West Vancouver Police Chief Peter Lepine announced Monday he will be stepping down from his job, just a day after a damning internal report was made public, pointing to plummeting morale within the West Vancouver Police Department.
It also comes after some officers went public with allegations of sexual harassment, racism and bullying within the department.
West Vancouver Mayor Michael Smith vowed this week that both the police department and the board would take "quick and decisive action" to investigate and deal with "allegations of improper behaviour."
Minister of Public Safety Suzanne Anton said she had also asked staff to look into the situation and report back to her.
On Monday, Smith hinted the departure of Lepine will likely not be the only change among top brass at the police department. "The board is prepared to take further personnel actions in a very short time frame," he told reporters at a press conference. "We will not tolerate harassment by anybody entrusted with a supervisory role."
While Smith acknowledged that "inappropriate behaviour has been going on for a long time" within the department, he denied the police board has been ignoring the issue.
Smith said when he became chair of the police board he asked to be notified of all allegations of harassment made against police supervisors. "I have met with the union and given them my personal assurance this will be fixed," he said.
But Smith added that has to be done carefully. "We're not going to go in there with a gatling gun and start firing all our lower management team."
A survey of West Vancouver Police Department employees completed in November showed fewer employees felt good about their work and more of them gave unfavourable ratings to managers than they did in the same survey conducted three years ago. Employees also pointed to a perceived lack of respect by some of the top brass.
Some police officers have gone one step further, making anonymous allegations about sexual harassment, bullying and racism to The Province newspaper. The North Shore News has also received allegations of intimidation and sexual harassment within the department.
Lepine said Monday his decision to leave the department was unrelated to both those allegations and results of the survey.
Lepine said he was disappointed in the survey results, but added many of the harassment allegations are connected to "incidents that occurred over 10 years ago."
Lepine said whenever he has been made aware of allegations of improper conduct, he has investigated. "When these things come to my attention, I deal with them," he said.
Issues of internal police discipline don't usually become public.
The Office of the Police Complaints Commission, for instance, provided information on only one incident of harassment at the West Vancouver Police Department for 2012-'13. In that incident, a police officer who harassed another officer at the department was suspended without pay for four days and told to complete a program on harassment in the workplace.
Rob Gordon, a professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University, said the allegations levelled at the West Vancouver Police Department should be taken seriously.
Gordon said in order for that to happen, the message that inappropriate behaviour won't be tolerated has to come from the top and be reinforced by senior managers. Too often, "this is entrenched behaviour," he said. "Nobody views it as being problematic until a bomb explodes."
Smith said Monday that West Vancouver will begin a search for a new police chief immediately. Lepine - whose five-year contract is up in September - will remain on the job until a new police chief is hired.
Lepine was hired to replace former police chief Kash Heed in 2009 after Heed left the department to enter provincial politics.
Heed had been hired to clean up the department in 2007 after a scandal in which an officer was promoted after she crashed a vehicle following a drinking party with supervisors at the department.
