing southbound down the lane at a high rate of speed, so I rode west across a parking lot to intercept it. When the car finally came into view, I saw it veer toward a scruffy-looking, long-haired character standing about fifteen yards in front of me in an apparent attempt to hit him. The intended target raised a pistol and fired three times as the car swerved past, barely missing him and continuing down the lane. I dropped the bike and drew my revolver, pointing it at the shooter, who had his back to me. I called out, “City Police! Drop that gun,” and the man turned toward me with his hands at his sides. I warned him two more times, thinking that he appeared to be in a state of shock. Finally calming, he yelled, “RCMP! RCMP!” Again I ordered him to drop his gun, which he refused to do. Just then I noticed a Vancouver Drug Squad sergeant running toward me from the south. He was a friend of mine and a fellow member of the Vancouver Police Pistol Team. He called out, “Wayne, he’s RCMP!” before going over to relieve the shooter of his firearm. When I returned to the station, the story was all over. The corporal asked, “Why didn’t you shoot him?” The first reason was that when the shooter opened fire, he crouched and used a two-handed grip on the pistol. The average drug addict would not normally have that kind of training and discipline, so it clicked immediately that something was wrong with the scene. The second reason was that I was a pretty good shot, and I had drawn and aimed at a shooter who had his gun at his side; at point-blank range I was confident that I had control of the situation. Besides, he had already missed the driver of the car with his three shots.

For Number Five I pulled over a westbound vehicle on Georgia Street, directly across from the Hudson’s Bay, for a routine traffic stop. It was rush hour so there were well over seventy-five people on the north sidewalk waiting for the bus, and now they were all watching me. The car stopped without incident, I put down the kickstand of the Harley and leaned it over. That’s when the kickstand snapped, and the bike went onto its side with me on it. I got up, dusted myself off, walked up to the driver and told him to get lost. I rode the Harley back to the city works yard, where I leaned it up against a wall to await repair.

I had a few more accidents while in Traffic Division. Fortunately, in this instance, I was driving a car, not a bike. Westbound on Cordova in the curb lane, I was stopped at a red light beside a tractor-trailer. With the light still red, the driver of the tractor suddenly decided to make a right turn, crushing the police car against a power pole. As I climbed over Crowther, I hit the lights and siren before the two of us spilled onto the sidewalk. This driver actually advised me that the accident was my fault because I was in his blind spot.

Although the members of Traffic Division ride our bikes in the sun, rain and sleet, we don’t ride in the snow. In one of the few blinding snowstorms Vancouver has ever had, Dan Dureau and I were westbound on Cordova Street in one of the big Traffic Division battlewagons. Dureau was driving, and it was slim pickings for tickets when we noticed a vehicle driving toward us with one headlight on. Dureau pulled a U-turn behind it and put on the lights and siren. The vehicle pulled over without incident but stopped right in the middle of an intersection where the northbound traffic would be approaching down a very steep hill. I got out and approached the driver, an Asian male who apparently spoke no English. His wife was the passenger. I told the driver several times to pull forward because any northbound vehicle would never be able to stop in the ice and slush. Exasperated, Dureau got back into the police car and drove it up the hill, where he meant to block northbound traffic that could slide down the hill and collide with our stopped offender. At the top of the hill he turned the police car to face us, but it began skating down the hill toward us in an uncontrollable slide. Standing at the driver’s door, I told the fellow, “You have to move right now.” No response as he continued to search in his glovebox for the car’s paperwork. Just seconds before the collision, Dureau hit his lights, which caused the two in the car to look to their right as the police car crashed into the passenger side door and blew the car right through the intersection.

As the ambulance arrived, the female passenger alleged she had been blinded and had to be carried from the wreck. As the ambulance drove away with the woman in the back, the husband, recognizing that he had made a mistake in not feigning injury like his wife, ran in the snow behind the departing ambulance, yelling, “Wait! Wait! I’m hurt, too.”

Throughout my career I would periodically remind Dureau about the incident: “Remember that Chinese woman you crippled on Cordova Street?” His response was, “She was Vietnamese.”

Back in the early 1980s the VPD had its own Parking Enforcement Squad, police officers who rode small, three-wheeled Cushman motorcycles all over the city and wrote parking tickets. (Since that time the squad has been replaced by a civilian detail that focuses on bylaw enforcement.) This Parking Enforcement Squad didn’t work Sundays, so early one Sunday morning, Dan Dureau, Christopher Shore and I booked out the Cushmans and rode them over to the PNE, where we chased each other all over the grounds in these ridiculous motorized clown cars. Then we lined up three abreast on Hastings Street at Boundary Road. We raced the engines (all thirty-five horsepower), and when the light changed, we floored it. I was approaching the crest of the hill at Renfrew Street when I smelled something burning. I careened over to the curb, stopped and got out to see that the brakes had somehow locked, causing a fire that had now spread to the fibreglass undercarriage. We borrowed a fire extinguisher from a taxi, put out the fire and had the burned-out hulk towed back to the station. In my defence, I have to say that at the time there was no actual rule or directive or policy that forbade members to book out the Cushmans. That policy was enacted immediately thereafter.

Traffic Division is either in your blood or it isn’t, and after six months Crowther bailed out. I had discovered that Traffic wasn’t in my blood either, but I couldn’t, in good conscience, leave the division after I had gone through all of the training. In fact, I just found the job to be too mundane, and I didn’t like the continuous negativity associated with giving out tickets all day long. In 1980 I applied for an instructor’s position at the British Columbia Police Academy. My wife and I were expecting a child, and I thought that the academy instructor’s position would offer some dayshift stability as well as giving me licence to shoot endless amounts of free ammunition from the widest possible variety of firearms.

There aren’t many secrets around the police department, and when I received a letter from the Justice Institute of British Columbia in the departmental mail, my Traffic squad knew what was up. As I opened the letter, “Dog Balls,” one of the more vocal members of the crew, said, “Is that your Thanks-but-no-thanks letter?” I read through the document and responded, “No, it’s my Thanks-but-thanks letter.” And I passed my letter of acceptance to the Academy around to the incredulous non-believers.