An Edmonton Police Service 911 operator whose handling of a call from a trans advocate triggered a human rights complaint says he regrets some assumptions he made during the conversation, but otherwise defended his decision-making.

David Schening testified before the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal Wednesday in the case of Marni Panas, who called 911 in 2019 after a friend failed to check in on a date.
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Schening — a retired vice investigator who returned to EPS as a civilian 911 evaluator — answered the April 11, 2019, call. He made several comments suggesting Panas’s friend — who Panas told him was trans — was a sex worker.

He also repeatedly misgendered Panas, referring to her as “sir.”

Schening said he regrets not asking more questions of Panas before making the sex worker comment. He said the allegation that he behaved improperly has been “eating away” at him, but he largely stood by his initial assumption that there did not appear to be a reason for police to be involved.

Makis has since made unsubstantiated accusations of pedophiles and child sex traffickers working within the health-care system, falsely claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine killed 80 doctors, and accused without merit medical professionals of covering up sudden deaths caused by the same vaccine.

More recently, he was also among the speakers at the anti-vaccine Injection of Truth town hall put on by Calgary-Lougheed UCP MLA Eric Bouchard in June and has also co-authored a paper positing that the anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin can treat cancer.