Pubdate: Fri, 04 Jan 2013
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2013 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Author: Rosie DiManno

MEASLY JUSTICE FOR DIRTY COPS

 From their expressions, it was impossible to tell whether the
convicted cops - the lying and justice-jamming cops - were pleased,
relieved, even kicking up their heels inside their heads.

They will not spend a single day in prison. That was surely enough to
put a smile on those five faces. But grins would have been
inappropriate. And these former Toronto drug squad officers, as we
know from their years of court appearances, have mastered outward stoicism.

What we also now know: Forty-five days of house arrest has been deemed
sufficient punishment for dirty cops.

The dishonour roll: John Schertzer, Steven Correia, Ned Maodus, Joseph
Miched and Raymond Pollard.

Exceedingly lax house arrest at that - what's known in courthouse
lingo as "working mom's house arrest" because it allows exceptions
for jobs, health-related appointments (including appointments for
family members), consultation with lawyers and, oh yes, four hours
free and clear each Saturday "to attend to personal needs."

A decade of legal wrangling, three investigations internal and
outside, dozens of specialized Crown attorneys assigned, 200 drug
cases tossed out of court - un-prosecutable because they were worked
by these tainted officers - 22 charges originally laid, knocked down
to 14 after a preliminary hearing, eventually winnowed to nine by the
Crown, an 86-day trial.

Five Toronto cops convicted of attempting to obstruct justice, three
of them also convicted of perjury.

Only one - the last remaining member of the Team 3 Central Field
Command drug squad crew still punching a clock on the force, albeit
under paid suspension - will probably be booted. Correia still faces
related charges under the Police Act and, as of Friday's sentencing by
Ontario Superior Court Justice Gladys Pardu, is suspended without pay,
according to his lawyer. House arrest, said Harry Black, is defined as
incarceration by Toronto Police Services, and that means Correia is
done.

"It's the end of his job," mourned Harry Black. "It's a huge
loss."

The rest of the gang, all of whom resigned from police employment in
the years since their 2004 arrest, are at liberty (which they never
actually forfeited) to go on with their lives, pending appeal of the
convictions, a process that has already been launched by a top-drawer
legal posse.

All the convictions relate to a single incident, from the five
postulated by prosecutors, where jurors accepted that the defendants
conducted a search of Ho Bing Pang's Scarborough apartment in February
1998, without a warrant, then "did wilfully attempt to obstruct,
pervert or defeat the course of justice, by practising deception,
including by making a false or misleading account of events in their
memo books, and/or by lying to the court in their testimony" to
conceal what they'd done.

It's a saga that ends not with a bang, nor a whimper but, frankly, a
wink - and the taste of ashes.

Read the judgment - as Pardu did, aloud, in court Friday - and the
folly of prosecuting disreputable, disesteemed, duplicitous officers
in this country jumps off the page.

"There is no evidence of a pattern of criminal misconduct extending to
matters other than Pang," Pardu writes, in support of her decision -
along with other factors - to reject the custodial sentence the Crown
had sought. "There is no history of findings of misconduct under the
Police Act. There is no evidence of a history of work-related
misconduct."

Maybe not within the narrow confines of Pardu's courtroom, but out in
the real world it's a different story. Three criminal investigations
of the officers, 16 civilian complaints naming Schertzer - former head
of the rogue drug squad - between 1992 and 1997, a misconduct charge
laid against four squad members over the strip-search arrest of a drug
dealer that was dismissed on a time-limit technicality, an internal
audit that found 82 per cent of Team 3 cases ended in a stay or
withdrawal of charges - and that was before this investigation of the
squad began - and Schertzer among eight drug squad members charged in
2000 with theft, forgery and breach of trust for their use of the
police "Fink Fund" - a cash reserve for paying informants - the
charges never tested in court, stayed two years later in order to
protect the larger Special Task Force investigation, led by RCMP Chief
Supt. John Neily, that culminated in this trial.

Public inquiries: 0.

Likelihood of a public inquiry ordered now: Zero.

Paperwork irregularities, the defendants' lawyers had argued at trial,
nothing more than that if the public would only try to understand the
immense pressures under which front-line drug cops operate, the
interminable minutiae of documentation required to arrest bad guys,
and just look at how bad the "victims" were: Drug dealers, unsavory
crooks, underbelly street hoods, chronic liars, their accounts of
being shaken down and ripped off not to be trusted. Any why care
anyway if their rights had been traduced in the pursuit of a greater
good that may have induced "noble cause corruption," a mitigating
circumstance that Pardu states she discounted in her sentencing
deliberations.

She did take note of the humiliation and ruination suffered by the
quintet, their sleepless nights, the post-traumatic stress disorder
diagnoses - who hasn't staked a claim to PTSD lately? - their long
police careers and the unlikelihood of reoffending, while concluding
that suspended sentences and probation, as urged by defence counsels,
would not reflect the "gravity" of the offences on which they were
convicted.

"I must be concerned with the long-term effects of conduct like theirs
upon the repute of the administration of justice and the integrity of
criminal proceedings."

If this outcome is a victory for justice, it is a small one indeed.
The case finally did make it to trial, after being tossed out in 2008
by another judge because of the time it took to get to court. That
decision was set aside by the Ontario Court of Appeal, which ordered a
new trial. So there's that. A jury of seven women and five men did
bring in a rare guilty verdict against cops, measly as it was.

But the biggest police corruption trial in Canadian history still
comes down to this: 45 days, home-served.

Try finding the denunciation and deterrence quotient in that.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jo-D