Judge releases cellblock video of alleged mistreatment by Ottawa police

July 28, 2011
Steve Rennie, Canadian Press (via Globe and Mail)

A cellblock video has been released that captures the arrest of a woman who claims Ottawa police injured and strip-searched her before leaving her naked in a cell without medical attention.

Roxanne Carr was arrested and charged with assaulting police, obstructing police and damaging property in 2008. Those charges were dropped in April.

She is now suing the police department over their treatment of her during her arrest.

Several media outlets, including The Canadian Press, went to court to have the video released. Last week, an Ontario Court judge agreed to release the footage, but court workers couldn't find the video in the case file. A duplicate copy was released Thursday.

The incident is broken up into 26 video clips showing Ms. Carr's arrest from several different angles.

In the videos, officers drag a handcuffed Ms. Carr, who is wearing a black tank top and dark pants, from a police car through the hallways of the cellblock.

Ms. Carr's arms are cuffed behind her back. She does not appear to resist.

Two officers hold her by the elbows and lead her into a room with a counter. They lower her head-first onto the floor. Her head comes off the floor and falls back onto it as they shift her body.

She is lying face down when the officers remove her handcuffs. Then, they take two objects from her hair or neck and toss them onto a nearby counter. One officer kneels on Ms. Carr's back as the police wrap a strap around her arms. They then hoist her to her feet and walk her to a cell.

The videos do not have any sound.

There is no camera inside Ms. Carr's cell. At one point, a white gown is tossed from one of the cells. Later, an officer leads Ms. Carr, who is now wearing a white gown, from her cell to retrieve her clothes from a bin. She gets changed in another room.

The video shows Ms. Carr, again in the black shirt and pants, standing at a counter signing documents. She leaves the cellblock, stops in a stairwell to put her hair in a ponytail, and leaves the station.

It is not clear from the videos if she is in any pain.

She claims her arm was broken during the arrest and that she was dropped on her head.

None of the allegations have been proven in court.

“It's clear from the video that there's not an instance, not a muscle of resistance. And despite that, there's six police officers hog-tying her and then leading her on a leash to the cell, taking her clothes and leaving her naked for at least an hour,” said Lawrence Greenspon, Carr's lawyer.

“It's a very disturbing video. I shudder to think if people treat people like this when they know they're on video, how do they treat people when they know they're not?”

In a statement released this week, Ottawa Police Acting Chief Gilles Larochelle noted the Ontario Special Investigations Unit and the Ottawa Police Service's Professional Standards Unit both probed the incident and did not lay charges or find any misconduct.

“I am satisfied that cellblock officers handled the custody of Roxanne Carr with the utmost professionalism, especially when faced with a crisis in the cell,” Mr. Larochelle's statement says.

The Carr case has similarities to another case in which an Ottawa police officer was charged with sexual assault after a woman's much-publicized arrest.

The Special Investigations Unit was called in after video showed a special constable kneeing Stacy Bonds while she was being booked at police headquarters Sept. 6, 2008.

The video also showed male officers holding Ms. Bonds down while another officer cut off her clothes the night she was arrested for a liquor offence.

Ms. Bonds was subsequently charged with assaulting a police officer, but Ontario Court Justice Richard Lajoie stayed proceedings in her case after seeing the video.

Other elements of the Ms. Bonds video, along with several other videos showing different cases of alleged police brutality, are still under investigation by various agencies.

'Bad attitude' led to violence, Ottawa defence lawyers say - Public will be 'shocked,' police chief warns

November 26, 2010
By Andrew Seymour, The Ottawa Citizen

Ottawa police officers displayed a "bad attitude" from the very beginning of a controversial cell block video showing Stacy Bonds being kneed, pinned to the floor and stripped of her shirt and bra, the head of Ottawa's defence lawyers association said Thursday.

"She is the smallest person in the room and the officers losing control of themselves in the situation so quickly is very concerning," said Doug Baum. "Why was there such initial roughness? Why the knee strikes?

