Officer admits he didn’t see drugs during arrest

A Toronto officer has admitted he never saw drugs he claimed were in “plain view” inside a man’s car and then testified inaccurately at the preliminary hearing in the case, a police tribunal heard Tuesday.

The behaviour was part of a pattern of repeated misconduct where Const. Richard White, a cop with 18 years on the job, left “large gaps” in his notes on at least 20 occasions between April and July 2017, potentially putting criminal cases at risk, a police prosecutor told a tribunal Tuesday.

“This is not the first time this has happened, nor a one-off,” prosecutor Matthew Capotosto said. “These are 20 different cases that could be called into jeopardy by this officer’s misconduct.”

White, 48, was one of two officers charged in October 2019 with theft, perjury and obstruction of justice stemming from a May 23, 2017, arrest. The charges were later withdrawn by prosecutors in 2023; White has been suspended with pay for the nearly five years since his arrest.

White’s misconduct case stems from the same incident, which resulted in drug and gun offences being dropped against the accused after the preliminary hearing.

In his guilty plea, White stopped short of saying he’d purposely provided false information. According to an agreed statement of facts filed with the tribunal on Tuesday, White wrongly claimed in his notes that he observed drugs in “plain view” in the accused man’s vehicle, and that he omitted to record a search done of the car. Later, at the man’s February 2018 preliminary hearing, White “did not accurately testify about the circumstances of the arrest,” the document says.

Joanne Mulcahy, White’s lawyer, said the incident took place while he was part of a neighbourhood enforcement unit focusing on taking guns and drugs off the streets. He was busy, going from “search to search, arrest to arrest, back to back and he got overwhelmed,” she said.

“He got way behind in his notes, and it’s clear he mixed up occurrences, including a related arrest involving someone with a similar name,” she said, noting this does not justify the misconduct but provides context.

She also said her client had failed to prepare for court, which showed in his “inaccuracies and mixing up things,” she said, adding that her client has agreed to take further training on note-taking.

Given a chance to speak, White stood and addressed the tribunal, saying he was “looking forward to getting this behind me and back on the road to serve the city again.”

Capotosto said the case was serious enough to warrant one of the highest penalties short of dismissal, asking the hearing officer, Insp. Suzanne Redman, for a two-year demotion in a joint submission with Mulcahy.

Mulcahy called the misconduct out of character, noting White had earned multiple commendations during his years on the force.

Capotosto said White’s career was not “unblemished”; he was previously found guilty of professional misconduct for misusing police databases.

Toronto lawyer Kim Schofield, who represented the man who was arrested by White, said she and her client were the ones who first brought concerns about police forward to the professional standards unit.

Reached Tuesday, Schofield called the proposed penalty of the demotion “insufficient,” saying the broader problems raised by the case remain unresolved.

Redman reserved her decision on penalty to a future date.