"Lost All Faith"

"As a result of the security breaches ... your safety and security has been significantly compromised and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police can no longer be responsible for your and your dependent children's safety and security as required pursuant to the Witness Protection Program Act. Signed, RCMP Assistant Commissioner Stephen White

Is it possible to save people from themselves? When people determined to proceed with an enterprise that runs counter to their safety security and this is pointed out to them, and they are informed unequivocally that to proceed in that direction would be tantamount to exposing themselves to danger? When they are informed that if they proceed as they intend, despite advice to the contrary, they will no longer be protected?

Guess not. The perceived prestige of appearing as a prime witness in a television expose, with the added cachet of being paid handsomely for that appearance obviously had the effect of diluting the sense of danger involved. Tina Potts and her three children were in a federal witness protection program. Her testimony at trial 11 years earlier helped provide the evidence to secure murder convictions in a contract killing.

More recently a documentary on outlaw bikers was being filmed and Ms. Potts agreed to the invitation to appear in the documentary to be filmed for The History Channel. Her husband had given the RCMP a head's up about a Hells Angels' murder plot. He was a long-time RCMP informant. And he happened also to be the getaway driver in the plot, and his wife had gone along for the ride.

Both Ms. Potts and her husband, Paul Derry, had been involved, they buried the hand-gun used in the murder, along with the clothes the killer wore fulfilling his obligation in the contract killing. Both were arrested as accessories to the plot, but agreed to become witnesses for the prosecution. They were given immunity in exchange for their testimony, as well as payment.

Ms. Potts, who turned down the advice not to be interviewed and thus bring attention to herself, was paid her travel expenses and a thousand dollars for allowing herself to be part of the documentary. Her voice was not disguised, nor were her facial features.

Moreover, what she narrated would result in embarrassing revelations, that the RCMP hadn't acted on advance warning from her husband about the planned murder.

But she made the decision to take part in the documentary, relating what had transpired, and thus exposing herself and her family to potential harm. Because she had revealed herself, and because she was warned by the RCMP that to do so would effectively negate the effectiveness of the RCMP's protection, she is left now to her own devices.

And she claims now to have "lost all faith" in the RCMP. She had, she claims now, better protection when she was involved with the criminal element that she had agreed to testify against to save herself from trial and prosecution as an accessory to murder.