When police get suspended, and then still get paid
Among the questions being asked about the case of Const. Nermin Mesic — beyond “this guy is a cop?” — is the obvious followup: did the Ottawa Police Service really pay him not to work for more than four years?
Yes, actually, and all done perfectly in line with the rules. It is neither a greedy-union provision or a mistake by the chief of police, it’s the law, as prescribed in the Police Services Act. And so, setting aside Mesic’s suspension pay of roughly 400 large, to Ontario legislators the issue falls.
The practice boils to the surface every so often, strikingly in 2015 when a departing officer with the Waterloo regional force wrote a thank-you note for receiving suspension pay for three years, time he used to travel, take courses and “play lots of golf.”
The chief was so galled, he made the email public.
There are worse examples. A Toronto police officer earned more than $1 million while on suspension for 12 years in a notorious internal drug case; a Niagara police officer was on full pay for five years, from the time of his arrest until convicted of the murder of his mistress. (Blood on his hands, public money in his pocket, have we gone mad?)
Police leaders and politicians have tried to change the law, but efforts have sputtered.
The Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, in a 2014 resolution, called on Queen’s Park to amend the act to allow chiefs to suspend without pay in cases serious enough to warrant eventual dismissal. (This raises the secondary matter of “dismissal,” which has its own legal process, appeal mechanism and can take an exceedingly long time.)
The Liberal government tried to deal with the issue. In 2017, it introduced sweeping reforms in the police field, including changes to how suspensions with pay were handled.
The bill passed, but the Ford government (elected June 2018) put the changes on hold, saying it was part of the most “antipolice” legislation action ever undertaken.
Nobody seems very keen to talk about how big a problem this is.
Ottawa police have yet to respond to a request about how many officers are on paid suspension, though we know of a handful. There were nine fresh suspensions in 2020 alone, though the total number (including previous years) is in flux because reinstatements regularly occur.
Over time, agencies have tried to paint a broader picture. In 2012, a chiefs association survey of police forces in Ontario found there were 129 officers suspended at some point in that calendar year.
In 2015, the National Post reached out to 53 police services in Ontario, asking for numbers and details about suspended officers. It tabulated more than 80 suspensions from the responding forces.
Mesic’s eye-popping case has raised the issue again.
After a four-and-a-half-year suspension, he pleaded guilty to two counts of discreditable conduct this week.
According to agreed facts, he was off duty when he met a tenant about unpaid rent and issued a series of lurid threats, including killing the man and selling his child.
If not for a secret recording, it would be hard to believe a sworn police officer could treat a civilian this way.
That he still has his badge says much about what kind of standards we hold officers to. (Charged criminally, he received an absolute discharge.)
The spate of suspensions this year has not escaped the attention of Coun. Diane Deans, who is just returning to her duties as chair of the police services board.
“I also share the community’s concern with respect to this policy,” she said in an email reply.
“It is one that the Board has actively been discussing and will be a priority issue for me upon my return to work this September. However, in order for meaningful change to occur, the province must also be engaged in these discussions as this policy is outside of the Board’s authority to change.”
The suspension-with-pay policy has not been changed in 30 years, and Ontario is said to be one of the last jurisdictions in Canada that has such an ironclad rule.
Some of it makes sense: police officers are more vulnerable to complaints because the work is filled with conflict; the Police Act forbids taking on substitute employment (without approval); and the process (criminal or internal, or both) takes so long to complete that an officer without pay would “starve out” before a resolution.
There is, importantly, the presumption of innocence against accusation. Fine.
But the bottom line, really: if police officers do terrible things on or off duty, they shouldn’t expect to sit at home and collect $100,000 a year while others take their sweet time to figure it all out.
Who, without a uniform, gets away with that?
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-291-6265 or email kegan@ postmedia.com
Twitter.com/ kellyegancolumn
For meaningful change to occur, the province must also be engaged in these discussions DIANE DEANS