Police should try to make flawed bust right
The scourge of fentanyl has hit the nation’s capital with devastating consequences, and kudos to Ottawa police for going into overdrive to bring to justice the criminals who traffic in this deadly drug. But there is no excuse for what they did to Royston Christie after a drug raid at his Caldwell Avenue home.
And it is a shame that months later, nobody has raised a finger to support a man wrongly accused of dealing drugs and then left homeless to boot. Ottawa police have sent a letter to the Citizen (see below, left) giving their take on the arrest, but it still doesn’t answer the fundamental question about Christie’s treatment.
According to a Citizen report by Gary Dimmock, police raided Christie’s public housing apartment in April after they received a complaint that fentanyl was being sold there. The police apparently discovered 15 grams of a powdered substance they believed was fentanyl in a linen closet, and following standard practice, charged Christie with various drug offences. He was put in jail, pending trial.
But there wasn’t the usual caution police often exercise in handling suspected cases of wrongdoing. The police essentially branded Christie a fentanyl dealer, and, following their lead, news organizations blared his name around the country, tarring him as an alleged drug trafficker. After a week in jail Christie got bail, but his nightmare was not over.
Days later, he was evicted from his public housing unit for selling fentanyl. Crucially, a police officer testified at the eviction hearing that 15 grams of fentanyl had been seized from Christie’s home, even though lab results had not confirmed that the powdered substance was indeed the opioid. In fact it wasn’t. When
All the people who heard I deal drugs, how am I going to change that?
the lab results came in, they showed Christie was innocent. What the police thought was fentanyl, appeared to be face powder his girlfriend got from the food bank.
Federal prosecutors withdrew the charges but the damage was done. Christie was now homeless, and a branded fentanyl dealer. “I am 61 and basically homeless because of the police. All the people who heard I deal drugs, how am I going to change that? How am I going to get my name back?” he told the Citizen. And the worse of it? No one from the police or the city has bothered to call and say anything. “I lost everything, and they are just ignoring me. No one has said a word to me,” says Christie, who is now staying with a friend.
The letter to the Citizen, signed by Supt. Chris Renwick, defends the police, explaining that the raid yielded a number of drug-related substances that left no doubt in officers’ minds that the apartment was a site of “trafficking activity.” And given the seriousness of the fentanyl crisis in the city, “it’s my belief that our officers responded appropriately,” he writes.
No one is questioning the police response. The opioid is destroying the lives of young people in the city and around the country, and most people would appreciate the desire to get a suspected drug dealer off the streets. The problem is the way they treated Christie after, and that remains indefensible.
The police, no matter how well-meaning, cannot wrongly accuse a man of a crime, give false evidence that seals his eviction, then just shrug it off. How’s that right? What’s wrong with calling him to apologize and helping him back on his feet? If this happened to anyone who wasn’t disadvantaged and underprivileged, there would be howls of outrage and protest from every corner.
The real mark of a civil society is its capacity to stand up for people, no matter their station in life. Royston Christie has been wronged, and someone — the police chief, the chair of the police services board, the mayor — should speak out and make amends.
We keep hearing that relations between the minority community and the police are fraught, but how can there be any confidence between them when a man’s rights can be so abused and the authorities behave as if it doesn’t matter? Mohammed Adam is an Ottawa writer.