Jimmy Thomson is a freelance investigative journalist and journalism teacher based in Victoria. He is the author of the newsletter One Day, I’m Going to Write for The New Yorker.
In the early summer of 2022, two brothers were killed by police in a shootout outside a bank in Saanich, B.C., which adjoins the provincial capital of Victoria. The brothers shot five officers – a sixth was hit by a ricocheted police bullet – and several of them had extended hospital stays while they recovered from serious injuries.
It was one of the biggest news events in the country at the time, with reporters rushing in from elsewhere to cover it.
It turns out they might have been better off waiting for the podcast to come out.
Yes, the Victoria police union released a show last month about the incident – not with answers to the many outstanding questions left by the high-profile case, but with a moment-by-moment account of the incident, told by police, to police, with no involvement from anyone resembling a neutral party. It has kept the story of the most shocking violent crime in Saanich’s history far removed from any external challenge, with full control and autonomy over the narrative resting in the hands of those involved. It’s like if the Trudeau government released a Netflix documentary about a diplomatic trip overseas, instead of providing media access.
In one sense, this isn’t surprising. In contrast to U.S. police departments, Canadian cops are almost invariably tight-lipped to the point of absurdity. Even when Justin Trudeau publicly blamed the Indian government for the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in September, all police would offer on the months-old investigation was that “investigators continue to gather information and evidence.” And given that the Saanich shooting was a particularly sensitive, developing and continuing case, with several of their own having suffered major injuries, journalists covering the incident – myself included – knew not to expect much from police at the time, especially at first.
But in the days, and then weeks that followed, the police would only provide terse updates before eventually refusing outright to answer questions, even simply walking away from the lectern when their statements had been read. In that context, a podcast seems like a direct insult – a brash reflection of the disregard the police have for the media’s role in oversight of powerful institutions.
Yes, police have the right to participate in public conversations. In fact, they’ve been doing it more and more, including in the promotion of the polarizing film Vancouver is Dying released on YouTube during last year’s municipal election, which was won by Ken Sim, who had promised to hire 100 more cops. But major questions are still unanswered, more than a year later: how had the Saanich operation gone so badly as to result in the deaths of both suspects and the injury of six of Vancouver Island’s most highly trained police officers? How is it possible that there was a police tactical squad just blocks away when the robbery began? How had police reached the conclusion, as they eventually did, that the deceased brothers had only set out to kill police, and that the bank robbery was only bait for their ambush?
This is the best the police have offered, all these months later: “It was determined the suspects’ primary objective was to shoot and kill police officers in what they saw as a stand against government regulations, especially against firearms ownership,” according to an RCMP spokesperson. They never provided specific evidence for that claim, which appears to clear the police of any possible blame; if violence was inevitable, the logic goes, police were right to charge in as the heavily armed brothers were leaving the bank. Now, the police have chosen to release interviews and recordings in a highly produced format.
What’s more, the Victoria media’s response to the podcast has largely been to gobble it up and launder it for public consumption, rather than treat it with scrutiny; the podcast, unchallenged, has now entered the public record as fact rather than as a particular point of view from people with a lot on the line. By failing to do so, the media also failed to fulfill its mandate of questioning the powerful, instead amplifying their account of their own work.
Reporters have a troubling habit of blithely repeating police information, something that has been shown to create false narratives and an overblown sense of public fear, particularly in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. If reporters play along, that represents an abdication of responsibility; if they stand up to it, it’s a public service. CTV demonstrated the role of responsible crime reporting in November when it showed that, despite the Vancouver Police Department’s election-season promotion of an increase in random attacks, such incidents had been steadily declining for years.
But when the police are outright taking over the media’s job, telling the story their own way without an opportunity for questioning, it means we have reached a new and dangerous point.