Jury hears final arguments in Hamilton police officer’s corruption case
Defence argues the officer is the victim of a drug dealer’s fabricated story
TORONTO — A jury hearing closing arguments Wednesday was presented with two starkly different portraits of a Hamilton Police Service officer facing corruption charges.
Defence lawyer Greg Lafontaine urged jurors to acquit Craig Ruthowsky, calling him a hardworking, crime-busting cop who has been “thrown under the bus” by a manipulative cocaine dealer who made up a bogus pay-for-protection scheme to avoid being outed as his confidential informant.
Lafontaine cited examples of what he called the drug dealer’s “fantastical evidence” during his lengthy time in the witness box, such as when he suggested Ruthowsky volunteered to import drugs from Jamaica or was planning a home invasion.
“Give him credit for his imagination,” he said of the dealer, whose identity is covered under a publication ban.
The dealer’s assertion that Ruthowsky called him to warn him that the RCMP were bugging his phone was “pure nonsense,” Lafontaine added, because “if his phone is being tapped, then the Mounties are listening to my client tell him that.”
If anything, Ruthowsky, 44, should be “commended” for his actions, not be on trial for bribery, obstruct justice, breach of trust, trafficking and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence, Lafontaine said.
The defence lawyer conceded his client had dodged taxes by not declaring all of the income he was earning from his swimming pool business in 2011 — a decision he “probably regrets ... because he has to explain things here.”
But, he said, there is no evidence of “great gobs of cash” rolling in, referring to the $20,000 a month the dealer alleges he paid Ruthowsky for protection.
At the end of his argument, Lafontaine summarized an intercepted call he played during
the trial of the drug dealer and another man snickering about Ruthowsky’s suspension from the force in 2013. (He remains suspended with pay.)
“They’re probably laughing now, as this is going on,” Lafontaine said. “Don’t let them have the last laugh.”
Prosecutor John Pollard followed Lafontaine to the podium because the defence called evidence during the trial.
He told the jury that Ruthowsky’s conduct was “an attack on the rule of law ... one in which he decided who would be policed and who would be allowed to continue to offend, and the entirety of it was for profit.”
The officer’s “churning, endless informant program created a perfect circumstance for corruption. There were no notes, no reports, no registration,” Pollard continued. Because he was so effective getting drugs and guns off the street, “no one above him (was) asking why, or checking on his work, or ensuring that anything was verified and real.”
So in 2011, “when money becomes a bit of a problem for the Ruthowsky family,” the officer jumped at the dealer’s offer to accept bribe money so he could run his drug operation without police interference, Pollard said.
And as disreputable as he may be, the cocaine trafficker “presented as a compelling, truthful witness” whose narrative “makes sense,” he said.
Pollard asked the jury to find Ruthowsky guilty on all five counts in order to hold him to account “and deny him the exceptional position before the law he created for himself.”
Superior Court Justice Robert Clark is scheduled to deliver his instructions to jurors Monday before they retire to deliberate.