"There was a bad attitude here that led to violence and improper procedure," said Baum.

The video was obtained exclusively by the Citizen Thursday following the newspaper's application for access to it.

The video, which shows Bonds treatment in the cells following her arrest on Sept. 26, 2008, was central to Ontario Court Justice Richard Lajoie's decision last month to stay charges against her of assaulting police. The judge halted the case against Bonds, finding Ottawa police arrested her unlawfully and called her subsequent treatment in the cells and the strip search a "travesty" and an "indignity."

Lajoie released the video to the Citizen under conditions the newspaper not publish or put on the Internet any portions of the video which showed Bonds' partially exposed breast or her attempts to cover herself with her arm and what remains of her tattered shirt and bra as she is led into a cell.

One of her lawyers, Natasha Calvinho, said Bonds did not oppose the release of the video, but wanted her integrity and privacy protected by the court. Calvinho said Bonds was a "victim" and feared the release of "humiliating" portions of the video would force her to relive what happened.

"To have it played over and over again on a webpage or on television just furthers the indignity of what these police officers did to her," said Calvinho.

The Crown also didn't oppose the video's release.

The Citizen was the city's only media organization to argue before the judge for a release of the videotape.

"Publication and broadcast of the video is vital for a full accounting and understanding of what happened to Ms. Bonds. It's a very important issue to the Citizen," said Editor-in-Chief Gerry Nott.

In the video, which has no audio and was shot just before 6:30 a.m. on the day of her arrest, Bonds can be seen being led through the police holding-cell area. The 27-year-old theatrical makeup artist with no criminal record does not appear to be resisting or aggressive.

Another camera angle then shows her being brought to a booking desk, where she can be seen turning around and appearing to be speak to the officers.

Bonds, whose hands had been cuffed behind her back, has her right arm come free from the handcuffs, prompting one of the officer's to put her in a wrist lock.

That's when special constable Melanie Morris knees Bonds twice in the back of the leg. Bonds' head is violently jerked backwards by the hair several times before she is forced forward against the counter.

Bonds' shoes are then removed and is searched. During an overhead camera view of that search, one of the officers can be seen sticking their hand down the back of Bonds' pants.

It's at that point Bonds appears to mule-kick Morris in the leg. A frame-by-frame playing of the video appears to show four kicks before two of the three male officers at the counter take Bonds to the floor, one of them grabbing her by the arm while the second tightly holds her neck and trips her with his leg.

That's when Sgt. Steve Desjourdy joins the three male officers. He picks up a plastic riot shield and places it across Bonds' legs. Desjourdy and Morris testified at trial she had been flailing her legs around.

Morris, limping noticeably, leans on a garbage can and then a wall before walking out of the frame.

Desjourdy leaves and goes to another desk, where he appears to put on a pair of goggles. He goes down a hallway and returns with a pair of scissors in his hand.

Desjourdy is then seen cutting away Bonds' shirt and bra as she lies prone on the floor.

Morris returns and at one point removes a black leather glove and appears to indicate an area on her leg.

The riot shield is then moved to cover Bonds' face, possibly to prevent her from spitting on the officers. Bonds does not appear to be resisting at any time.

Her bare back visible, Bonds is eventually lifted by the four male officers, her arm across her chest holding what remained of her tattered clothing in an attempt to prevent herself from being completely exposed.

Another camera angle, which is covered by the publication ban, shows Bonds being led down a hallway to a holding cell with nothing but her arm and the small piece of fabric covering her chest. The side of her breast is briefly exposed at one point.

Morris, the female officer, can be seen tearing away what's left of Bonds' shirt and bra before putting her in a cell with the help of the male officers.

Bonds, who had soiled herself, is then left half-naked and in dirty pants for at least three hours and 15 minutes before eventually being provided a pair of coveralls -- an outcome Lajoie attributed to the vengeance and malice of the officers.

