The doors of the Club Zanzibar, one of Vancouver’s most notorious nightclubs, swung open. And in we went an Inspector, a dog handler and his police dog Argus, two other police officers and me, Cst. Tony Peyton, a green untested young cop seconded to the Vancouver Police Department through the UBC law student police officer program. 

“We should wait for a back up”, said the dog handler to no one in particular, revealing in his remark and his tone of voice that he was expecting big trouble.

“Nope, we’re going in,” insisted the Inspector, “the call said someone was in big trouble, being beaten badly … we can’t wait!”. And in we went.

It was the summer of 1972 and I was twenty two and had just finished my second year at UBC Law. And young Tony was embarking on what would turn out to be another Eyeopener.

My partner was a grizzled vet of twenty years on the VPD, one of the few prepared to take on the ‘wet behind the ears’ law students. We were in Div. 1 in the city, meaning the heart of downtown, Davies Street, nightclubs, the Penthouse, Richards Street and Granville. All you knew each time you got into your squad car was that something was going to happen. And on the overnight shift, it always did.

As soon as we stormed into the Club Zanzibar all hell broke loose. We were in a battle royal and we were in for it. Just ten days earlier young Tony had been studying the arcane history of riparian property rights and this was definitely not that! Now we were badly outnumbered but we did have an ace up our sleeve. We had Argus! Few things will keep a crowd under some sort of control more effectively than a snarling, barking, menacing looking police dog, somehow even more intimidating tethered tightly, straining under leash as Argus was; he was fearsome in the imagination, even more so in the reality.

And then, his handler was knocked unconscious in the brawl. Down he went. Now if you know anything about police dogs, you know that was not a good turn of events. Argus went crazy, untethered, releasing all that coiled aggression, attacking everyone and taking no prisoners in his uncontrolled frenzy. And his attacks were random, apparently unable to distinguish the blue uniformed good guys from the bad. It may as I reflected later, actually have saved us from our inevitable fate, everyone of the bad guys more concerned about Argus than us. Absent Argus the bad guys would have no doubt been able to form a plan and attack us with some cohesion. And more than all that, it may well have answered that age old question, “What does a man sound like when a dog bites him in his balls?” Well, I can only tell you as a man who has been kicked in the balls during a rugby game, it is by all accounts much, much worse. The poor man’s scream pierced the decibel ceiling in the Club Zanzibar, piercing the cacophony of the conflict that had unfolded when we entered. I last saw him running, wailing in agony as he ran out a side door. 

“Shoot him. Shoot him!”, screamed one of the police officers no doubt a reflection of how desperate the situation had become. Without his handler Argus was uncontrollable and he was perilously close to being shot by a cop or by one of the bad guys. One way or the other it was not going to end well for Argus. And just in the nick of time his handler came to. 

‘Call him off! Call him off!” the Inspector shouted above the din. Moments later Argus was muzzled and desperately needed reinforcement burst through the doors to our rescue. Order was restored and the round up began; some had disappeared into the ether of the night, others the injured, were more easily identified and located. My partner and I were dispatched up to St. Paul’s Emergency on Burrard Street. 

“Do you have anyone here with a dog bite to his testicles?” I asked the admitting clerk.

“Over there”,  she pointed to a gurney, drapes drawn around. The poor man as it turns out would have to navigate his remaining years without one of The Boys.

I first learned Harvey my partner liked rum and coke, in an alley behind the Penthouse, the notorious headquarters of the Filiponis, at the time of the most feared Vanccouver crime families. As Harvey quietly turned our squad car up the back alley he cut the lights and we glided silently to a stop opposite. the back door of the club. I was on high alert. He had not told me why we were there but I had heard enough by now from other cops that this was a dangerous centre of criminal activity and we were in the belly of the beast! We must be on some surveillance assignment.

“Here you go Harvey,” announced the beautiful cocktail waitress, dropping low enough through the open car window for me to get a full view of her ample cleavage and the rum and coke she gave to Harvey.

“What’s your pleasure, honey?” as she turned her attention to a gobsmacked Tony.  And so it went all summer. Whenever we worked nights Harvey and I would find ourselves in the alley behind the Penthouse, sipping on something delicious. Corruption is no doubt borne of such simple compromise but for me it was just another paragraph in my Eyeopener. 

And then there was the day my Sergeant said, “Peyton, you’re on the Black Maria’ for the next two weeks.” I had been told that of all the assignments the ‘Black Maria’ detail was the one you just didn’t want. It was the morgue detail. You picked up dead bodies wherever they were found and hold your nose if you don’t quite understand what I’m saying yet. We retrieved a bloated body floating at the foot of the Lions Gate Bridge, dead as it turned out for at least ten days, one half of the body purple, the other half a translucent white, gravity doing what it does when blood stops pumping. Cigars were standard issue during that detail, one of the few auditory filters which at least partially screened the unforgettable odours. There’s more to this little anecdote but I’ve decided to spare you the rest. I’m sure you get the idea by now. It does stand as a grim testament to work done by the police that is never seen, and rarely acknowedged. Each week as a Vancouver City cop was different, all of it adding up to an extraordinary and life changing experience.

“We’re arresting one of the FBI’s  Ten Most Wanted, today.” The duty sergeant was briefing my platoon and assigning the team for this job.  I was on that team. The VPD had learned that a man wanted in the US on many felony charges had been spotted at the Drake Hotel just off the Granville Street Bridge at the west end of Granville. The hotel was a grimy and notorious hangout for many a bad guy. Six of us were assigned to take him down. I would go in last and my job was to search for hidden weapons and seize them. In particular we had been informed that the suspect had a sawed off shotgun and I was to seize that if it was in the room. 

