An RCMP officer is under scrutiny for his alleged conduct towards a Kelowna family in both civil and traffic court, which is prompting questions over his ability to testify in criminal cases.
It all started when Cpl. Matt Hare got into a dispute with Kelly Whitehouse, who builds homes for a living and owned a property next door.
Hare built a retaining wall, and then demanded payment for it shortly before Whitehouse was about to sell his neighbouring property.
“I told him, ‘I’m not paying for something that you built on your property for your benefit by yourself.’ And he said, ‘Well, if you don’t give me $5,000, I’m going to put a builder’s lien on your property,’” Whitehouse said.
“More than anything, there was no way that I was going to just roll over and hand $5,000 to a cop who was trying to shake me down,” Whitehouse said.
According to court documents, Hare claimed Whitehouse had previously agreed to pay for half of the costs.
Hare then put a lien on his neighbour’s property for $8,500, kicking off a five-year civil court battle.
“He figured that nobody would be determined enough to spend the tens upon tens of thousands of dollars to enforce their claim,” Whitehouse said.
After a prolonged legal battle, Whitehouse won.
The judge awarded Whitehouse punitive damages against the Mountie, calling the officer’s conduct “highhanded and malicious.”
“Mr. Whitehouse’s evidence makes sense, and Mr. Hare’s evidence does not make sense to such an extent that I conclude that Mr. Hare concocted it,” the judge wrote in the decision, calling the lien invalidly filed.
Kyla Lee is a defence lawyer who is not involved with the case.
“Judges don’t often deliver judgments like this, where they use language that calls people ‘high-handed or malicious’,” she said.
“Statements like that are very rarely used by judges and often only reserved for the clearest of cases where the conduct of the individual falls far below the acceptable standard,” Lee added.
Kash Heed, a former police chief and former B.C. solicitor general, said that although the civil case wasn’t related to Hare’s work duties, it’s important for officers to maintain their credibility at all times.
“It will have an impact on any of his duties, whether it’s testifying in court on a criminal matter or just in his everyday duties, if in fact a judge has admonished him because of the lack of integrity or credibility.”
And the civil case isn’t the only question around Hare’s conduct.
While Hare was still embroiled in a civil dispute with Kelly Whitehouse, the officer stopped Rachel Whitehouse, Kelly’s daughter, outside of a bar in downtown Kelowna.
“He’s like, ‘You just hit the car behind you.’ And I was like, ‘No, I didn’t,’” Rachel said. “’I can see.’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah, I just watched you hit that car.’”
Rachel claims that the owner of the other vehicle came out from the bar and was not concerned about any damage.
“And at that point he said he wanted to breathalyze me.”
Hare issued Rachel an immediate roadside prohibition and also slapped her with a ticket for driving without due care and attention, which carries a six-point penalty.
Rachel didn’t believe that she deserved the ticket. She maintains that she has a backup camera and did not bump into the other person’s vehicle or cause any damage. She told her dad what happened when he picked her up from downtown that night.
“My dad said, ‘That’s super weird. What, was the cop Matt Hare or something?’ And I looked at my ticket and sure enough it was,” she said.
“It made a lot more sense because I was like, ‘Am I losing my mind? Am I crazy?’ I just couldn’t understand why somebody would be there at that moment and then say that I hit a vehicle,” Rachel said.
At that time, the two men were still in a bitter court battle over the retaining wall.
“I believe that he’d scanned her licence plate randomly, recognized the name, recognized the home address on the driver’s license, and then parked there and just waited to see who came out of the restaurant,” Kelly Whitehouse said.
That hasn’t been proven, and Hare denies it.
Whitehouse said that despite repeated requests, RCMP wouldn’t hand the data over.
But Rachel’s case still ended up in traffic court.
Under cross-examination, Hare testified that he became aware that Rachel was Whitehouse’s daughter sometime after he initiated the traffic stop.
However, his police cruiser had a recording system, and according to court proceedings, Hare can be heard speaking to another officer who arrived on scene.
“I am trying to get this done before the dad shows. If the dad shows, he’ll just — he sees me here he’ll — ,” Hare said, according to a court transcript of the audio recording from the police vehicle.
“Any responsible cop that genuinely believed that my daughter was doing something wrong in that situation would have called somebody else, a supervisor, another officer, and said, ‘I have a conflict of interest with this person’,” Kelly Whitehouse said.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that it seems like retaliation against me. We’d been in a very long, very bitter legal fight,” he said.
“It’s also really frightening that a police officer would target somebody else just in order to get back at somebody they had a beef with,” he added.
The judge told traffic court he didn’t need to hear from Rachel and found her not guilty of driving without due care and attention.
“I find that this was a minor bump between the trailer hitch and the licence plate of the vehicle behind it,” the judge wrote, adding that it did not meet the parameters for driving without due care and attention.
He made no decision on whether or not Hare had acted in retaliation against Rachel.
During the court proceeding the judge is clear in saying he does not know whether Hare knew Rachel’s identity before or after he wrote the ticket.
But if he did know her identity before writing the ticket, then it raises serious questions with some in the legal community.
“The second part of the story is very troubling,” Lee said. “It suggests that the officer was aware that he was in a situation of a potential conflict of interest and that he didn’t take any steps to mitigate that,” she said.
She said that based on the circumstances that were presented in court, there was no evidence that would support a driving without due care and attention ticket.
Lee said it’s common for defence lawyers to research witnesses, including police officers taking the stand in criminal cases, and the civil case could affect Hare’s ability to testify in criminal cases.
“Engaging in conduct like this demonstrates not only a flagrant disregard for the justice system, but it also demonstrates a flagrant disregard for the truth and honesty: two things that are necessary for somebody who is working as a law enforcement officer,” Lee said.
She said there is a process that needs to be followed to introduce a previous court ruling that might question a testifying officer’s credibility.
“But if you do have the proper set up for it, a case like this, and a decision like this from the court can be a very powerful tool in a defence lawyer’s arsenal,” she said.
Heed said it will be difficult for Hare to move forward in policing, especially when the civil case could potentially impact his ability to give evidence in criminal matters.
“Defence lawyers are calling this into question more and more when they’re defending their accused individual in front of a police officer,” he said.
With regards to the traffic case, Heed said that if Hare believed it was appropriate to continue the investigation into Rachel Whitehouse, he should have called another officer to handle it.
“That’s common practice in policing,” he said.
“The unspoken part of this is whether it was a bit of a power struggle that was going on, whether he was trying to show some retribution or the fact that he’s in a power position for this particular family,” Heed said.
Matt Hare did not respond to Global News’ request for comment.
He has now been suspended with pay from the RCMP, although police won’t confirm why.
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