There is no video of Bonds receiving the coveralls, however, and the next available video shows an officer standing outside the cell for several seconds before a now-clothed Bonds emerges just after 11:30 a.m.

Bonds had been walking home on Rideau Street in the early morning hours when she was stopped by police. An officer later claimed she had an open bottle in her hand, although Bonds denied that was the case and no bottle was ever seized by police.

An officer ran her name through a police computer and found nothing, so they told her to keep walking home. When she turned back to question why they had stopped her in the first place, she was arrested for public intoxication -- an arrest Lajoie found unlawful at trial -- and taken to police headquarters.

Her lawyer at trial, Matthew Webber, said the video is "indisputable" evidence of an "egregious" violation of Bonds' Charter rights.

"What it shows is a compliant accused coming into the station, not resisting. She could have posed absolutely no risk to any reasonable thinking person," said Webber. "It's an utterly inexplicable and unjustifiable use of extreme force."

In a statement released Thursday, police Chief Vern White said he understood Ottawa residents "will be shocked" by the video, but couldn't comment further because the matter is under a sexual assault investigation by the province's Special Investigations Unit. White, who asked for the public's "understanding and patience" while that investigation was under way, immediately ordered an internal investigation into the actions of the officers following the judge's decision.

Nathalie DesRosiers, general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said that was the right move.

"To the extent that she had no prior criminal record and was not obviously dangerous, the use of force and the way it is presented seems to be unwarranted," DesRosiers said after seeing the video. "Certainly, the cutting of the bra and the way in which it was done appeared to be another misconduct."

DesRosiers said the police reaction appeared excessive, especially when the four male officers appear to be "ganging up" on Bonds.

"You don't expect police violence of that sort unless they are in danger," she said. "They can only use reasonable force if it proportionate and warranted by the circumstances. In this case ... it seemed unreasonable force for the circumstances."

Baum said he was shocked by the initial attitude of the officers.

"She is not being escorted into the cell block, she is being yanked and pulled," said Baum, adding there was no apparent justification for the subsequent knees or strip search that followed.

In an opinion article on the Citizen's Arguments page today, the past president of the Ontario bar association, James Morton, concludes "for the sake of all Canadians a case like that of Stacy Bonds must never be allowed to happen again."

"The Stacy Bonds case shows a Canadian being mistreated by police in the nation's capital. Compounding the wrongful behaviour was the laying of charges for the apparent purpose of covering up misconduct," he writes in the opinion article.

OP-ED - How is it that people whose job it is to see justice done acted so unjustly?

November 26, 2010
James Morton, Ottawa Citizen

OTTAWA — Stacy Bonds, a young black makeup artist with no criminal history was arrested by Ottawa police, apparently for asking why police had stopped her for questioning. A video of her treatment in police custody is now available on the Citizen’s website, ottawacitizen.com.

The facts of Bonds’s treatment bear repeating. She was walking on Rideau Street in downtown Ottawa. She was neither drunk nor behaving inappropriately. The police stopped her and asked her name; she provided it.

After checking her name and finding nothing, the police told her she could go on her way. Bonds, as is her perfect right, asked why she had been stopped in the first place.

In response, the police arrested her for public intoxication and handcuffed her. As Ontario Court Judge Richard Lajoie later held, Bonds was not drunk. Once Bonds was taken to Ottawa Police headquarters, the judge noted that she was anything but “violent or aggressive.”

As can be clearly seen in the video, Bonds is much smaller than the police who confronted her.

In spite of the lack of violence or aggression, Bonds was assaulted by police. Judge Lajoie found she was the victim of “two extremely violent knee hits in the back ... and has her hair pulled back and her face shoved forward.”

Although it is hard to see exactly what happened afterwards because one police officer is blocking the video camera, it appears that a female police officer hurt her leg; she is seen limping in a later part of the video. Perhaps that injury explains what appears to be increasing hostility as the video continues. Bonds was forced to the ground with a riot shield — though she was “not resisting with hands flailing or feet flailing,” the judge said — and subjected to a strip search. The video shows four male officers and one female officer taking part in, or watching, as Bonds was forced to the ground.

