Pubdate: Fri, 01 Jun 2012
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2012 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Author: Peter Small
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?236 (Corruption - Outside U.S.)

Toronto Police Corruption Trial:

OFFICER LYING ABOUT POUND OF COCAINE, DEFENCE SUGGESTS

The word of a senior Toronto drug squad officer is being pitted 
against a former member at a cop corruption trial.

Earl Levy, lawyer for former Central Field Command drug squad officer 
Raymond Pollard, suggested Friday that a detective sergeant lied when 
he gave evidence damaging to his client in March.

"How can you be sure that Ray Fortin has been telling the truth?" 
Levy asked a Ontario Superior Court jury in his final arguments.

Fortin testified that in 1999 Pollard told him his crew had seized a 
pound (16 ounces) of cocaine from drug dealer Andy Ioakim's Richmond 
Hill home two years earlier.

But the drug squad at the time reported seizing only 2.5 ounces, a 
13.5-ounce discrepancy worth almost $17,000. The Crown has suggested 
some officers "skimmed" the difference.

Levy pointed out, however, that Fortin never wrote in his notes 
Pollard's supposed reference to a pound of cocaine.

Fortin has admitted he wanted to report a pound had been seized in 
1997 to beef up his 1999 application for a search warrant for another 
Ioakim home, Levy said. "The supposed one pound my client told him 
about is important for his purposes," Levy said.

But interestingly, Levy added, Fortin never noted in the search 
warrant application, as he should, that Pollard was the source of the 
information about the alleged pound.

Pollard, 48; Joseph Miched, 53; Ned Maodus, 49; Steven Correia, 45; 
and their former boss, John Schertzer, 54, are variously charged with 
conspiracy to attempt to obstruct justice, perjury, extortion, theft 
and assault from 1997 to 2002.

Miched's lawyer, Peter Brauti, asserted Friday that the Crown has, 
for 10 years, charged his client with a count that makes no sense on the facts.

Miched is charged with perjuring himself in the case of heroin dealer 
Ho Bing Pang, by claiming he did not enter the man's apartment on 
Feb. 18, 1998, before a search warrant arrived.

But according to the Crown's own theory, Miched didn't show up at the 
apartment until he arrived, warrant in hand, after his fellow 
officers had searched it illegally or, alternately, he never went to 
the apartment at all, Brauti told the jury.

"So, for 10 years they have charged Officer Miched with the wrong 
charge," Brauti said in his final arguments.

No one disputes that Miched was at drug squad headquarters that 
evening, sending and receiving faxes to and from a justice of the 
peace as he sought a warrant for the Pang apartment and a separate 
warrant for another drug dealer's address.

The Crown has suggested Miched could not possibly, as he claims, have 
driven from drug squad headquarters on Eglinton Ave. near Yonge St. 
to the Pang apartment on Eglinton near Midland Ave. to present the 
warrant, then raced back for the other warrant, all within 22 minutes.

The Crown is to begin its final arguments Tuesday.
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