Call to pull drug bust stories sparks questions
No obvious legal reason, says civil liberties lawyer
LONDON, ONT. • A police request for the media to remove stories from their websites about a drug bust that led to charges against an Ontario MP’S daughter raises troubling questions, says a civil liberties lawyer.
Kyle Moir, 31, and Hannah Williamson, 22, face a combined 76 charges after police in St. Thomas, Ont., seized four guns with their serial numbers removed, $35,000 in drugs including fentanyl, $24,000 in cash and other weapons during the raid on an apartment on Thursday.
St. Thomas police detailed the charges in a media release published online Friday morning.
Two hours later, Conservative MP Karen Vecchio released a statement saying a family member was arrested during the raid and asked for privacy.
Williamson, whose connection to Vecchio police did not describe in the news release, is the daughter of the MP for Elgin-middlesex-london, The London Free Press confirmed.
Citing a court-imposed publication ban, police emailed media outlets late Friday afternoon asking them to “remove any information posted to your sites and refrain from publishing any further information in relation to this case.”
But court documents reviewed by The Free Press show the only publication ban in place is a routine order under a section of the Criminal Code that bans reporting of evidence and other information heard during a bail hearing for an accused person.
That restriction doesn’t apply to the names of accused persons or the charges they face.
“It’s incumbent on participants of the justice system, including police, to make sure that when they are communicating with the press or the public about what is fair game for publication and what isn’t, that they are being true to the law,” said Abby Deshman, director of the criminal justice program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
“The fact that this was a case that was getting attention … it certainly does raise questions about why police made this decision, what prompted them to make this request.
“Police do press releases all the time. One must assume that they’re very familiar with publication bans. … So I think there are legitimate questions here about why police did this, whether they were responding to legitimate legal concerns, in which case I don’t know what those are.”
A St. Thomas police spokesperson referred inquiries about the ban to court officials. A request to interview Chief Chris Herridge, who was quoted in the original police news release, went unanswered Monday.
Vecchio put out a second release an hour after police sent the email to the media, saying neither she nor her family requested a publication ban.
A staffer at Vecchio’s Ottawa office declined an interview request, saying the MP had nothing further to add and directing a reporter to the statements released Friday.
St. Thomas lawyer Lisa Gunn, representing Moir, said she requested the publication ban, as she does in all bail hearings.
“Only the prosecutor or the accused have the right to make the application. Nobody else,” Gunn said in a statement.
“The ban protects the right of an accused to a fair hearing and a fair trial. This mandatory ban reflects the fundamental principle of our justice system which is that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty.
“Accusations have been made in social media today that one of our public officials has abused their authority by making this ban happen. No request was made or could have been made by that person for the publication ban.”
Plywood covered the door of the second-floor unit of the apartment that police raided Thursday.
A resident at the building, located on the city’s main street above the Bargain King, said multiple police officers entered the building from a rear entrance with a battering ram around noon.
A man and a woman were taken away in handcuffs, said the resident, who did not want to be identified.
The seized drugs included 283 grams of fentanyl, crystal meth, purple fentanyl, cocaine, crack cocaine and hydromorphone tablets, police said.
Moir and Williamson face dozens of drug- and weapons-related charges including production of a controlled substance, drug possession for the purpose of trafficking, tampering with a serial number on a firearm, possession of a restricted firearm and breaching probation.
Several Southwestern Ontario media outlets appeared to have complied with the police request to remove the story from their websites Friday. Police also deleted the original news release from their website.
The Free Press published a story on advice from its lawyer.
“If you’re working in a media outlet that’s smaller and you don’t have access to legal counsel, it has an effect,” Deshman said of the police request citing the publication ban.
“Journalists have been prosecuted before for violating publication bans. These are serious notifications that police would send out that shouldn’t be taken lightly.”