Judge Lajoie severely criticized police actions at the station, saying it was “an indignity toward a human being and should be denounced.”

As a prosecutor and as a defence lawyer I have heard numerous complaints about police misconduct.

I have argued cases where an accused, charged with assaulting police, claims to have been the victim of police violence. Such claims have until now, I am afraid to admit, usually rung hollow with me. To be blunt, I did not believe them. I know that police have a difficult job. Police are often faced with violent, intoxicated individuals who have no regard for the truth and who will say whatever they think will get them out of trouble.

It is all too easy to assume that complaints about police brutality are false claims made to avoid the consequences of criminal wrongdoing. However, the Stacy Bonds case shows a Canadian being mistreated by police in the nation’s capital. Compounding the wrongful behaviour was the laying of charges for the apparent purpose of covering up misconduct.

How many “assault police” charges are merely trumped up for the purpose of concealing official wrongdoing? Put otherwise, absent a video recording, would Bonds have had a fair hearing?

The likely answer is depressing.

There is a malaise in the system. How could five police officers have taken part in the brutalization of Stacy Bonds and then allowed charges for “assault police” to go ahead? How could a Crown Attorney have failed to stay charges on seeing the video? More generally, how is it that people whose job it is to see justice done acted so unjustly? The system as a whole takes a beating when abuse occurs. Trust in the system is eroded.

To fix the problems the Bonds case uncovered will be difficult.

Yes, videotaping all police/citizen interactions will help and should be mandated. More broadly, a new professionalism is required in the justice system.

A free nation does not fear intimidation by police or the state. A free people can ask “why” when stopped by police. An honourable police force is not afraid to explain its actions to the people it is there to protect. Nelson Mandela rightly said, “I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.” For the sake of all Canadians a case like that of Stacy Bonds must never be allowed to happen again.

James Morton is a Toronto lawyer and past president of the Ontario Bar Association. He teaches evidence at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University. The opinions expressed here are solely his own.

Ottawa police strip search video released

November 26, 2010
CBC News

A judge has released a portion of surveillance video showing the controversial strip search of a woman by Ottawa police officers in September 2008.

The video shows Stacy Bonds, 27, being forced to the ground and pinned by four police officers before having her bra cut off. Justice Richard Lajoie, of the Ontario Court of Justice, released the video to the Ottawa Citizen after the newspaper filed an application.

Bonds was strip searched after being arrested on Rideau Street for public intoxication — a charge stayed by Lajoie in a verbal ruling issued on Oct. 27.

The video shows four police officers leading Bonds into a cell area at the Elgin Street police headquarters.

When Bonds doesn't immediately turn to face the table-area, a female officer knees her twice in the upper leg, then grabs the woman's hair and forces her into place.

Bonds is held by at least one of her wrists by a male officer as the female officer removes her boots. The video then shows an officer reaching into the pocket of Bonds's pants and pulling out a handful of change, which is thrown onto a table.

At one point, Bonds kicks behind her, catching the female officer in the leg. The officer limps out of the frame, and another male officer can be seen entering the room.

Four male police officers force Bonds to the ground and place a riot shield over her legs.

A male officer leaves the room and returns with a box. He then cuts the back of Bonds's shirt and bra, leaving her back exposed. The female officer stands over Bonds, but does not appear to assist in the search.

The close to seven-minute video posted by the Ottawa Citizen ends with Bonds being lifted to her feet with her cut shirt still around her arms and covering the front part of her body.

In his Oct. 27 ruling, Lajoie said the officers left Bonds alone in a jail cell "half naked and having soiled her pants" after the search.

"That is why videos have become so important," Lajoie said.

"They provide us with these extra details that put meat to simple words that are spoken by witnesses."

Ongoing investigation

"I understand that Ottawa residents will be shocked by the video," said Ottawa police Chief Vern White in a media statement released Thursday.

