Shannon Kari (National Post ) - The senior RCMP officer who led a probe into a now disbanded Toronto police drug squad, wanted 12 officers charged with corruption related offences, but was told by provincial prosecutors that this number was unmanageable.
As a result, six officers were charged with conspiracy, obstruction of justice, perjury, extortion, theft and assault-related charges in January, 2004.
Detective Sgt. John Schertzer and other members of his former unit were accused of assaulting and stealing from drug suspects, as well as routinely falsifying information related to confidential informants in drug investigations.
All of the charges against the six officers were stayed in February of this year by Superior Court Justice Ian Nordheimer because their Charter rights were violated as a result of unreasonable delay in bringing the case to trial (the Crown is appealing this ruling).
The Ontario Ministry of the Attorney-General’s explanation for charging only six officers has been disclosed for the first time, in a confidential report sent by RCMP Assistant Commissioner John Neily in 2004 to the chief of police in Toronto. The report was obtained by CBC radio news and made public Friday.
“The practice of prosecuting conspiracy cases can be limited by the logistics of too many subjects on an indictment,” Asst. Comm. John Neily said that he was told. “The rule of thumb among experienced attorneys appears to be to not prosecute any more than seven on one indictment for conspiracy,” he wrote.
Four more drug squad officers were named as “unindicted co-conspirators” and would have been required to testify as prosecution witnesses, but they were not facing criminal charges.
A series of affidavits by Asst. Comm. Neily that were unsealed by the Ontario Court of Appeal in 2004 alleged there was “evidence of criminal activity” by 17 officers. In a letter to the Crown in 2003 that was made public in Judge Nordheimer’s ruling, the allegations were described as “the largest police corruption scandal known in Canadian history,” by Asst. Comm. Neily.
The confidential report he authored in 2004 alleged that Mr. Schertzer (who retired last year) led a “specific group of officers serving under his supervision on a crime spree in the drug culture of Toronto,” between 1995 and 1999.
The allegations of corruption against the Schertzer team and other Toronto police drug squads led to federal drug prosecutors dismissing or staying charges in at least 200 cases between 1996 and 2002.
A former drug squad member in northwest Toronto who admitted to using cocaine while on duty is the only officer to be convicted of a criminal offence as a result of the findings of the more than two-year-long task force investigation, which began in 2001.
The then-Toronto police Chief Julian Fantino appointed Asst. Comm. Neily to lead the internal investigation, which was made up of more than two-dozen detectives.
The appointment was made soon after an internal Toronto police “business case” report in June 2001 recommended setting up a task force to avoid a public inquiry into alleged corruption. “That the investigation has an external component, that will provide greater credibility to the results,” wrote Inspector Tony Corrie. “The faster the review is done the less chance there is of committing more damage. Taking these steps may avoid a public inquiry,” he wrote.
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1 RCMP Watch // Apr 26, 2008 at 12:23
RCMP Alleged Litany of Police Crimes
Betsy Powell (Toronto Sun) - A small group of rogue drug squad officers engaged in a crime spree “with relative impunity for many years” during the 1990s because various internal Toronto Police Service investigations lacked co-ordination, resources or didn’t go far enough, alleges a 2005 confidential report.
Those are among the details to emerge with the leak of the 29-page document written by then RCMP chief superintendent John Neily and addressed to former Toronto police chief Julian Fantino.
The report provides an overview of a three-year, $8 million investigation that Neily headed that resulted in criminal charges being laid against six officers in January 2004. Justice Ian Nordheimer stayed those charges in January citing the “glacial progress of this prosecution.”
The Crown is appealing the decision.
Neily is now assistant commissioner with the Mounties in Ottawa and did not return calls yesterday from the Star.
“Since there is still a possibility of these cases coming before the courts, it would be inappropriate to comment,” said Toronto police spokesperson Mark Pugash.
Much of the report is focused on the conduct of now-retired Det.-Sgt. John Schertzer, who Neily alleges led a small group of officers under his supervision “on a crime spree in the drug culture of Toronto thereby obstructing the administration of justice.”
According to the report, the officers are alleged by accused drug dealers to have used excessive force, lied to judges, stolen illicit drugs and cash and conducted unlawful searches and seizures. There were at least 47 complaints about theft from 1997 to 1999, Neily wrote.
A review of Schertzer’s personnel file, Neily said, “will show this man had problems from almost the time he first hit the streets of Toronto. At the time of his promotion to Detective Sergeant in 1999, he had been the subject of no less than 20 public complaints which had resulted in effectively no finding or foundation from a wide variety of investigations.”
Schertzer’s lawyer, John Rosen, said yesterday the media is “taking this report completely out of context.”
“My client has always maintained his innocence. He did nothing wrong and had there been a trial, had the Crown done their work in a timely way, we would have been able to get him acquitted… . There was no substance to these charges.”
Neily says in his report that before he got involved, there were various attempts by Toronto police officers to address complaints being levelled against members of the now-disbanded Central Field Command Drug Squad, Team 3.
One attempted review, conducted by Det. David Eagleson, compared 16 complaints and found common traits “from diverse complainants who had no knowledge of each other.” Yet his attempt to relay that information to senior officers “met with no success.”
Another investigation, this time by internal affairs in 1999, concluded there were “reasonable and probable grounds to believe that Schertzer and certain members of his crew had committed several criminal acts.” But that probe also failed to delve deeper, he said.
There was also a tremendous reluctance internally to “put any weight to the complaints of drug traffickers” even though the stories were “strikingly similar among diverse individuals with limited or no prior contact.”
As well, forensic accountants found the financial situations of some of the officers improved while they were with the drug squad, then “deteriorated” when they left.
Defence lawyer Edward Sapiano, who first brought the corruption allegations to light, said yesterday there have been many positive developments in the wake of Neily’s probe even though the charges against the officers were stayed.
“The jury pool, the public, have now been educated that they need to be a little bit more cynical and critical of police testimony,” he said.
Sapiano added he also believes judges, especially newer ones, have become much more cautious about accepting police testimony.
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