When police are charged in Ontario, hypocrisy and double standards are hard to miss

[Michael Jack]

By Patrick Watson Contributor

Patrick G. Watson is assistant professor of criminology and socio-legal studies at the University of Toronto. He studies policing and civilian police oversight.

Toronto Police have returned to the headlines this month following two substantiated allegations of corruption and it’s not hard to find the fingerprints of hypocrisy and double standards on each case.

Const. Ronald Joseph pleaded guilty to staging vehicle thefts and collisions to defraud insurance companies and superintendent Joyce Schertzer filed an appeal of a tribunal decision that found she sheltered her nephew from an investigation following a single vehicle crash on Lake Shore Blvd. W.

Joseph remains in some jeopardy of losing his job. In court, he received a two-year conditional sentence to be served in the community. He faces an internal tribunal to decide his employment fate later this year. He had been suspended with pay since 2021 when the allegations against him arose.

Schertzer will be automatically returned to the rank of superintendent before year’s end, sooner if her appeal is successful.

Both Schertzer and Joseph are veteran officers, having worked for Toronto Police Service for 30-years and 17-years respectively. Both had their service years cited as mitigating factors in their cases.

There are other examples of long-serving police officers receiving arguably light treatment for corruption offences. In January, Const. Daniel Han, a 15-year Toronto Police Service veteran, evaded criminal conviction for stealing $360 from a deceased person. Han will also face a disciplinary hearing this year, but without a criminal conviction termination may be unlikely.

Toronto Police Service Sgt. Mark Kennedy is currently facing disciplinary charges and is suspended with pay as of last November for allegedly stealing Fentanyl from an evidence locker. Kennedy has been an officer since at least 2010, when was charged by the SIU for injuring a 61-year-old man in custody.

In 2021, a veteran Toronto detective, Paul Worden, was not criminally charged for stealing opioids from evidence, despite admitting to doing so while giving testimony during a murder trial. Then-chief James Ramer later offered the opinion that Worden should have been charged. Instead, Worden was forced to resign.

Even the police themselves have questioned the light treatment of (especially senior) officers who offend. In 2023, Toronto Police Services Association president Jon Reid questioned the fairness of a one-year demotion to Superintendent Riyaz Hussein after he crashed an unmarked TPS vehicle on highway 401. Hussein pleaded guilty to both drunk driving and professional standards offences in separate proceedings.

This comes at a time when police chiefs and associations across the country are demanding bail reform and tighter conditions on releasing individuals pending trial. While police in Ontario grant themselves full salary while due process runs its course, they are increasingly vocal about infringing the Charter rights to due process for everyone else.

The irony of police demanding members of the public face more punitive conditions prior to conviction, while they face arguably light sanctions post-conviction, is too rich to go unobserved.

In principle, police are meant to be held to a higher standard than the public. This principle was acknowledged in the judge’s decision in Joseph’s case, stating that his sentence was higher because he is a police officer.

However, that is a case of a judge passing a sentence on a police officer. In professional standards hearings, the role of judge falls to other police officers from outside services. Both Schertzer’s and Husseins’ cases were heard by retired members of the Ontario Provincial Police.

When police officers are left to judge themselves, the public can rightly wonder if highest standards are even acknowledged, let alone met. It is surely not unreasonable to at least suggest that exercising such poor judgment as to obstruct an investigation or drive after drinking should be disqualifying for such an important public office, regardless of how many years of service preceded the offence.

The Community Safety and Policing Act that came into effect last year gave police chiefs new powers to suspend officers without pay, but only for serious offences committed off duty. A confluence of politicians, police leadership and police unions have promoted a police culture that avoids, rather than delivers, accountability for corrupt conduct. All the while, the police demand the public face stricter conditions while avoiding those standards for themselves.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contrib ... f5700.html