Vancouver Blue. Wayne Cope

      Pocket identification I was issued while working in the summer of 1974 at Oakalla Prison Farm.

      One of the first pieces of advice I was given while working at Oakalla came from a grizzled old jailer. He advised, “Don’t be nice to the scrotes. When there is a riot, the friendly guards are the first ones they take hostage.” (Short for scrotum, “scrote” is a Vancouver Eastside term used to describe worthless scum.) Less than a year later, social worker Mary Steinhauser and fourteen other staffers were taken hostage by prisoners at the BC Penitentiary in New Westminster. Forty hours into the hostage taking, prison guards stormed the barricade and opened fire. Steinhauser was killed by gunfire, and one of the hostage takers was seriously wounded.

      The west wing was the most dangerous place in Oakalla to work. Prisoners were held there awaiting trial, so they had no way of knowing what, if any, sentence they would be facing, and tempers flared with little warning. It was here that I met Eddy Haymour, generally considered to be one of Canada’s few truly political prisoners. In 1971, he had purchased Rattlesnake Island on Okanagan Lake near Peachand, BC, and proceeded with his plan of turning the island into an Arabian Nights–themed amusement park, to the chagrin of local and provincial politicians. But his project was torpedoed and he was later arrested for making threats, then ultimately incarcerated in Oakalla.

      Haymour was by trade a barber and he held court daily, offering advice and wisdom at the prison barbershop. One day, along with seven or eight prisoners, I was being entertained by Haymour’s theories about the nature of the world when he told me, “The reason all of these men are criminals is because they are all bastards. None of them know their fathers.” He pointed to each of the prisoners in turn, and rather than be offended, each offered a brief comment that supported Haymour’s statement. In fact, none of them knew their fathers.

      Haymour later sold Rattlesnake Island back to the provincial government for forty thousand dollars and was found not guilty of the charges against him. He was ultimately freed and in the fall of 1975 went home to Lebanon. A few months later he and his cousins seized the Canadian Embassy in Beirut. He negotiated his way back to Canada, where he had been assured that the federal government would assist him in processing his claim for compensation. In 1986 the BC Supreme Court ruled that the BC government had conspired against him and his theme park and awarded him $250,000 in compensation. He didn’t get his island back, but he built Castle Haymour, now Peachland Castle, on Highway 97 in Peachland, BC.

      Working at Oakalla taught me three things: One, don’t be nice to the scrotes. Two, criminality generally occurs as a result of a breakdown of the family unit. Three, don’t ever work in a jail.

      In 1974 the age requirement for Vancouver City Police recruits was reduced from twenty-one to nineteen, the height restriction was eliminated and the minimum education standard was raised to secondary school graduation instead of grade eleven. By this time the days of twirling a Fraternal Order of Masons ring while sitting for a job interview were long gone, and Vancouver was breaking new ground by diversifying its hiring practices. However, what really increased the multicultural nature of the force was not just the new progressive attitude about hiring people who reflected the makeup of the community; it was the elimination of the height requirement. Demanding that recruit candidates be at least six feet tall had acted as a silent barrier to employment for many Asian groups. Now recruits were only required to be physically fit and in excellent health. From that time on, whenever the department marched in parades, you no longer saw a sea of white faces.

      Don Winterton, the new chief constable, was heavily promoting a program of neighbourhood policing, which meant assigning a contingent of officers to individual neighbourhood-support offices. This program, coupled with union demands that a higher percentage of police cars be manned by two officers, resulted in a hiring boom. Normally the VPD would hire about thirty members a year to cover attrition, but in 1975 more than 160 officers were hired, bringing the total number on payroll to about 850.

      That September I came to Inspector Don MacGregor’s office to advise him that my birthday was on October 19, and then I would be good to go. At that time armed reserve officers accompanied regular police members who would have otherwise been in one-man police cars. At the end of shift the regular officer would submit a fitness report that would go on the reserve officer’s record of service. MacGregor said that he would consider my application in about a year, when there were more of these fitness reports on my service record for him to scrutinize. From that day on, I was out in the patrol cars three times a week. In December, with a stack of recommendations spilling from my file folder, I re-attended MacGregor’s office, hoping he had forgotten that he told me to come back in a year.

      On February 20, 1975, I received a letter stating:

      Dear Sir:

      This is to inform you that you have been chosen a member of this force and you are instructed to report to the Police Training Academy, HMCS Discovery, Stanley Park, Vancouver, at 7:30 a.m. on March 10, 1975. Please bring your birth certificate with you.

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      The Police Academy, 1975

      My partner: “I have two degrees from the University of Saskatchewan. This police department isn’t capable of writing a test I can’t pass.” (He didn’t pass the test.)

      My first day at the Police Academy was March 10, 1975. Up until that time, Vancouver had run its own academy, attended by municipal officers from all over the province, but I was a member of class one of the new Provincial Police College. Recruits from six of the twelve municipal police departments were represented at the largest collection of officers ever trained at one time in British Columbia. In fact, class one was so large that it had been split into four units to be more manageable.

      On the morning of the first day, the inspector in charge made a speech to the group acknowledging that though 107 recruits was a very large number to train, he was confident that, because of the extensive background checks that had been done and the quality of recruit selected, all 107 would graduate. Except there weren’t 107 recruits gathered there that morning waiting to be sworn in. There were 106. The previous evening one of Vancouver’s pre-recruits had been the subject of a police check when he was found exposing himself to prostitutes in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. They advised him not to show up for work the next day.

      Training at the Provincial Police College was to more closely resemble a university environment than the traditional police academy, and completion of some of the courses earned recruits transferable university credits. As well as the usual training in law, police procedure, pursuit driving, traffic studies, firearms and physical education, we had courses in psychology and multiculturalism. Our training consisted of three “blocks” of study, and the first of them, which was fourteen weeks long, included our VPD orientation and ended with a mile-and-a-half run on the last day.

      Corporal Steve Sidney was our drill instructor, and on the first day he walked back and forth, inspecting our class. As he passed me, he said, “Cope, haircut.” So I thought, okay, this is Monday. On the weekend I’ll hit the barbershop and everybody will be happy. At Tuesday morning parade Sidney stopped in front of me and said, “Cope, didn’t I tell you to get your hair cut for today?” Well no, not really, I thought. There was no timeline given for what had appeared to be more of a request or suggestion than an order. Before I had a chance to vocalize my defence, Sidney said, “Okay, Cope, have your hair cut by tomorrow or don’t bother showing up.” This really wasn’t the good first impression I wanted to make on my second day at the Academy, but I don’t think an explanation would have mattered anyway.

      Attrition was brutal in those first weeks of training. Two or three times a week, a recruit would be asked to report to the office and bring his or her books. I sat in the front row of our class, fourth desk from the right. When the first two recruits sitting at the far left of the front row were sacked, the next person in line picked up all of his books and quietly relocated to the back.

      One day when I was sitting