White said he could not comment further due to an ongoing probe by Ontario's Special Investigations Unit.

White said the police force is "co-operating fully" with the SIU and has launched its own internal investigation.

The SIU is investigating whether Bonds was sexually assaulted while in custody.

"The key points are Justice Lajoie's comments regarding the strip search and the involvement of three male officers and the cutting off of the complainant's shirt and bra," said SIU spokeswoman Jasbir Brar. The SIU investigates reports involving police where there has been death, serious injury or allegations of sexual assault.

Video shows Ottawa police cutting prisoner's bra

November 24, 2010
Andrew Seymour, Postmedia News

OTTAWA — Video of a wrongfully arrested Ottawa woman being kneed, pinned to the floor and her shirt and bra cut off with scissors has been released to the Ottawa Citizen.

The video of Stacy Bonds' treatment in the Ottawa police cells was central to Ontario Court Justice Richard Lajoie's decision on Oct. 27 to stay charges against her of assaulting police. The judge called her arrest and strip-search a "travesty."

In the video, which was recorded just before 6:30 a.m. on Sept. 26, 2008 and has no audio, Bonds can be seen being led through the police holding-cell area. The 27-year-old theatrical makeup artist with no criminal record does not appear to be resisting or aggressive.

Another camera angle then shows her being brought to a booking desk.

Bonds, who had been handcuffed, has her right arm come free from the handcuffs.

That's when Special Const. Melanie Morris knees Bonds twice in the leg and Bonds' head is violently jerked backward by the hair several times before she is forced forward against the counter.

Her shoes are then removed and she appears to be searched.

As she's restrained, Bonds appears to mule-kick Morris in her socked feet. Two of the three male officers at the counter then take her to the floor by the arm and the neck.

That's when Sgt. Steve Desjourdy joins the three male officers, picking up a plastic riot shield and placing it across Bonds' legs.

Morris, limping noticeably and appearing to be in obvious pain, leans on a garbage can and then a wall before walking out of the frame.

Desjourdy leaves and goes to another desk, where he appears to put on a pair of goggles. He goes down a hallway and returns with a pair of scissors in his hand.

Desjourdy is then seen cutting away Bonds' shirt and bra as she lies prone on the floor.

The riot shield is then moved to cover Bonds' face. Bonds does not appear to be resisting.

Her bare back exposed, Bonds is eventually lifted by the four male officers, her arm across her chest holding what remained of her clothing in an attempt to prevent herself from being exposed.

Lajoie put a publication ban on the next part of the video itself.

The judge had severely criticized the police officers' actions at the station, saying "there is no reasonable explanation . . . to have cut Ms. Bonds' shirt and bra off, and there is no reason, apart from vengeance and malice, to have left Ms. Bonds in the cell for a period of three hours and 15 minutes half-naked and having soiled her pants, before she received what is called a blue suit.

"That is an indignity toward a human being and should be denounced."

Bonds had been walking home on a downtown Ottawa street in the early morning hours of Sept. 26 when she was stopped by police.

An officer ran her name through a police computer and found nothing, so they told her to keep walking home. When she turned back to question why they had stopped her in the first place, she was arrested for public intoxication — an arrest Lajoie found unlawful — and taken to police headquarters.

In the earliest available video, which shows Bonds being led from a police cruiser to the cell area, she appears to be stumbling and having difficulty walking.

The province's Special Investigations Unit has since launched an investigation into the officers' conduct. Desjourdy is now subject to an internal investigation and has been banned from dealing with the public.

Officer’s unlawful actions revealed in detail

November 24, 2010
Gary Dimmock, The Ottawa Citizen

Days before Sgt. Steve Desjourdy was caught on videotape strip searching Stacy Bonds in the police station booking room, the Ottawa officer lost his temper with another female prisoner who was also kicked in the back, stripped of her clothing and tasered.

