In Depth
Toronto police
CBC News investigation: The report that led to the charges and the Crown's problems
April 28, 2008
By Dave Seglins
Beating up drug dealers and stealing their money. Shaking down bar owners for protection money. Extortion, obstructing justice, assault, theft, perjury, corrupt practices. The allegations that were levelled against a small but influential group of Toronto police officers were stunning in their breadth.
Related
Now, of course, with the result of an equally stunning judicial decision, those accusations of corruption may never be resolved.
Media
- Documentary report: CBC News Sunday
- Audio: Dave Seglins reports on the Crown's problems (Runs 1:28 - April 28)
- Audio: Dave Seglins on the report that led to the charges against Toronto's finest (Runs 1:28 - April 24)
In January 2008, Ontario Superior Court Justice Ian Nordheimer tossed Canada's biggest-ever case of police corruption out of court, ruling it took Crown prosecutors too long to bring six veteran drug squad officers to trial. The Crown has launched an appeal.
What went wrong? What else did an internal special task force into Toronto's drug squads find? What corruption has never been fully investigated — or explained to the public?
CBC News has been following this story closely for almost a decade now and has recently unearthed some documents and other information that shed new light on the scope of the investigations, the nature of the charges that were originally contemplated and some difficulties the Crown felt it had with the Toronto police when it came to preparing the case for trial.
This new information includes the confidential final report of the special, internal task force that had been probing the initial allegations against a number of Toronto officers as well as letters from the lead prosecutor, Milan Rupic, complaining of lack of help.
They are being brought forward at a time when the Crown is appealing the Nordheimer decision and when the attorney general of Ontario, Chris Bentley, is reviewing the case to decide whether there should be a full public inquiry.
None of the allegations in the task force report, it should be noted, have ever been proven or even introduced as evidence in a court. And, given the current legal circumstances, may never be.
All six officers who were originally charged in 2004 with criminal offences have pleaded not guilty and have said that the allegations against them come from drug dealers making up stories to try to win lighter sentences. Some of the officers have sued the Crown and the police force for malicious prosecution.
The Special Task Force
The origins of this case go back to the late-1990s, a period when Toronto police were fending off widespread accusations of internal corruption on several fronts.
Julian Fantino, who was Toronto's police chief until 2005, repeatedly said during this period that any such incidents were isolated and urged the public to keep faith in the 7,200-member force.
But in 2001, after an outcry from defence lawyers that their clients were being unfairly treated and robbed, Fantino quietly established an internal task force to investigate specific allegations stemming from a five-year period in the late 1990s. According to some, the task force was set up to try to avoid a full public inquiry and assure authorities that only a small group of officers might be involved.
The main target was one team of undercover drug officers in particular, a team led by now-retired Det. Sgt. John Schertzer and which happened to have one of the best arrest records at the time.
The special task force was led by RCMP Chief Superintendent John Neily, now an assistant commissioner.
The task force grew to include 26 senior Toronto police investigators, five Mounties, including Neily, and a handful of civilian support staff. Its work went on for three years and has cost more than $8 million.
In the spring 2004, shortly after the six Toronto drug squad officers were charged with an assortment of criminal offences, Neily handed in his final report to then chief Fantino. In it, he pulled no punches and wrote that the task force had found evidence of a "crime spree" by "rogue officers."
He then went on to say "that the real victim, while initially portrayed to be drug dealers who may have lost cash, was indeed the justice system and the police service because by means of the courts, affidavits, search warrants and so on were being utilized as tools for the potential gain of the suspects," who were all police officers.
Neily recommend criminal charges against 12 Toronto police officers, not just the six who were charged: John Schertzer, Ned Maodus, Joe Miched, Raymond Pollard, Steven Correia and Richard Benoit.
The task force report also points to two additional teams of drug officers that were investigated but never charged.
At one point, Neily details a covert sting operation that was used to try to ensnare one of the drug team officers in an attempt to get him to cooperate with the task force. It failed but, according to Neily, the officer didn't hesitate to enter into what he thought was a money laundering scam. The officer involved was never charged with any offence along these lines and denies the allegation completely.
The task force also set out allegations from a police informant about another officer who was accused of selling seized guns back to criminals. Neily said the informant's information could not be corroborated and the officer involved denies the allegation and was never charged with that offence.
Throughout his report, Neily also says that much of the information pieced together by investigators is circumstantial and that many of those who say they were robbed would not be reliable witnesses even if they were willing to come forward at all.
To further its investigation, the task force hired a forensic accounting firm to analyze the bank accounts and spending habits of some of the officers under suspicion, including the Schertzers. John Schertzer's wife Joyce is also a Toronto police officer and has never been charged with any offence.
The accounting firm concluded that at least two of the officers who were eventually charged were spending above their observable means.
Undue delay
In his ruling to stay the drug squad case in January 2008, Justice Nordheimer was highly critical of what he called the "glacial" speed with which Crown prosecutors were bringing the case to trial and that the long delay violated the accused officers' charter rights.
As a result, he stayed the 30 corruption counts against the six men.
But CBC has learned the source of delays was far more complicated than first meets the eye.
In fact, even before the judge's surprise decision to throw out the case, the lead prosecutor had grown frustrated and, behind the scenes, was accusing the Toronto police force of failing to provide the necessary follow-up support to bring such a complex case to trial.
Milan Rupic wrote a series of letters to the Toronto police task force decrying the lack of officer help to follow up investigations and prepare evidence. According to two police sources who have read the letters, Rupic went so far as to threaten to abandon the prosecution unless the police increased their support.
In one letter obtained by CBC, dated March 2006, Rupic says the prosecution case is in "dire" circumstances for the purpose of proceeding to trial because at least four key members of the original investigating team were retiring and fill-in officers had not been secured.
At that point, he noted, the disclosure brief of the Crown's case, was well in excess of 200,000 pages.
