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Regina Police Service Chief Evan Bray is standing behind all police actions — and lack thereof — during the labour dispute at the Co-op refinery, even as he takes barbs from all sides.
Bray said Friday that police were making strategic moves all along to deal with illegal blockades around the refinery. He said steps like ticketing vehicles last week gave police more confidence to move in without having to escalate the situation to make arrests.
“We were doing a robust investigation that ultimately resulted in us taking over a piece of roadway for a week and allowing facilitating movement of vehicles,” he said.
On Feb. 6 at 11 p.m., police officers closed Ninth Avenue North between Winnipeg and McDonald streets. The next day, Unifor barricades at all but one of the refinery’s gates were cleared away and fuel trucks were allowed into the facility.
A Court of Queen’s Bench judgment issued Wednesday called for the removal of the final blockade at Gate 7. On Friday, the police reopened Ninth Avenue North.
From Bray’s perspective, frustration is the word to describe the feelings of all parties involved in the long, tense labour dispute, from Co-op managers and executives to Unifor local and national members to truck drivers caught in the middle to political leaders and the general public.
He particularly pointed to the truck drivers as an example of innocent third parties whose livelihoods are being compromised. He said he has reached out to them to try to explain the decisions made by police.
As a police chief, Bray said he shares the frustration, describing the situation as a distraction from important work dealing with volatile public safety issues like a spate of drug overdoses and recent murder investigations.
Bray said the wording in Wednesday’s court decision clarified the role of police to balance the responsibilities of keeping the peace and protecting the rights of all citizens while upholding the law and being responsible to their own conscience.
“I think that’s an important balance when you think about responsible to law. So the blockade, yes, it is breaking the law, there’s no question. But responsible to our conscience — meaning going in and escalating the situation for no purpose other than to give someone a show on Twitter — to me isn’t the right thing to do,” Bray said.
The court order also provided more clarity around the role of police to keep the peace during the removal of blockades. As Unifor removed the barricades to comply with the court order in Regina this week, Bray said that gave the police confidence to remove officers from holding Ninth Avenue North.
With emotions running high and complaints from the public on many sides of the dispute, Bray said he is proud of the professionalism shown by officers dealing with it.
“Hold your head high knowing that we made calculated, tactical, operational decisions that we felt were in the best interests of our community and we will continue to do so,” he said.
Bray said there is a glimmer of hope the dispute will end, with the sides agreeing to meet with a special mediator starting Tuesday. But if that doesn’t lead to a resolution, the police are ready to continue balancing resources to deal with it.
The lockout began Dec. 5.