The arrest of Toronto police officers in a sprawling organized crime and corruption investigation threatens to upend the prosecution of other criminal cases and could lead to the quashing of previous convictions.
On Thursday, York Regional Police announced the arrest of eight officers – seven active on the Toronto Police Service and one retired – on many charges, including conspiracy to obstruct justice. The allegations have not been proven.
York Deputy Chief Ryan Hogan said investigators had no immediate information about other current police work or court cases that have been compromised by the accused officers.
He said police will review the roles the accused officers played in other investigations to determine whether their involvement “may have jeopardized cases in the past, present or future.”
Criminal defence lawyers are expected to focus on the names of this week’s eight accused officers in other current or past court proceedings. If they had important roles in arrests and charges, as well as convictions, their credibility as witnesses or as investigators would be questioned. These issues also mean prosecutors may not be able to rely on the officers’ work or their testimony at a trial.
Seven Toronto police officers and one retired officer were charged as part of a complex investigation into organized crime and corruption.
Cases of alleged or proven illegal conduct by police in the past have had wide impact.
A quarter-century ago a group of officers on a Toronto drug squad were accused of a range of crimes including extortion and theft, but they weren’t, years later, convicted of those particular charges. They were convicted of obstruction of justice.
Even so, the accused police officers’ potential prosecution and alleged conduct was seen as a key factor in the derailing of about four dozen criminal cases over several months from December, 1999, through May, 2000. Crown prosecutors gave up on the cases.
More than 80 people who had been accused of crimes had their charges stayed or withdrawn, according to reporting at the time.
In late 2001, one reported case of a man convicted of drug trafficking was overturned by a court. The judge said information had emerged after the conviction about potential police misconduct. That led Crown prosecutors to recommend the drug conviction be quashed.
John Neily, a retired RCMP assistant commissioner, led a special task force that investigated the accused police officers back then.
In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Neily said prosecutors in the early 2000s were concerned about the actions of the accused officers in cases they had worked on. But when defence lawyers in those cases demanded records – as is their right under disclosure laws – police didn’t want the disclosed information to compromise the investigation of the officers.
Without such disclosure, prosecutors elected to stay or withdraw charges in some of those cases that may have been tainted by the accused officers, Mr. Neily said.
Toronto police, others arrested in auto theft and drug trafficking probe
On Thursday, a Globe and Mail review of the Canadian Legal Information Institute’s database of court judgments found several rulings in recent years that involved police with the same names as several of this week’s accused Toronto officers.
“I guarantee every lawyer doing a case in Toronto is going to be looking for these names,” said Chris Sewrattan, a Toronto criminal defence lawyer.
He said there will be potential challenges for the prosecution in other cases that involve the accused police officers and this could lead to cases being dropped: “It’s not uncommon for the Crown to just tap out.”
David Cole, a retired judge who worked for about three decades on the Ontario Court of Justice, said defence lawyers will definitely knock on the doors of prosecutors to say: “Hello, take a look at this one.”
But the actual impact on other cases remains speculative, Mr. Cole said. Tangential involvement in other cases won’t be enough. But Mr. Cole described a more serious generic scenario, where a police officer’s credibility stands at the nexus of a case: “If a constable arrests somebody and the accused makes a statement confessing that they did the act, that officer becomes central to the case.”
Toronto criminal defence lawyer Annamaria Enenajor pointed to another scenario: “If a guy was handling evidence, you’d be really concerned. But it’s case-by-case.”
Ms. Enenajor also said prosecutors will be motivated to keep as many other cases on track as possible and that defence lawyers will need persuasive arguments to convince a judge that a case is tainted because of the involvement of one of the officers accused this week.
“This is extraordinarily corrosive to the public trust in policing and the justice system as well,” she said.
“The public fear will be that everything these police officers have touched will collapse. The courts will try to balance that concern with the need to preserve the integrity of the justice system.”