What are we going to do about Sean Chu?
What are we going to do about Sean Chu?
The former Calgary cop who we recently learned was reprimanded for sexual impropriety with a teenage girl in 1997 has been re-elected in Ward 4
Sean Chu is set for re-election in Ward 4 under a shroud of sexual misconduct and abuse of power.
With 30 of 30 polls reporting, alleged pedocop Chu has defeated his closest opponent D.J. Kelly by 52 votes. But with such a narrow margin of victory, a recount is quite likely.
On Friday, CBC News revealed Chu had been lightly reprimanded by the Calgary Police Service for touching a 16-year-old girl on the leg at a restaurant in 1997, when he was 34. Chu claimed he couldn’t have known the girl was underage, since it was an 18+ licenced establishment.
CTV News reported on Election Day that Chu’s account was hokum:
However, information obtained by CTV News indicates that the girl was not at an 18-plus licensed establishment, but that she was at a restaurant called the Husky House and Chu was only there at the request of another officer to drive the girl home when he touched her leg. CTV News has learned that instead of dropping her off at her home, he took her to his home where the girl alleged he sexually assaulted her and where she alleged Chu pulled out his Calgary Police Service handgun. [Emphasis mine]
Furthermore, according to information obtained by CTV News, Chu had met the girl during an unrelated police investigation when she was 14 years old, two years before the sexual encounter.
Mayor-elect Jyoti Gondek told CTV on election night that council will have to act “immediately” in the event Chu is re-elected.
It’s not clear what council would be able to do. They couldn’t even get Joe Magliocca, who was charged with fraud and breach of trust for filing expenses for meals that never occurred, to apologize for his conduct.
Ultimately, it will be pressure from the Conservative establishment he represents, rather than any censure from council, that will force Chu to step down.
Calgary Nose Hill MP Michelle Rempel, whose riding includes Ward 4, retracted her endorsement of Chu in a notably brief statement, which she announced in a self-congratulatory tweet Monday.
I suspect this is a sign of the direction Chu’s tenure on council is headed.
In other news …
Farewell Diane Colley-Urquhart, we might actually miss you
It was an absolute rout Monday night for the longest serving Calgary city councillor, who placed third in Ward 13.
I’ve written about Colley-Urquhart’s flakiness quite recently, but her successor, golf cart entrepreneur Dan McLean, is set to be a whole lot worse.
With his calls for a “dramatic makeover” to city hall, cuts spending without accounting for revenue and an unspecified reduction to closed-door meetings, he sounds like the second coming of failed mayoral candidate Jeromy Farkas.
Son of a cop arrested for downtown Calgary machete attack
The father of 25-year-old Connor Dery, who is accused of randomly attacking three people with a machete in Calgary’s downtown core Friday, is a Calgary police officer, whom the Calgary Police Service says helped facilitate his son’s arrest.
Counsel for Dery requested that he be removed from general population at the Calgary Remand Centre, due to his police connection, which was granted at his first court appearance Monday.
The attack landed three people in the hospital, all of whom are expected to fully recover.
Southern Alberta county councillor found dead and his wife is charged with his murder
Eight days after he was reported missing, 72-year-old Alf Belyea, a councillor in Cypress County, which surrounds Medicine Hat, was found dead, and his wife was charged with second-degree murder and causing indignity to human remains.
Deborah Belyea made her first appearance in provincial court on Election Day, via CCTV from the Medicine Hat Remand Centre.
Alf Belyea had been acclaimed to retain his seat in the ward of Suffield-Jenner, where CFB Suffield — the largest military base in North America — is based, so a byelection will be coming soon.
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