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5

Police Academy Instructor, 1981–83

It’s Not a Bullet, It’s a Cartridge

I started work as a firearms instructor at the Justice Institute in the first week of January 1981. That someone would pay me to shoot and to teach others to shoot was a dream come true. Even now I enjoy shooting and a good day is one spent at the range. As a former police chief once commented, “A bad day at the range is better than the best day at the office.”

Teaching at the academy offered the opportunity to shoot a wide range of firearms. This one was a 9-mm. MAC-10 submachine gun.

My son Chris was born on January 26 of that year. I couldn’t have been happier.

Corporal Bill James was the other firearms instructor. His background was with Vancouver’s Emergency Response Team (who we were mandated to train), while mine was with Police Combat Shooting. An RCMP staff sergeant headed the Firearms Section, and the director of the academy itself was Chris Jones, a retired RCMP member. Though the RCMP didn’t participate in municipal training, they were qualified to give it. As the criteria for employment at the academy was only that you had to have police officer status, any Canadian police officer could apply for a job there. My experience was that the mix of instructors was a good thing. I think that in my pre-police college days, when the VPD ran its own academy, having only Vancouver instructors offered a more limited view of policing. But at the Justice Institute, I got to know some pretty outstanding people, including Larry Young, a corporal who taught fitness training at the Justice Institute, who died in 1987 in a shootout with an armed gunman.

At that time we were teaching instinctive shooting at metal targets at close range. To demonstrate how effective the technique was, I would lie on my back seven metres from the metal plate, extend my arms over my shoulder and—without using the sights—shoot a very small group of rounds into the centre of the target. Twenty-five years after I left the academy, when I was working a historical homicide file, I phoned the Delta Police Department to get some information. After I identified myself to the desk sergeant, there was a pause before he asked, “Is this the same Wayne Cope who taught me shooting at the Academy and shot bulls’ eyes while lying on his back by just pointing at the target?” I responded, “Yeah, that’s me.” I had no problem getting the information I needed for that file.

One morning I gave a demonstration to the class followed by some practice shooting. The recruits left for lunch and when they came back, they were told to return to the outdoor firing line, where the instructors would meet them shortly. As I came out to the line, Jim Bellevue, one of the more gregarious members of the class, was lying on his back with his gun out, pointing it at the target. When he saw me standing over him, he said, “The gun’s not loaded.” But even with an unloaded gun, what he was doing was strictly against range rules. As he rolled over to get up, I said, “If I thought that gun was loaded, I would have you terminated if it was the last thing I ever did.” I followed up with a few additional comments, and let it go at that.

More than twenty years later I was in an elevator full of police officers at 312 Main Street, the police station annex, when I looked over to see Bellevue staring at me.

He said, “You couldn’t do it, could you?”

“What was that?”

He responded, “You said you were going to get me fired if it was the last thing you ever did. You couldn’t do it, could you?”

I then realized that as he rolled over to get up, he hadn’t heard me preface my threat with: “If I thought that gun was loaded.” If our discourse in the elevator had been more civil, I would have straightened him out, but given his manner, I didn’t see the need to clarify what was actually said. As it turned out, a short time later Bellevue was fired (resigned under duress) because of an unrelated incident. I briefly considered meeting with him to let him know that I had gotten him fired after all, that it had just taken longer than anticipated.

One of my pet peeves at the Justice Institute was instructors who talked down to their students. My position was that, by sheer odds, half of the students were smarter than their instructors. The only reason these students didn’t lash out when being berated was because of their fear of the consequences.

One of the perks of teaching at the Academy was that instructors were allowed to travel to Ottawa to take training courses, usually once a year. I took the mandatory Instructional Techniques Course and then signed up for a Crisis Management Trainers Course. I had to have approval from the academy’s director, Chris Jones (who also happened to be a friend of mine), and he asked me why I wanted to take the course. “I don’t really think it’s your style,” he said. “It teaches how to teach other people how to talk suicidal people off bridges.” I said, “Four reasons: it’s in Ottawa, it’s in the spring, it’s three weeks long, and there is no final examination.” And away I went.

One consequence of the enormous amount of hiring that was going on at that time was that very junior constables were being promoted to the rank of corporal without much experience. In my view, this is a mistake virtually every time. I was on the elevator with one of the more obnoxious promotional errors when one of the other occupants, pointing to the new chrome chevrons on the novice corporal’s collar, asked, “What do your friends have to say about your promotion?” He responded, “I don’t need friends now that I have these.” A veteran constable in the back of the elevator looked over and said, “Keep talking, kid, and I’ll shove those stripes right up your ass.” The junior corporal considered his options, then got off the elevator at the next floor.

Occasionally the academy would run double classes, which meant all hands on deck at the shooting and driving ranges, and even our staff sergeant would attend to assist with the teaching. Because of the scheduling at these times, unless we were running overlapping training blocks, when recruits attended the range, the other academy instructors had free days. The only significant assistance ever offered was from Larry Young. He was an Emergency Response Team Member who really enjoyed spending the day at the range doing recruit training, so he would volunteer when he had an “open day.” One of the most enjoyable training sessions was a week-long course in May 1985, when Bill James, Larry Young and I ran an Emergency Response Team training course at the Chilliwack Military Base and the Port Coquitlam Hunting and Fishing Club on Burke Mountain. The training for this course was skills based with final tests involving scenario evaluation. I didn’t have the background to offer anything other than general advice on tactics, so my focus was on marksmanship, and from that time on, Larry dubbed me “Billy-Bob Swilley” because he said I reminded him of a “good old boy” Southern sheriff. Whenever we would pass, even in the slightest proximity, I would hear a high-pitched, “Beely, Beely-Bob …”

A simulated hostage rescue at the Chilliwack Armed Forces Base in 1985. Corporal Larry Young was carrying an experimental prototype .12-gauge shotgun while I held a more conventional .223-calibre Colt AR-15.

About a year after I became a full-time academy instructor, Dan Dureau and Christopher Shore were transferred there as well to teach traffic studies. Shore had been in three major motorcycle accidents while with the Traffic Division. Each of them happened exactly the same way: he was riding straight through an intersection on a green light when a vehicle coming the opposite way turned in front of him. The last accident was the most serious, and he was hospitalized for a long time.

Tiger, Tiger

Whenever we did training at the outdoor range, we would hang out a sign indicating that the place was closed for the day. Frequently people would drive by and, seeing all the cars, assume the range was open and the sign was wrong. We would normally shoo them away, but on one occasion I opened the door and recognized Tiger Williams standing on the porch. At the time, Tiger was a Vancouver Canucks forward and a renowned enforcer who still holds the NHL record with more than 4,400 penalty minutes. He said, “Oh, you’re closed” and was about to walk away when I invited him in and asked what he was shooting. When he produced a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver, I told him that he could shoot while James delivered a lecture inside to the recruits. I watched Tiger for a short while and noted that, despite the fact he was shooting a Magnum pistol that kicked like a mule, he showed no sign of a flinch. I guessed that he was used to ignoring pain. When I commented he had shot a really good target, he challenged me to a shooting match. He presented the challenge so earnestly that I could see the competitive spirit that made him such a great hockey player.

I said, “You can’t win.”

He bristled back, “Oh, why is that?”