Naked Mountie wins appeal

An RCMP officer who stripped naked during a birthday party and covered his genitals with a pot scrubber has won an appeal that sets aside the force’s conclusion his conduct was discreditable.

In a recent Federal Court decision, Judge Richard Southcott said the RCMP’s internal discipline adjudicators failed to explain how the officer’s conduct reflected poorly on the force or how it could be linked to his job. Such determinations are necessary steps in disciplinary actions, the judge said.

Southcott, however, denied the officer’s request to have his “unjustifiable” reprimand removed from his record, instead sending the case back to the RCMP for a new discipline hearing.

“I understand the applicant’s argument that there is considerable evidence in the record supporting a conclusion that the test for dishonourable conduct has not been met,” Southcott said. “However, I am not prepared to find that such a conclusion is inevitable.”

In 2016, Const. Daniel Laporte was a 13-year veteran of the RCMP assigned to a joint organized crime unit in Montreal. That summer, on Aug. 14, he attended a private birthday party for an RCMP colleague at a home in Chambly, a Montreal suburb. No one was in police uniform.

As the evening progressed, the court heard, some of Laporte’s friends joked about taking their clothes off “sooner or later” and “going to the spa.” Later, according to the Federal Court decision, Laporte “took off all his clothes in the kitchen and covered his genitals with a dishwashing brush.”

Laporte was nude for about five minutes. When he realized that the freezer had no more ice for drinks, he found a small towel, wrapped it around his waist, and went next door to his own home to find more ice. When he returned to the party, the court heard, he changed back into his clothes “and remained fully dressed for the rest of the evening.”

Months later, in February 2017, one RCMP partygoer told another member, who had not been at the party, what had transpired. That RCMP member shared the story with Insp. Christian Dubois, leader of the organized crime unit, who launched an administrative investigation.

In April, RCMP Insp. Sylvain Leclerc issued a memo as part of that investigation, arguing that the party behaviour should not trigger a full disciplinary probe.

“I am of the opinion that an investigation under the code of conduct is not necessary: It concerns a joke in bad taste between friends at a private party,” he wrote.