Dramatic year for police board

Police board under provincial supervisor for first six months of 2017

Tension between the city and the police force continued to make headlines in 2016.

Here’s a recap of key developments this year:

City Lawsuit Against Chief and Deputy Chief of Police

Early in January, the city launched a lawsuit against the police chief and deputy chief after the two officers fought to win a year’s salary apiece – even though they didn’t lose their jobs.

The city wanted to sue city police Chief Murray Rodd and Deputy Chief Tim Farquharson for nearly $460,000. That was the money the officers said they were entitled to, under their contracts.

There’s a clause in the two top officers’ contracts that says they get a year’s compensation pay apiece if the police force dissolves, even if they keep their jobs.

That’s exactly what happened in 2015: Peterborough-Lakefield Community Police folded to form Peterborough Police (a city-only service, with the village of Lakefield excluded as a part-owner of the force but still serviced under contract with Selwyn Township).

In court documents, the city’s lawyers argued that Rodd and Farquharson took steps to conceal those clauses from the city.

But the officers’ lawyers wrote in a statement of defense that this wasn’t true: They were owed money, and never tried to hide it.

The officers’ lawyers also argued that city appointees to the police board – particularly Mayor Daryl Bennett – had long behaved in “vexatious” and “threatening ” manner toward Rodd and Farquharson.

It would have been an interesting court case, had it ever come before a judge.

Instead, the two sides settled their differences with a mediator in mid-October. Nobody involved would say whether Rodd and Farquharson got any compensation pay.

OCPC Drops Findings Against Mayor

In December, Mayor Daryl Bennett announced that he was free to sit on the police board again because his four-year battle with the Ontario Civilian Police Commission (OCPC) was settled.

After a lengthy hearing in 2014, the OCPC found Bennett guilty of 11 allegations of misconduct when he was last on the police board. The penalty: Bennett was banned from ever sitting on the police board again.

But when the mayor tried to appeal the OCPC’s ruling in divisional court, the commission dropped 10 of its 11 findings.

The mayor hasn’t returned to the board yet, and it’s not clear whether he will.

The one finding against Bennett that stuck was that he made disrespectful comments about Rodd and the force during a bitter dispute over money in 2011. (He called Rodd unprofessional, for instance, and said it was embarrassing the police chief was on the sunshine list.)

But Bennett won’t apologize for those remarks – he said he stands by them.

OCPC Declares Police Board Dysfunctional

The day after the OCPC dropped its findings against the mayor, it issued orders to place the police services board under the supervision of an administrator.

The OCPC said the board was so dysfunctional that it constituted an emergency; an administrator would have to step in immediately.

Board chairman Bob Hall said he could see no emergency: The board had settled the compensation dispute with Rodd and Farquharson. How could the board be dysfunctional if it had settled this significant issue?

Yet the OCPC still appointed Mark Sandler, a top criminal defence lawyer from Toronto who was born and raised in Peterborough, to oversee all meetings until July 1, 2017.

Sandler attended his first board meeting in late December. He told the board he intended to work collaboratively with them to settle any problems.

It was a decidedly more friendly approach than the OCPC’s orders, which stated that the board was in complete disarray.