The Lethbridge Police Service says it has reprimanded an officer for accessing a police database for information on former NDP MLA Shannon Phillips and now considers the issue concluded.
The president of the police union called the officer’s breach “a minor contravention” of the service’s regulations and says the constable who faced sanction is an NDP supporter who voted for Phillips and “believes wholeheartedly in police accountability.”
Lethbridge Police Association president Jay McMillan says Const. Joel Odorski searched Phillips’s name back in 2018 in order to “determine if a coworker or former coworker had improperly leaked police report information on social media about Ms. Phillips.”
McMillan’s details of Odorski’s actions align with LPS’s announcement that its professional standards investigation found the officer accessed the MLA’s file “to determine if there had been any misconduct by LPS personnel related to social media posts involving the then-cabinet minister.
“After finding no evidence to connect any employees to the posts, there was no further action taken by the officer,” said LPS in a written statement issued Monday.
Police Chief Shahin Mehdizadeh found that the reasons for the officer’s search “do not excuse or justify” his conduct.
Odorski was found guilty of Police Act offences of discreditable conduct and insubordination and was sanctioned with a reprimand, which will remain on his record for three years.
ASIRT cleared 4 police service employees
The reprimand comes four years after Phillips filed a complaint that her name was improperly searched by six LPS employees.
In May, Alberta’s police watchdog recommended laying charges against two officers — one of whom is no longer employed by LPS — in connection with the searches, but the Crown’s office declined to prosecute.
The four other employees were cleared by the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT).
LPS’s professional standards unit then conducted an internal investigation into the serving officer’s conduct, the results of which were announced Monday.
“There have been inaccurate accounts, broad accusations, and unfair speculations aimed at the men and women of the Lethbridge Police Service,” said McMillan in a statement issued Monday. “We sat quietly out of respect for the process and in order for the full facts to be established, never thinking it might take seven years for that to happen.”
“Const. Odorski took it upon himself to conduct what is more properly a task assigned to investigators of the LPS professional standards unit, and the reprimand he received was for that mistake alone.”
Phillips followed
Phillips filed the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIP) request after an incident in 2017 when she, along with local conservationist Harvey Locke and some other friends, were watched and photographed by Sgt. Jason Carrier and Const. Keon Woronuk at a Lethbridge diner.
At the time, Phillips was the NDP’s environment minister.
Woronuk then followed Phillips and ran Locke’s licence plate through the police database after the pair left the diner.
The officers had also taken photos of the group and posted them anonymously online.
Both officers were involved in the off-roading community, whose members were upset by plans by the then-NDP government to restrict off-road vehicle use and create a provincial park in the environmentally sensitive Castle area of southwestern Alberta.
Woronuk — who admitted his actions were motivated by his personal and political views — and Carrier were both convicted of offences under the Police Act and demoted.
In 2022, Phillips filed a $400,000 lawsuit against LPS officers, claiming illegal searches of police databases were an invasion of her privacy intended to cause her psychological and emotional harm.
Phillips did not immediately respond to CBC’s request for a comment about the reprimand announced Monday.