A year ago, New Democrat MLA Shannon Phillips received an anonymous "whistleblower" letter alleging someone from the Lethbridge police had threatened retaliation against her and a CBC journalist for exposing misconduct within the service.
Now recently obtained documents reveal it was the police chief, Shahin Mehdizadeh, who was accused of making the threat.
Phillips's lawyer had previously called for a public inquiry into that letter, and into another letter sent to a woman who had accused a former Lethbridge Police Service (LPS) inspector of sexual assault. The request was rejected owing in part to the police commission's concerns about the letters' anonymity and lack of specific evidence.
Still, justice studies expert Doug King says the situation warrants further investigation — to clarify once and for all if there's any truth to the allegations in the letters.
"If I was in the chief's shoes, I would want this — I would want a mechanism by which I can clear my name," said King, a professor at Mount Royal University.
He noted that public trust in police is maintained through transparency and dialogue.
"You can't kind of push this stuff aside, you have to embrace it and say, 'OK, let's try and be as transparent as we can,' [while] protecting the legal rights of everyone involved," King said.
The whistleblower letters are quoted in correspondence between...
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