There’s no defence for officers’ conduct

The disgusting comments by two Toronto police officers mocking 29-year-old Francie Munoz, who was born with Down Syndrome, are indefensible.

Calling her “disfigured,” “a half person” and “artistic” which one of the officers said “is going to be my new code word for different,” was cruel.

It doesn’t matter that they were alone in their cruiser and thought their conversation, recorded on the vehicle’s dash cam, would never become public, as they ticketed Munoz’s mom for allegedly running a red light last November.

Munoz — an ambassador for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health who is featured in one of its poster campaigns, goes to school and has held down a full-time job — was simply a passenger in her mom’s car, along with her sister.

She did nothing to provoke the officers. Even if she had, their comments would still have been inexcusable.

Such police conduct undermines public trust.

It causes parents to think twice about whether they should tell their children to ask a police officer for help if they are lost or afraid.

It undermines years of well-intentioned efforts by the police to build positive relations with the public.

You have to commend the swift response of police Chief Mark Saunders.

Within hours of the story being reported Monday by the Toronto Sun, Saunders, who has an autistic child, visited the Munoz family at their home for more than an hour, offering an apology and a promise of a thorough internal investigation.

His visit lifted the spirits of the Munoz family, including Francie, who said Saunders “was very, very nice to me. He showed me a lot of respect.”

Toronto Mayor John Tory phoned the family to express his concern as well, saying the incident should never have happened.

Toronto Police Association president Mike McCormack said the two 22 division officers are “embarrassed and devastated” by their conduct, and “want to earn back the trust not only of that family (and) the community, but their peers whom they embarrassed.” Fair enough, but that will be a tall order. While apologies and contrition are a start, they must now be backed up with serious disciplinary action, to make it clear to the police and public that such police conduct is unacceptable.