Police across Canada are repeatedly violating citizen rights, Torstar investigation finds. More than 600 cases reveal that police are not often told when judges find they violated the Charter. And consequences for officers are rare.
Torstar, with the assistance of Western University’s law school, has identified more than 600 court rulings in the past decade where judges found that officers committed serious Charter violations. These rulings came down at a rate of two per week from 2017 to present.
The Toronto Police Service said it was unaware of 94 cases where judges found officers committed serious Charter breaches until Torstar told the force about the rulings. That is more than two-thirds of the cases the reporters identified where judges found Toronto cops violated the Charter.is intended to protect everyone, including young black males driving a fancy car in a bad part of town.breaches that were inexcusable in the circumstances.
Ottawa police did not respond to questions about Const. Gutierrez’s repeated Charter violations or whether the force was aware of the outcome in the 2020 drug case. Gutierrez also did not respond. A few weeks after Gutierrez took the stand, the prosecutor told the judge he had reviewed the officer’s testimony and acknowledged Gutierrez’s search of the vehicle, where the drugs were found, was illegal. He asked the court to toss the case.
“I fundamentally support a system where police leaders are informed,” Larkin said. “We want to instill trust and confidence. We also want to put forth very strong criminal cases … We don’t want evidence excluded. We don’t want charges acquitted, because we have a responsibility to the victim. We have a responsibility to the community.”
Charter breaches have a corrosive effect, particularly in Black and Indigenous communities where systemic racism has led to overrepresentation in the criminal justice system.
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