Desjourdy, a former spokesman for the Ottawa force, was in charge of the cell blocks on Sept. 2, 2008, when a female panhandler was arrested on Rideau Street for public intoxication and brought into detention.

Desjourdy watched the jailed prisoner from a closed-circuit television monitor and when she took her shirt off and tied it to the cell bars he expressed concern that she was going to hurt herself. He grabbed a Taser and approached the cell.

But according to an agreed statement of facts, harm came to her not from her own hand, rather by Desjourdy’s, who would later plead guilty to unlawful exercise of duty — a Police Services Act charge.

Desjourdy threatened to use the Taser on the woman if she didn’t calm down. So she obeyed, and the topless female prisoner knelt, with her back facing the locked cell door.

Desjourdy then entered the cell and proceeded to kick the kneeling woman in the back, knocking her into the cell’s stainless steel toilet. He kicked her a second time, then took a position on the cell’s bed with his Taser at the ready while a female officer came in and stripped off the rest of the woman’s clothes.

At this point, the female prisoner grabbed at Desjourdy’s leg — that’s when he tasered her twice.

Terence Kelly, a retired York Regional Police deputy chief who presided over the Police Services Act case, said in a report that described the incident that he gave Desjourdy what he termed a lighter sentence — three months demotion to constable — because Desjourdy showed “remorse” and pleaded guilty right away.

“The public must be confident that police officers will strive to set the example for those in the community. Anything short of this will be seen as a contradiction and serve no other purpose but to undermine the efforts of all police officers and the explicit goals of the service. An informed police officer possesses a sense of responsibility to the service of which he is part, and the community, which he serves,” Kelly wrote in the April 9, 2009, decision.

The hearing officer noted that being a police officer can be stressful and “on occasion unfortunately leads to a loss of temper.”

“It is unfortunate that when faced with this situation Sgt. Desjourdey (sic) would not have permitted himself to be guided by his better judgment; he must be understanding of human failings and yet, for the good of the police … he must be tolerant of improper actions of prisoners under his care. It is clear from the evidence presented in this tribunal that he had all the necessary assistance to control this situation,” Kelly wrote. And, after 90 days, Desjourdy was reinstated as a sergeant.

Unbeknownst to the office of Chief Vern White, days after the Sept. 2, 2008, case described by Kelly, Desjourdy would use a pair of scissors and commit what a Ottawa judge last month branded as an unlawful strip search and an “indignity.”

On Sept. 26, 2008, Desjourdy cut the shirt and bra off a 27-year-old theatrical makeup artist named Stacy Bonds in the booking room of the police cell block. Bonds, who has no criminal record, had also been arrested on Rideau Street.

Ontario Court Justice Richard Lajoie said last month that not only was Bonds not drunk, but that he didn’t want to play any part in the case against Bonds, who was charged with assaulting police during her “unlawful” strip search.

Lajoie stayed the assault charge, calling it a travesty. He also described police treatment of Bonds as an “indignity” and condemned the officers involved as malicious.

Desjourdy is now under investigation by Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit for alleged sexual assault against Bonds, who is now considering suing the police. She has told the Citizen that she felt as though she had been “mentally and verbally raped.”

She said she was simply walking home from an after-hours party when police stopped her on Rideau Street. They asked her name, ran it and came up with nothing and told her she was free to go. But she turned back and asked why she was stopped. “They wouldn’t even give me their names,” she recalled.

And when she questioned them, they arrested her for public intoxication.

White said last week that his officers have no authority to arrest citizens for public intoxication unless they pose a risk.

Desjourdy joined the Ottawa Police Service 12 years ago. Before joining the Ottawa force, he was a member of the MRC des Collines police force in the Outaouais. White has banned him from dealing with the public while he is under investigation.

Policing police no simple matter

November 24, 2010
Kelly Egan, Ottawa Citizen

OTTAWA-There are 64 cells in the Ottawa police station, monitored by 89 video cameras.

And soon, possibly, an array of microphones.

