Victoria’s police union is demanding the suspension of Chief Frank Elsner after it was revealed he had sent “inappropriate” Twitter messages to the wife of a subordinate officer.
“The best course of action will be to suspend the chief pending the outcome of these investigations,” said Glen Shiels, acting president of the Victoria Police Union, following a meeting Thursday with the city’s police board.
Shiels also revealed the union, which represents all frontline officers in Victoria, has fielded new concerns from its members regarding Elsner.
“We’ve received a number of complaints from our membership in relation to breaches of our workplace harassment policy,” Shiels said.
The Victoria and Esquimalt Police Board, which is co-chaired by Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins and Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps, said it would issue its reaction to the call for suspension on Friday.
Earlier in the day, Helps appeared to distance herself from a statement made by the board Sunday that voiced confidence in Elsner.
Asked if she still supports the chief, she replied: “It’s very challenging. Do I personally? I can’t say for sure without having a conversation with the [police] union.”
“But what’s most important, and this is where people really need to understand, it doesn’t matter what I think as a person, it doesn’t matter what Mayor Desjardins thinks as a person, it matters what the police board thinks.”
The Victoria City Police Union has criticized the board’s handling of the investigation and also expressed a lack of confidence in Elsner’s ability to lead the force.
But Helps defended the board’s investigation, saying she and Desjardins “followed the direction of the Office of the Police Complaints Commission from start to finish.”
She said the OPCC instructed the board to conduct an internal investigation when the matter was brought to the board’s attention in August, and that the OPCC didn’t consider the incident a matter of public trust.
“We also have our concerns about the process so we’re looking to sort that out as well,” she said.
She added that she has seen the Twitter messages, which Elsner himself described as “inappropriate” in a public apology, but wouldn’t disclose what was in them.
“Right now, it’s still a matter of internal investigation and I would be breaching the Police Act, the law, the confidence of the board and the direction of the OPCC if I commented on what was in the tweets,” she said.
The police board was expected to meet with the union Thursday to sort out its concerns.
Elsner released a statement in response to the union’s criticisms, saying he had no plans to step down.
“My priority as Chief Constable is to continue serving the citizens of Victoria and Esquimalt with the first-rate policing service that they expect and deserve,” he said in a statement Thursday.
When news of the investigation first came to light, the police board said at the time it still had “full confidence in the chief’s ability.”
