Former MLA Shannon Phillips’ complaints against the Lethbridge Police Service have concluded with a reprimand against an officer found to have improperly accessed the force’s database.
The service said in a news release Monday that its professional standards unit investigated the officer’s conduct in June following an Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) investigation into allegations of improper data access involving the former Lethbridge-West MLA and NDP cabinet minister dating back to 2018.
The Lethbridge Police Association, in a separate release, identified the officer reprimanded as Const. Joel Odorski.
The officer had seen posts on social media involving Phillips and accessed a file containing her information to determine if there had been any misconduct by Lethbridge Police Service personnel related to the posts, the LPS investigation determined.
He found no evidence connecting the employees to the post and took no further action, it said.
“In his disposition, Chief Shahin Mehdizadeh noted the reasons for (Odorski’s) search do not excuse or justify the conduct, and the officer’s actions were unauthorized as he was not acting in compliance with policy or legitimate instruction from a superior officer in conducting the database inquiry,” Monday’s release states.
Mehdizadeh found the officer guilty of discreditable conduct and insubordination, and he received a reprimand that will remain on his disciplinary record for three years. Under the Police Act, the police chief’s decision is final, with no appeal process.
The Lethbridge Police Service declined further comment when asked Monday.
Lethbridge Police Association president Jay McMillan issued a statement responding to the conclusion of Phillips’ complaints, excepting her outstanding $400,000 civil suit against the Lethbridge Police Service.
McMillan called the conclusion “fair” but said he wanted to address the “inaccurate accounts, broad accusations, and unfair speculations aimed at the men and women of the Lethbridge Police Service” during the past seven years.
Two other LPS members were demoted in 2020 following an incident at a Lethbridge diner in April 2017 involving Phillips, Alberta’s environment minister at the time in Rachel Notley’s NDP government.
Later that year, Mehdizadeh was hired and the officers have since retired from the Lethbridge force, McMillan noted.
“It is the fall of 2024 now, and the concerns Ms. Phillips had about the actions of these former members are behind us,” said McMillan, adding later appeals made by Phillips in relation to that matter have since been dropped or dismissed by the Law Enforcement Review Board and/or the Alberta Court of Appeal.
“For seven years the men and women in Lethbridge Police uniforms have sat quietly listening to very broad and very public accusations or allegations of ‘what the Lethbridge Police are doing or have done to Shannon Phillips’. The insinuations of conspiracy and coordinated harassment efforts by LPS are untrue and unfounded,” the statement reads.
Multiple Lethbridge police employees were deemed to have legitimately accessed Phillips’ information as part of their police duties, said McMillan, who called “widely inaccurate” allegations that police accessed Phillips’ police database because she’s a woman or an NDP member.
McMillan said Odorski’s reprimand is the “lone blemish of a minor misconduct on an impeccable career.”
“Const. Odorski was never accused or investigated for any of the separate instances of ‘surveillance’ or other misconduct of any kind and his was an isolated instance,” he said.
According to documents filed in Phillips’s civil suit case against the LPS, Odorski accessed Phillips’ database file to see if a coworker or former coworker had improperly leaked police report information on social media about her.
“Const. Odorski was, and is, a supporter of the NDP and voted for Ms. Phillips in three consecutive elections, including the time during which she has accused him of gross misdeeds against her,” said McMillan.
“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.”