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2005: Revelation
of $30M in claims paid out over last six years | This
story continues with evidence many more officers were involved
and Toronto police obstructed RCMP investigation | Ken
Wood sues | See also Vancouver's
criminal cops
Toronto Police
corruption: 2004
Six Toronto police officers
face corruption charges
By DARREN YOURK, Globe
and Mail, Jan. 7, 2004
Charges have been laid against
six veteran Toronto police officers in the wake of a massive
2?-year RCMP investigation into corruption on the force.
Staff-Sergeant John Schertzer,
Detective Constable Steven Correia and Constables Raymond Pollard,
Joseph Miched, Ned Maodus and Richard Benoit have been charged
with more than 20 offences, including conspiracy to obstruct
justice, perjury, extortion, assault causing bodily harm and
theft over $5,000.
Constable Maodus, a 15-year
member of the force, was arrested Monday by the Toronto Police
Service Professional Standards Special Task Force and charged
with possession of heroin, cocaine and ecstasy for the purpose
of trafficking.
The officers, five of whom
are still active on the force, were members of the Police Service's
central drug squad. They turned themselves in at Toronto Police
headquarters Wednesday morning and are scheduled to appear in
court Wednesday afternoon. All have been suspended with pay while
they await trial.
"As I stand here today
with the news that five serving officers and one retired officer
are now facing charges I am deeply saddened and disappointed,"
Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino said Wednesday. "Without
doubt, this whole situation is quite regrettable."
Four other officers - Greg
Forestall, John Reid, Jason Kondo and Mike Turnbull - were named
as unindicted co-conspirators Wednesday. The officers have not
been charged with a criminal offence but will be placed on restricted
duties.
Wednesday's arrests mark the
culmination of an internal Toronto Police Services investigation
that began in 1999 with allegations of thefts of relatively small
amounts of money from the force's so-called "fink fund,"
used by officers to pay their informants.
That investigation led in the
fall of 2000 to dozens of criminal and Police Act charges, virtually
all of them abruptly dropped in February last year, with the
only case that proceeded to court, and involving two officers
from another squad, resulting in jury acquittals.
In August, 2001, Chief Fantino
asked the RCMP to oversee a separate independent investigation
into the allegations that members of the drug squad were beating
and stealing from suspects.
Chief Superintendent John Neily,
who led the RCMP investigation, said the evidence in case pointed
squarely at a small group of officers who chose to get involved
in criminal activity while trying to obstruct justice.
The charged officers are alleged
to have falsified notes and internal police records, given false
testimony, sworn to false affidavits to obtain search warrants
and failed to account for evidence they seized.
"Police officers are not
above the law," Chief Supt. Neily said. "It never has
been, and never will be, acceptable for police to engage in criminal
activity or take the law in to their own hands. There is no excuse."
"...The special task force
mandate challenged us to follow the truth, The truth has led
us to where we are today."
Chief Fantino that while Wednesday's
news was troubling, it must not take away from the public's trust
in the good work that the vast majority of officers in the Toronto
Police Service do every day.
"We must maintain our
faith in the system," Chief Fantino said. "I do today
as I always have in the past. I can however tell you that the
allegations are isolated and confined. The investigation has
been independent, extremely exhaustive and most definitely thorough."
"...Although I would have
preferred a different outcome, I know that the public interest
has been well served."
With a report from Christie
Blatchford
- © 2003 Bell
Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Suspect
officers surrender quietly
Six dodge reporters and walk in back door of police precinct
NICK PRON AND JOHN DUNCANSON,
STAFF REPORTERS, Jan. 7, 2004
Six veteran police officers,
once frontline troops in this city's war on drugs, arrived at
32 Division in North York about 8 a.m. this morning to face a
host of charges.
The charges are expected to
range from theft, assault, obstruction and perjury.
Police union spokesperson Andrew
Clarke said they would be formally fingerprinted and photographed
and later taken to Scarborough court for a bail hearing.
It's expected they would be
released on their own with promise to appear later in court.
The officers went in the back
door of the station, sparking questions from the media horde
camped out about why they didn't enter through the front door.
"They are police officers
and this is the way police officers usually enter," Clarke
said this morning.
Police Chief Julian Fantino
told a morning news conference he was disheartened by the news
but called the charges "isolated" and not reflective
of any general corruption on the Toronto force.
"I am deeply saddened
and disappointed," Fantino said. "Without doubt and
from all points of view this whole situation is quite regrettable."
"However, we must keep
this situation in perspective ... the allegations are isolated
and confined."
Police union lawyer Gary Clewley
said earlier today that the allegations are "nothing more
at this point."
Clewley added "there isn't
a lick of proof."
The charges are no surprise
to some of the officers, who have suspected for months they might
be the focus of a probe led by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
One Toronto officer was even
followed by a surveillance officer to the police association
headquarters, on Yorklands Blvd. in North York, where he had
gone to attend a union meeting.
Rick McIntosh, head of the
7,000-member police association, was not immediately available
for comment, but it was expected that the union would fund the
legal defence for the six, likely to cost several hundred thousand
dollars.