A senior police officer said Tuesday the force is investigating the option of adding audio recording to the “prisoner processing area” of the cell block.

Supt. Mike Flanagan was careful to point out the initiative began in the summer and is not a reaction to the Stacy Bonds case, which broke last week with a judge’s stinging condemnation.

An outside agency has been called in to investigate how a woman walking down Rideau Street, possibly sipping on a beer, ends up arrested, strip-searched, forcibly restrained, then left for hours in a cell in a dishevelled state, never to be convicted of anything.

The plan for audio recording is not a secret way to gather evidence on suspects or eavesdrop on cell conversations, he said, but should be viewed as an “enhancement” of existing video equipment. It is commonly used in other jurisdictions, he added.

“Our goal is to be as transparent as possible,” said Flanagan.

It is possible that it could be used to monitor the conduct of officers, just as the video is, and should raise the “standard of professionalism” on display.

How to discipline officers, including how to fire them, is much in the news these days. Outside the police services board meeting this week, Chief Vern White was addressing that very topic, just as he was assuring the board there would be accountability in the Bonds case.

It is, clearly, damage-control time. A day after reassuring the board, White was attending a meeting of taxi drivers, many of them upset with the acquittal of an off-duty police officer who was involved in a fight at the airport taxi stand that left the driver with broken bones.

White says he and other chiefs across Ontario would like more authority in the area of discipline, including the right to suspend officers without pay.

It is a contentious point.

The president of the Ottawa Police Association said he would oppose such a move, as it represents punishment before the officer has had an independent hearing on the grievance.

“You can’t jump to the conclusion that they’re guilty,” said Steve Boucher.

The Ontario government has legislated the rules for conduct under the Police Services Act and both sides have to live with them, said Boucher.

“Just like anywhere else, the workers need protection. They need protection from arbitrary discipline and arbitrary termination.”

Police, indeed, are in a special category. Unlike much of the private sector, where non-unionized employees are protected by labour laws but little else, police are both unionized and have a separate disciplinary protocol, as spelled out in the Act, for more serious infractions. At hearings, they are represented by lawyers — their bosses, in effect, can’t just up and fire them.

It is, in fact, quite difficult to dismiss a police officer.

In a force with more than 1,300 officers, there might only be one or two dismissals per year, with a handful of suspensions.

Even being charged with a crime — and convicted — is often not enough to get an officer tossed off the payroll.

For example:

A constable is charged with shoplifting, theft and uttering a threat after an incident in a Loblaws in 2004. He is found guilty in criminal court, given a 12-month conditional sentence. The force wanted to fire him. On appeal, he won his job back, but it took more than three years, during which time he was suspended with pay.

An Ottawa police officer admitted to stealing crack cocaine from a motorist he stopped and from the evidence room. He was ordered dismissed, but fought the decision. He was paid roughly $70,000 a year during his three-year suspension. In the end, his appeal failed. A newspaper access request found the force spent $59,000 to pursue the prosecution.

In May 2008, police went to the home of an officer, in response to a call about a possible domestic assault. The officer was a 20-year veteran. He fought police, was stunned by a Taser and later escaped custody. He was sentenced to two years’ probation and given the odd condition that he not possess any firearms, except in the course of his police duties. A disciplinary hearing led to his dismissal from the force. He is now appealing.

In a little over a month this year, two off-duty Ottawa police officers were charged with impaired driving. In one case, a motorist struck a pole and a parked car. It is believed both officers are still on the payroll.

White was visibly irked Monday evening with persistent questions about the Bonds case. It is hardly a leap to think he’d like to hoof a couple of derrieres and maybe take a badge away.

But, in policing the police, it isn’t that simple.

Matt Gurney: Ottawa cop doesn't learn from "learning experience" in brutality

November 18, 2010
Matt Gurney, National Post

On Wednesday, we heard about an Ottawa-woman subjected to an illegal arrest and a beating by Ottawa police officers for no apparent reason at all. After being stopped while walking to a friend’s house, and then let go, Stacy Bonds …

… stopped and asked them why they’d stopped her in the first place.

