Pubdate: Mon, 06 May 2002
Source: Toronto Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 2002, Canoe Limited Partnership.
Contact:  http://www.fyitoronto.com/torsun.shtml
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/457
Author: Mark Bonokoski
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm (Corruption)

NO REVELATIONS FROM ROGUE COP

Staley Avoids The Hard Questions

It was moving day in the downtown apartment building where disgraced 
Toronto cop Richard Staley will be spending the next 18 months under house 
arrest.

No need to ring the security buzzer, though, not that Staley's name was 
listed on the panel because it wasn't. It was just that the movers had 
conveniently left the front door open as they hauled their boxes from a 
17th-floor apartment to the truck parked in the crescent below.

Problem No. 1 was therefore solved. The requirement of having to first use 
the intercom had been taken out of play. All there was to do now was go 
directly to his apartment, knock on his door, and ask for his side of the 
story --like how does a 27-year veteran cop with 30 commendations in his 
file become a crackhead?

Last week, Superior Court Justice Harry LaForme surprised everyone -- the 
50-year-old Staley included -- by sentencing him to house arrest after he 
pleaded guilty to a litany of crimes, everything from supplying 
confidential police information to a drug dealer, running a licence plate 
number through the police computer for a woman connected to an outlaw 
motorcycle gang, to "losing" three handguns registered in his name and then 
not reporting them missing as required by the law.

All because of his addiction to crack cocaine, first "sampling" it as an 
undercover cop and then letting the hard-boil narcotic consume his life.

It was after that first whiff that Staley, in the words taken from his 
pre-sentence report, "moved from the role of a cop to that of a culprit."

Staley himself told the judge he thought he deserved at least six months in 
jail, and he even brought along a plastic bag containing a toothbrush, 
clean underwear and a deck of smokes, all in anticipation of his first 
night in the detention centre.

Lenience opposed

The Crown was seeking a year for Staley's serious breach of the public's 
trust. Two internal affairs officers who brought him down -- Det.-Sgts. 
Mike Earl and Bryce Evans -- were hoping for enough to send the message 
that bad cops will not get an easy ride from the courts.

But Judge LaForme ignored them all.

Instead of going to jail, Staley walked out of court and headed home -- his 
pension figuratively in his back pocket, having officially signed his 
retirement papers on the eve of his guilty pleas.

Despite spending almost 20% of his career as a cop on paid suspension, and 
with enough criminal and Police Services Act convictions to fill more than 
a half-dozen bankers' boxes, Staley will nonetheless collect a pension of 
approximately $30,000 a year.

All he had to do was retire without a criminal record hanging around his neck.

And this is what he did.

Can't go far

There are at least three dead bolts on Richard Staley's apartment door. The 
friend who answered the knock said he had just gone down to the lobby and 
would be back in a minute.

As stipulated in the terms of his house arrest, Staley can't go far, not 
even to the corner store to buy groceries. So the wait for his return was on.

"I've got absolutely nothing to say," he said when first confronted. Then 
he took my business card, and promised to think it over.

That evening, he agreed to meet -- at 11 o'clock the next morning.

Richard Staley came across pretty good in earlier press reports. He said 
all the right things and pushed all the right buttons.

"I'm not trying to justify what I did," he said in one article. "I just 
hope at the end of the day my colleagues on the job and the public will not 
see me in too harsh a light"

He is, in fact, almost instantly likable. He is also, according to his 
pre-sentence report, "egocentric, moody, socially immature" and prone to 
"passive aggressiveness."

And "manipulative," according to the two internal affairs cops who busted him.

"He knows how to cry the right river," said one.

In the end, however, there would be no asking Richard Staley about how and 
why he became a crackhead, and no answer to the question of what would 
possess a once-honourable cop to allow three of his handguns to be out on 
the streets, no doubt in the wrong hands.

"He traded them for crack," said Det.-Sgt. Earl. "What else are we supposed 
to believe?"

The meeting with Staley had been set for 11 a.m. at a place to be determined.

At 6 o'clock in the morning, however, the telephone rang.

Richard Staley had changed his mind.

He said he had "had enough."
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MAP posted-by: Ariel