If you’ve watched scenes like this unfold on cop shows, guns drawn, furtive glances, the air thick with tension, not knowing what was going to greet them behind the locked hotel room door. It’s just like that! BLAM! The explosive tension was unleashed against the door submitting to the metal battering ram and in we went. Now that was living life well. I was a uniformed police constable but I only carried a truncheon, not a gun and was quite frankly, only too happy to be the last man in.

“Don’t move. Police!”

“Hands in the air!”

“Freeze!” 

The shouted commands contributing to the intentional cacophony and confusion that enveloped the occupants of the room, all five of them. And there he was, distinguishable if for no other reason than he was the only black man, a huge black man, I might add. He was pinned and the four others brought under control and cuffed and I found what we were looking for, the mother lode, the sawed off shotgun. We had him!

“I’ve got it.’ I shouted, thrilled in the moment with my bit part in this real life drama, fully expecting widespread approval from the sergeant in charge. 

“Put that God Damn thing down Peyton. you bloody fool!”

Young Tony it seems had grabbed the weapon, this potential evidentiary gold mine, with his bare hands, his fingerprints now part of the record. In the fall, I testified in court as the felon faced a number of charges bringing that story to its conclusion. No harm was done as it turns out to the case against the bad guy and he was in due course returned to the US to meet his fate there. 

And speaking of testifying in court. I spent several days during my third year at UBC Law School as a witness for the prosecution, testifying in several criminal cases. I was not to know at the time but it was one of the best learning experiences a ‘wanna be defence lawyer’ could go through. I came out of it knowing that being on a witness stand in a criminal trial is not fun, not for the faint of heart. It is hard. You feel some version of exposed and vulnerable and tested. I could literally see the various defence lawyers lick their lips at the prospect of cross examining me, this wet behind the years rookie. I won’t adjudicate on my performance as a witness other than to note the defendant’s were all convicted in the cases in which I testified. So by that measure at least, I didn’t wreck anything. And I took one other thing away from the experience. The premise that police officers and prosecutors have no bias, no need to ‘win’ their cases because they are Officers of the Court and are serving Justice, is absolute nonsense, an institutional conceit. No cop ever told me to lie in court, as we shared a beer and their ‘war stories’ in an East Vancouver cop bar; but I was told what to say, how to say it and as importantly, what not to say. I can tell you, it is challenging to unhear the vocabulary of those conversations without it impacting your own bias.

“That fuckin’ shit rat! He’s out again.”

“There’s no way that little shit is walking on this one.”

No prosecutor ever asked me to lie of course but I was told what to say, how to say it and as importantly, what not to say. It was one of the most valuable experiences of my life not just as I prepared to become a defence lawyer, but as it impacted my whole life and my core values.

Still waters run deep and it is what lies under the waterline, hidden from view that is so sinister and threatens the entire criminal justice system. So much is unseen. All that keeps the system working is integrity and that integrity is in the hands of every moving part of criminal justice: prosecutors, defence lawyers, forensic experts, police, prison guards and judges. Any one of them can wreck a criminal justice system which has stood the test of time and protected the rule of law. With obvious exceptions, it is a system has been remarkably successful and remains equally vulnerable.

The UBC – VPD program received significant media coverage; it was innovative and risky and one that I was thrilled to be a part of. Cops are all things good and bad, just like the rest of us. At their best they are men and women of service, without whom we would not be safe and without whom our communities could not thrive. I was lucky to be able to get on the ‘inside’ if only for a few months, giving this budding young lawyer a rare and exclusive privilege of access behind the blue wall. I took away many anecdotes when I left and real respect for the police officers in our midst. Not to mention the fun I had being featured in various articles in the Vancouver Sun and in one of the famous Norris political cartoons. I was a guest on BC’s most popular radio talk show at the time, “9AM PRECISELY, with JACK WEBSTER”.

Of course with ‘hello’ comes the inevitable ‘goodbye’ and I was given the most memorable ‘goodbye’ of my life by C Platoon, VPD. I remember it fondly. It was coupled with a stag for me, as my platoon mates had learned I was getting married.  My pewter beer mug with the VPD crest stands silent sentinel to the events which unfolded that night in a dark, seedy backroom of a cop bar down East Hastings. It arrived with suitable story telling and roasting of young Tony, filled to the brim as it was with whisky.  And this was not good whisky, this was the kind of whisky that comes in plastic bottles with labels that really read, “I am going to hurt you!”. And hurt me it did. 

And there was more. As a sendoff and as a sign of approval, Harvey announced with some fanfare, swaying on unsure legs as he was by this time of the night, that they had all ‘passed the hat’ and bought me a treat, a final ‘before you get married’ treat. And there she was. Through my drunken haze there she stood with all the promise of … and I couldn’t for the life of me think what that promise would be. But what I did know immediately is the answer to the question you’re all thinking. 

“Did you?”

“Did I what?!”

“Did you go with her?”.

That’s the answer I knew before you asked the question. 

“No! I didn’t.”, and without appearing to be too prissy, I never would have. It was a generous gesture one supposes, certainly in my platoon’s mind it was, but my debt to my mates in C Platoon was paid in full with a great and memorable evening. From what I can remember, that is. I was delivered home at 4am, lying prone in the back seat of a police cruiser, drunker than I had ever been and as it turns out, drunker than I would ever be in my life again. 

I would not get out of bed for three days. Now that is what I call The Best Goodbye Ever and a fitting end to a great yarn.