Mike on Crime

By Aldo Santin
Winnipeg Free Press

Former East St. Paul police chief Harry Bakema told Crystal Taman’s cousin ­— a veteran Winnipeg Police officer — that the man responsible for her death was another police officer who had been drunk at the time of the crash.

Cecil Sveinson, a patrol sergeant and 16-year veteran with the Winnipeg Police Service, told the Taman Inquiry this morning that he went to the crash scene at Highway 59 and the North Perimeter several hours after the crash where he wanted to perform an Aboriginal grieving ceremony for Taman.

Sveinson, who fought back tears as he recounted the events of that day, said Bakema took him to the scene and they waited together in Bakema’s patrol car while RCMP traffic collision reconstruction experts finished their work.

Sveinson, who said he had been very close with Taman when they were growing up, said he was shocked when Bakema told him that the driver was a member of the Winnipeg Police Service.

“I was speechless… someone who had taken the same oath I had taken had taken my cousin’s life,” Sveinson said.

“I asked Chief Bakema, ‘was he …’ and he finished my sentence for me. Chief Bakema said, ‘pissed?...oh, yea. We had to get him out of there right away.’”

Sveinson said that the crash scene investigators allowed him to perform a brief ceremony before Taman’s car was taken away.

“I put tobacco down and I prayed for her … and I cried for her.” Sveinson said. “I sang a little song for her so she could go home.

“Everybody stopped what they were doing while I did that.”

Sveinson said that he has felt betrayed and ostracized by his colleagues and superiors at the Winnipeg Police Service in the time after Taman’s death.

Sveinson, who heads up the WPS Aboriginal and diversity policing section, said no WPS officials reached out to him and no one officially told him what was happening to Harvey-Zenk.

“I felt like a leper for awhile,” Sveinson said of his relationship with other officers. “I lose my cousin and I become the leper … isn’t that strange.”

Sveinson said it was a close friend on the force who sought out information about the crash and kept him informed.

Sveinson said he learned that Harvey-Zenk had been so drunk in the hours leading up to the crash that other officers who were with him at a house party in East St. Paul had taken his truck keys away from him.

“(Harvey-Zenk) had tried to leave a few times but eventually he got his (truck) keys and left,” Sveinson said he was told.

Sveinson said he believed senior officers should have kept him informed about the case against Harvey-Zenk but they never did.

“I had my own supports, my elders, but I was just surprised that someone would have explained to me what had gone on,” he said. “Nobody explained any of that to me.

“I didn’t need support … I just wanted an explanation and it never came.”