Undercover Crisis

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER THREE

The Crown Attorney prosecuting the case against Clancy Hogarth shook wrinkles out of his long black robe and straightened his white bib before taking his place behind the lectern. He stood facing the robed judge who was several meters away and a meter higher. At his left the jury was in place, waiting for the Crown's summation of the case.

Clancy still was surprised every time he heard his name pronounced in public. He had spent most of the last ten years working as an undercover cop in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia. During that time, he had used a number of aliases. He would have no problem if the court called him Danny Baker, his name as a motorcycle club member and drug runner in B.C.

He had used his real birth name of Clancy Hogarth for the past few months, returning to it when he went back to being a uniformed police constable with the Toronto Police Department.

After only two months back in blue, Hogarth was formally charged by the RCMP in B.C. with second degree murder. He was immediately suspended with pay by the Toronto force. At a bail hearing held in Osoyoos in the B.C. interior, Hogarth was allowed to return to Ontario to wait for trial in B.C. Hogarth was ordered, however, to remain in Toronto under strict supervision including that by his own father, a senior officer in the Toronto P.D., who had pledged his home and most of his savings for bail.

The trial date came relatively soon after and Clancy flew back to B.C., this time to Vancouver to appear in the provincial Supreme Court. His lawyers had chosen that venue thinking Clancy would get the most impartial hearing at that level of court. Clancy wasn't as certain.

In his last assignment as an undercover cop on loan from the Toronto force, Clancy, under the name of Danny Baker, had worked his way deep into the hierarchy of one of the major drug-running gangs. Such a good job he made of it, Clancy caused a rival in the gang to convince the leader that Clancy was going to make a run at the boss. The gang's boss then put a bounty on Clancy's head just as Clancy was on a drug run from Alberta back to his base in Osoyoos.

Clancy, alias Danny, had been approached by a hood he thought was a 'friend'. This motorcycle gangster told Danny about the bounty, then went for his gun to collect the money. Danny outdrew and killed the man. He then left town on his own bike before more of the bunch could take runs at him. Shortly afterward, he was moved, by the Mounties, through a safe house to a flight to Toronto under yet another alias.

Clancy had returned home to Toronto where his father, a Black-Canadian, had risen to Deputy Chief of the Toronto Police Department. His mother, a Chinese Canadian, had lived most of her life in and had died in Toronto only a few years before. Clancy decided it was time to leave the undercover world and its hardships and return to policing as a uniformed cop with the Toronto force. He was welcomed back to the ranks and assigned to a division to get experience on the overt and entirely legal side of the job.

In Clancy's eyes, it was an 'overzealous' Crown Attorney in B.C. who saw the chance to take an overly aggressive cop to court on a bogus charge. That prosecutor shoved aside a police probe that determined Clancy had been acting in self-defence when he shot his fellow gang member. He charged the former undercover with second-degree murder and a judge agreed.

Evidence had been given by both sides over the past two days. Clancy had two defence lawyers, paid for by the Toronto Police Department and the RCMP, a bizarre situation because it had been the Mounties who, on orders from the Crown Attorney and 'the Crown', had to arrest Clancy at the police division in Toronto. While Clancy's lawyers were experienced and had good reputations, he wondered if they were strong enough in their pressing of his case. In Clancy's estimation, the Crown Attorney had sounded much more persuasive,.