The long-anticipated charges
come following an intensive, 30-month investigation into allegations
of corruption among officers from the central field command drug
squad and other units investigating the sale of illicit narcotics,
such as crack cocaine and heroin.
There had been late discussions
on whether the officers should be arrested and handcuffed as
they left their homes or arrived at work.
By late yesterday, however,
it was decided they should be allowed to surrender themselves
at a police station, in what is called a "friendly."
Police officers facing serious
criminal allegations are usually suspended with pay until their
case is over.
A trial, said one insider,
could be two or even three years away, as lawyers begin the slow
and arduous job of going through the "discovery" package
- all the evidence compiled by the task force during its 2 1/2-year
probe.
The task force, headed by RCMP
chief superintendent John Neily, began delving into the murky
underworld of Toronto's illicit drug trade following unproven
allegations that dealers were being "ripped off" by
those who were supposed to enforce the law.
It has been estimated that
the investigation cost considerably more than $3 million.
The special squad, working
out of a secret location in North York, was comprised of officers
with the Toronto force, themselves sworn to secrecy while delving
into the alleged wrongdoing of their brother officers.
A special prosecutor with the
Ministry of the Attorney-General spent the past six months reviewing
the compiled evidence before deciding to proceed with the charges.
Earlier this week, the task
force announced charges against former central command drug officer
Ned Maodus, 40. Maodus was charged Monday with possession of
heroin and cocaine for the purpose of trafficking and possession
of ecstasy.
One former Toronto drug squad
officer, Robert Kelly, has been convicted. Kelly pleaded guilty
in June to possessing 3.15 grams of cocaine. His sentencing hearing
is to continue in a Brampton courtroom Jan. 23.
Allegations being made by the
task force against the six drug squad officers expected to be
charged today stem from an earlier probe by the force's internal
affairs unit, dating back to 1999.
That investigation led to charges
of theft, fraud and forgery against eight central drug squad
officers in November, 2000.
While those charges were still
before the court, Chief Julian Fantino called in Neily in July,
2001, to lead a task force that would include reviewing the work
done by the internal affairs unit.
Just after the task force was
announced, federal drug prosecutors made public the fact that
115 drug cases had been stayed because of the probe into the
Toronto drug squad.
Prosecutors dropped another
bombshell in February, 2002, when they went into court and stayed
all the charges against the eight officers, saying the prosecution
might compromise the ongoing investigation by Neily's team.
A charge of perjury against
a ninth officer was also stayed.
While the RCMP-led task force
quietly went about its business, reviewing drug cases, talking
to those arrested by certain officers, and developing informants,
the case became very public when former drug defendants and narcotics
officers started filing civil suits.
In several suits, people arrested
by drug squad officers are claiming their rights were violated
or that money and belongings were stolen from them during police
raids.
Eight officers have filed their
own $116 million lawsuit against Neily, Fantino, crown attorneys
and government officials, claiming they are the subject of a
witch hunt by the force and province.
With files from CP
Charges laid in Toronto
drug squad probe
CBC Wed, 07 Jan 2004
TORONTO - Charges were laid
on Wednesday against six Toronto police officers following the
largest corruption investigation in the history of Canadian policing.
The former drug squad officers
face a total of more than 40 charges, including conspiracy, attempt
to obstruct justice, extortion, theft, assault and perjury.
They turned themselves in on
Wednesday morning.
The six charged on Wednesday
include a retired officer. They were all long-serving members
of the force, one of them having been an officer for 28 years.
The officers are suspended
with pay.
The charges come after a two-and-a-half-year
internal police investigation led by RCMP Chief Supt. John Neily.
"This investigation was
led entirely by the evidence," Neily told a news conference.
Toronto Police Chief Julian
Fantino said the public should feel more confident about its
police force considering the way the investigation was initiated
and carried out.
"I am totally committed
to leading a professional and ethical organization," Fantino
said.
Fantino said he was disappointed
in the outcome of the investigation, but draws comfort from the
fact the incidents were "isolated and confined."
The probe was ordered after
provincial prosecutors dropped more than 200 drug cases. Many
of the accused drug offenders had filed civil lawsuits alleging
drug squad officers beat them and stole their money.
One of the complainants, Christopher
Quigley, said he was beaten so badly that he had to go to the
hospital after police arrested him in 1998.
"These are extremely vicious,
dangerous people that have no boundaries, that are obviously,
or think that they are above the law," he said.
Police lawyer Gary Clewley
maintains that Quigley's story isn't true.
"They didn't do it. Nothing
novel about that. Not guilty."
Ten other lawsuits were filed
alleging similar crimes. Police and the city of Toronto settled
several of them, with an agreement that the details will remain
confidential.
Clewley has always said those
lawsuits were simply a tool used by drug dealers to cast suspicion
on the police.
"Their superiors knew
what they were doing and how they were doing it and they didn't
have any problem with it," he said.
"Some of them were promoted,
many were encouraged to stay in the drug squad for longer periods
than ordinary because they were doing an excellent job."
Clewley also questioned the
RCMP-led task force that investigated.
"The motto of the RCMP
has always been exaggerate now and investigate later."
Written by CBC News Online
staff
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
