No charges against officer who breached pursuit rules

A city police officer did nothing that merits criminal charges after the driver of a stolen vehicle he pulled over for speeding then raced off and crashed last year, leaving a 16-year-old passenger injured, the province’s civilian police watchdog said Friday.

Special Investigations Unit director Tony Loparco said that the driver was to blame for the injuries, but the unidentified officer breached provincial regulations and OPS policy to “immediately notify and continually update” dispatchers when initiating a pursuit.

Instead, his “radio was silent” and he didn’t contact dispatch until he was in a foot pursuit of another youth who escaped the wrecked car.

“Since the (subject officer) had the opportunity to access his incar computer terminal during the pursuit, I can only assume that he would have been equally capable of contacting the dispatcher and putting the decision of whether or not to continue a vehicular pursuit into the hands of a communications supervisor” as is required, Loparco wrote.

Those concerns will be brought to the attention of the city’s chief and “hopefully, will be appropriately dealt with,” Loparco said.

Two officers in separate cruisers were running radar on Bank Street south of Hunt Club Road just after 6 p.m. on Oct. 11, 2017.

While one officer was ticketing a motorist, the second officer who became the subject of the investigation was using a hand-held laser gun to monitor Bank Street traffic when he spotted a black Honda heading northwest at high speed.

The officer got into his car and gave pursuit, but the vehicle turned right onto Albion Road. The officer caught up and the Honda pulled over on the south side of the Hunt Club Road intersection.

As the officer approached on foot, the Honda again sped off heading east onto Hunt Club Road.

It would reach speeds of up to 187 km/h in the seconds before it mounted a curb, downed a traffic pole at the Pike Street intersection, rolled onto its roof, sliced through a wooden fence and landed in a resident’s front yard.

The police officers arrived about 30 seconds later as the driver and a second passenger fled the scene. They were arrested soon after as the injured youth was extricated from the vehicle and rushed to the hospital.