Pubdate: Thu, 13 Aug 2015
Source: Winnipeg Free Press (CN MB)
Copyright: 2015 Winnipeg Free Press
Contact: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/send_a_letter
Website: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/502
Author: Gordon Sinclair Jr.
Cited: http://leap.cc/
Page: B1

EX-COP'S EVOLVING THOUGHT ON POT

ONCE, as a staff sergeant of detectives, Bill VanderGraaf was a
warrior leading Winnipeg's version of the war on drugs. Now, the
retired former cop is the leading local voice on the decriminalization
and regulation of street drugs. Pot in particular.

So what happened to VanderGraaf between then and now?

He is half an hour into an explanation of the journey to smoking
joints as a way to help deal with a life and a career laced with
psychological booby-traps when he says this: "Police work is always
about doing things you don't necessarily like having to do. And the
Morgentaler clinic was one of those investigations."

What has a raid he led on a Winnipeg abortion clinic way back in the
1980s got to do with VanderGraaf's view on the legalization of marijuana?

Well, for one thing, it's about how much he regrets being part of the
raid.

But then, in retrospect, he has a lot of regrets about his days as a
cop.

It is the week before a police raid that will close the doors of an
unlicensed medical-marijuana dispensary on north Main Street, and
VanderGraaf and I are starting where it started. Growing up in East
Kildonan. And, like so many of his generation, trying pot as a kid. He
was 16 the first time he lit up. Unlike most kids, though, his
extended family was full of cops.

But his father was a firefighter. And while he was battling fires, he
was battling depression that lead to shock treatments.

Eventually, VanderGraaf chose to become a cop instead of a
firefighter.

But he didn't have a choice in the depression he inherited.

He was 21 when he joined the Winnipeg Police Service, where his
legendary uncle, Peter VanderGraaf, served. He recalls being
introduced early on to the limitations of what cops can do. It also
may have been the beginnings of his insight into finding a better way
to deal with street drugs than to leave it to bike gangs to dispense
in their deadly way.

The young rookie cop was called to transport a prisoner to the
methadone clinic at the St. Boniface Hospital, an addict he
immediately recognized as a kid from his high school.

"I had a bit of a sympathetic streak for that fellow," he said. "And
about six or seven months later, I read that he'd died of an overdose."

Over the years, VanderGraaf would see at least six police colleagues
die by suicide in ways that still haunt him. And he would encounter
other addicts - some who recovered, some who didn't, and some who
weren't given a chance because their futures were criminalized over a
minor pot charge.

"A policeman I arrested in about '85, we ruined his life,
totally."

The cop was caught buying pot while in uniform.

"I was in internal affairs at the time, so I had to become involved.
There were wiretaps and a whole bunch of other BS," VanderGraaf said.
I ask how he felt back then. "I felt crappy. Because I told them we
should be taking the kid aside and saying, 'What's the problem?' And
helping him. We do that with drunks. We do that with impaired-driver
cops that get nabbed. We don't effing fire them. He lost his wife and
everything."

VanderGraaf can relate to the cop he busted for pot purchases in
another way. In 2007, after he retired, VanderGraaf's home was raided,
and he was arrested for growing five pot plants. He said they were to
make marijuana cookies to alleviate his chronically ill father's pain,
and the court granted him a conditional discharge. VanderGraaf ended
up applying for, and receiving, a licence for medical marijuana. The
pot helps him cope with his own addiction. "Yes, I have a drinking
problem, and marijuana keeps me away from the alcohol. I can limit
myself much better than I used to do. And I find it very effective for
the issues that are bothering me."

Issues related in part to post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by
bodies he has seen and seen again in his nightmares. He remembers one
in particular; the 1987 Christmas Eve heroin trade-related massacre of
a mother and her five-year-old daughter.

"In homicide, we're cleaning up all the leftovers on the war on drugs.
We're cleaning up the mess left behind."

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he says this. "But did we hurt people?
We certainly did."

He's referring now to the Morgentaler clinic bust back in the
1980s.

"I'd like to apologize to all the doctors and nurses that we detained
in custody. As well as the patients that I was told to harass and
bother over this."

He mentions Morgentaler, not just because of post-arrest regrets, but
because of the connection he sees between the abortion clinic that was
already well on its way to legalization, and the medical-marijuana
store police just raided and shut down.

"It's the same as medical dispensaries," VanderGraff says. "It's a
social-health issue. It has nothing to do with policing. It should
never have anything to do with police."

But, if I may, there's another similarity between a woman's right to
control her own body and a pot smoker's right to put whatever he likes
in his or hers. It should be a choice. Bill VanderGraaf has already
made his choice with his personal crusade for cannabis
legalization.

"I do not do this for my personal benefit; it causes me stress. I do
it because I think it is the right thing to do."
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MAP posted-by: Matt