[HPN] Officer wrote about dropping off drunks

[Graeme Bacque]

February 26, 2000

Officer wrote about dropping off drunks
Police investigate 1997 column in Saskatoon paper

SASKATOON (CP) - Police are investigating whether a newspaper column 
written by one of their own three years ago was fact or fiction when it 
talked about officers dropping a drunk off at the edge of town.

``We'll investigate and then make a decision about whether it will be 
referred to the RCMP,'' Staff-Sergeant Glenn Thomson said yesterday.

The location named by the author, Constable Brian Trainor, was the same one 
where the frozen bodies of two aboriginal men were found a few weeks ago.

Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations spokesperson Darcy McKenzie said 
his organization has no doubts about the veracity of the column. ``It's 
another example of what we've been saying all along, that this is really no 
surprise to us.''

Trainor wrote a series of columns for a weekly Saskatoon newspaper called 
The Sun under the title ``Tales From The Blue Lagoon.''

The paper is published by the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

In one column in 1997, he described an event similar to what an aboriginal 
man said happened to him and may have been the fate of the two men whose 
bodies were found.

Under the headline ``Belligerent Drunk Gets Ride To Highest Power In The 
Land,'' Trainor told of how two young constables he nicknamed Hawk and 
Gumby picked up a drunk and told him they would drive him home.

He wrote how the man became abusive and made threats and how, when he 
failed to provide an address, they dropped him off at the edge of town in 
front of the Queen Elizabeth Power Station.

``Quickly gathering his wits, the drunk scrambled out of the car and into 
the thickets along the river bank, disappearing from view,'' Trainor wrote. 
``One less guest for breakfast.''

He quit writing the column in 1998, after he was asked to do so by 
Saskatoon's new police chief, said Thomson.

The power plant is where police found the body of Rodney Naistus on Jan. 
29. Less than a week later, they found the body of Lawrence Wegner in the 
same area.

Naistus had been out partying the night he disappeared. Friends of Wegner 
said they believed he had taken drugs.

Two veteran officers were suspended with pay and an investigation started 
when another aboriginal man came forward to say police had once dropped him 
in the same area.

StarPhoenix city editor Gord Struthers said the column didn't raise any 
flags when it appeared in 1997. ``We're looking to interview the author to 
find out what it was based on and whether it was a factual account.''

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