That got her handcuffed, thrown in the back of a cruiser and spirited off to the police station, where police pulled her hair, kneed her in the back a couple of times, slammed her to the ground with a riot shield, cut off her clothes and bra while a few male officers watched, and strip-searched her.

The Ottawa police are investigating themselves, of course, and we all know how those usually end up: An officer might be sent to bed without any supper. But it turns out that this isn’t the first time one of these officers has been involved in a case like this. Why am I not surprised?

Just four days before Bonds’ arrest, on Sept. 2, 2008, Sgt. Steven Desjourdy, one of the officers involved, used excessive force on an aggressive woman who he kicked and shocked with a Taser while in custody.

The details of the earlier case are somewhat different. In the first case, the woman was drunk and hostile and spat on a police officer. She later pleaded guilty to the charge of assaulting an officer. But still, the facts of the case were disturbing enough that Desjourdy was demoted to constable for 90 days, which the adjudicator called a significant punishment. Then the adjudicator had this to say:

“You’re obviously a very good police officer with an exceptional career. These things are a learning experience for us police officers.”

You know, I’m not an adjudicator, but I get the feeling that if the average citizen did to a cop what this cop has done to two women, the law enforcement community probably wouldn’t deem it an important learning experience. Why a police officer should get special dispensation to treat other people with brutality is a mystery. We entrust these people with law and order, to be enforced on our behalf, if necessary, with state-sanctioned violence. They owe us better than this.

Kelly McParland: Ottawa police brutalize lone, 100-pound female – and aren’t fired?

November 17, 2010
Kelly McParland, National Post

There are so many mind-boggling crimes in the world it’s easy to get immune to surprise. But there is something so mind-bogglingly stupid and commonplace about this particular case that it makes you wonder what home for the congenitally brain-dead Ottawa uses to recruit police.

Two years ago a young woman named Stacy Bonds was walking along an Ottawa sidewalk on her way to a friend’s house. Bonds is 27, just five feet tall, weighs barely 100 pounds. She’s not a trouble-maker, has no criminal history, no record of causing problems for police. She had — horrors — enjoyed a few drinks, though a judge ruled later that she was not drunk. Two police officers stopped her, checked her out, discovered she was harmless and told her to be on her way. She took a few steps, then stopped and asked them why they’d stopped her in the first place.
That got her handcuffed, thrown in the back of a cruiser and spirited off to the police station, where police pulled her hair, kneed her in the back a couple of times, slammed her to the ground with a riot shield, cut off her clothes and bra while a few male officers watched, and strip-searched her.

That done, they threw her in a cell, half-naked, for three hours. They charged her with public drunkenness — though she wasn’t — and with aggressive behaviour, though a video showed that wasn’t true either.

Now, how big a moron do you have to be to pull a stunt like this? These cops are on video — which one assumes they are aware of, it being a police station and all — and they molest an innocent woman, then lay false charges, which can be easily disproved. Did they think Bonds would just go away and not mention the experience to anyone? Did they think no one would notice the video? Did they figure three male cops and one female cop was appropriate force to use against a lone, 100-pound female?

Or, being clearly of limited mental capacity, did they just figure the rest of the world was as stupid as they are?

The judge, rightly, denounced the whole episode, noting there was ”no reason, apart from vengeance and malice, to have left Ms. Bonds in the cell for a period of three hours and 15 minutes half-naked and having soiled her pants, before she received what is called a blue suit. That is an indignity toward a human being and should be denounced.”

The obvious question is: Are these four idiots still employed by the Ottawa police force, and if so, why? Ottawa Police Chief Vern White says the force has launched “an internal investigation.” We know what that usually means: a mild rebuke, maybe some lost pay, but nothing that might upset the union.

Chief, this is an easy one. Fire them all. They don’t deserve the right to demean their uniforms.