Pubdate: Sat, 05 Jan 2013
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2013 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Christie Blatchford
Page: A11

LESSONS LEARNED IN OFFICER 'CORRUPTION' CASE

Lengthy Public Trial Exacted a Terrible Toll

In the words of the great English novelist John Galsworthy, someone 
gave the machine that is justice a push.

Only 15 years later did it finally run out of gas and stop rolling on.

Virtually no one in its path escaped unscathed, with the reputations 
of the Canadian criminal justice system, prosecutors, the Toronto 
police force, the cops who investigate their own and even the press 
all left damaged.

The five former Toronto drug squad officers who were the machine's 
target and suffered its most devastating effects were on Friday 
spared a jail term by Ontario Superior Court Judge Gladys Pardu.

That small mercy, if that's what it was, did little to mitigate the 
quintet's long voyage on what Toronto Police Association boss Mike 
McCormack recently described as "the ship of the damned."

Whatever the outcome of the trial was, whatever the sentences handed 
down, Mr. McCormack told Postmedia earlier this week, the men "were 
judged and convicted years ago in the court of public opinion. You 
can't beat the conspiracies; it's just the reality of the world we live in."

In the packed downtown courtroom where the judge read her 22-page 
decision aloud, Mr. McCormack's words rang true.

Families and friends of the five men appeared too exhausted to even 
be relieved by the fact their loved ones weren't going to jail, while 
from the press, there was disappointed grumbling about the lightness 
of the sentences.

The judge herself called the impact of the protracted proceedings 
"catastrophic," noted the five men had been in "the crosshairs" of 
investigators since 1998, said that some comments reported by media 
"have amounted to hyperbolic vilification for conduct" far beyond the 
offences they were convicted of, and concluded that in and of itself 
the process "constitutes an enormous deterrent to any officer tempted 
to cut corners or lie under oath."

Judge Pardu sentenced each of the now middle-aged men - all of whom 
were convicted by a jury last June of attempting to obstruct justice, 
with three also being convicted of perjury, but acquitted of many 
more, including such serious ones as fraud, assault and theft - to 45 
days of house arrest. The convictions all came in relation to a 
warrantless search of a heroin dealer's apartment and in the 
officers' efforts to cover up the fact they had entered the flat 
before they got a search warrant.

Judge Pardu didn't minimize the misconduct - she dismissed the notion 
of what's known as 'noble cause corruption,' law-breaking done to 
catch criminals - but she noted the only possible gain for the five 
men was "perhaps shortening their work day by a couple of hours.... 
"There was nothing abusive about the manner in which the search was 
conducted and the occupants were well-treated," the judge said. And, 
she added, "There is no doubt that they had grounds to obtain a 
warrant." Only one of the five, Const. Steven Correia, is still a 
serving officer with the Toronto force, at least on paper.

For him, the custodial sentence handed out by Judge Pardu - though 
the men will be able to serve their sentences at home, with 
conditions, they are nonetheless considered custodial terms - means 
his status immediately changes from suspended with pay to suspended without it.

It is expected the five may still appeal their convictions of last summer.

Pending the results of any appeal, the 45year-old Correira is faced 
with the choice of hanging on by his fingernails to a job with no 
income, or resigning.

The other four former members of the long-disbanded central drug 
squad - leader John Schertzer and officers Ned Maodus, Joe Miched and 
Raymond Pollard - all walked away from the job years ago as the 
process dragged on, exacting a terrible price on their mental health 
and upon their families.

All five have been diagnosed either with Post Traumatic Stress 
Disorder, profound depression or anxiety.

The case began in February of 1998 when internal charges under the 
provincial Police Act were laid against the men.

But though these charges were dismissed that fall, other 
investigations - no fewer than three criminal probes - followed, with 
dozens of investigators working full-time on the prosecution and 
little expense spared.

As Correira's lawyer Harry Black mused Friday, after the sentencing, 
"When a police officer is charged, the prosecution effort that is put 
in is enormous. I don't know of anything that equals it. Allegations 
of police misconduct and crime are obviously very serious, but 
compared to other crimes, unsolved murders ... I think people would 
be very surprised. They just kept going and going, looking under every rock."

In fact, at one point five years ago, another Ontario Superior Court 
judge, Ian Nordheimer, actually stayed all the charges against the five.

He was sharply critical of the glacial pace of the prosecution, 
particularly in disclosing the case to defence lawyers and especially 
in view of the efforts of lead outside investigator, RCMP Chief 
Superintendent John Neily, to stir to action those at Ontario's 
Special Prosecutions Unit.

But Judge Nordheimer's decision was overturned at the Ontario Court 
of Appeal, and a new trial ordered.

Judge Pardu referred obliquely to the intense investigative efforts 
to nail the five officers.

Investigators "went to a vacation spot" frequented by Schertzer and 
his wife, who is a homicide detective with Toronto, "and suggested 
she was not a good mother. An anonymous package suggesting falsely 
that they [the Schertzers] had foreign bank accounts spread the 
humiliation to her family," the judge said.

Another officer, Miched, and his wife were "led to believe that they 
had won a holiday and were paired with another couple," the judge 
said. The Micheds were by then socially isolated because of the 
investigation and the publicity, and the couples became friends.

But nine months later, Judge Pardu said, "it transpired that this was 
all an investigative ruse, and the other couple were undercover officers."

On 10 different occasions in one four-year period, the judge said, 
Miched "was advised that charges were imminent," though the officers 
weren't charged until January 2004.

The 48-year-old Pollard and his wife have a disabled child and, the 
judge said, once when they were in hospital with him - "something had 
gone wrong and their son was paralyzed from the neck down" - 
investigators picked that moment to tell Pollard he had "two hours to 
surrender into custody."

Many years ago, when rumours were swirling about the five men and 
their purported "corruption," some of this making it to print, I 
remember attending one of their court appearances.

Schertzer's wife, Joyce, was there to support her husband. She's a 
strikingly attractive woman, and I remember a colleague telling me 
that she bought designer clothes, the inference being with ill-gotten 
gains. "Look at those shoes," the colleague sniffed.

I complimented Detective Schertzer on the shoes and asked where she 
got them. "Aldo," she said, and sure enough, on my way home, I found 
them in one of the chain's shops.

They were $80, or something. They were cheap; the willowy Ms. 
Schertzer had just made them look expensive.

There's a lesson in that, and in the whole story of the drug squad 
five, in the first about the power of gossip, in the second about the 
untrammeled power of the state.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom