Former constable sentenced to house arrest for assault
Michael LaCombe avoiding jail time; judge says the 54-year-old has learned his lesson
The woman sexually assaulted twice by now disgraced former Hamilton police officer Michael LaCombe lives in perpetual fear of seeing him again.
Her life, according to the judge who sentenced LaCombe, is one of being “virtually in a state of hiding.”
However, LaCombe — convicted in October of two counts of sexual assault — will not see the inside of a jail cell.
Last week, Justice Cameron Watson made good on the promise he made to LaCombe at his sentencing hearing in April that the former cop would not go to “real jail.” Instead, he handed LaCombe a 12month conditional sentence. He will spend the first six months under house arrest and the last six with a curfew. In either case, he can leave the province if he gets leave from the courts to do so.
Once his sentence is served, LaCombe faces 12 months of probation.
Although LaCombe pleaded not guilty, and the court heard he lied to investigators about the assaults, Watson said the 54-year-old learned his lesson over the course of the public trial.
“As a person he should have known better, as a man he should have known better, as a police officer he should have known better. He did not then, but he does now,” Watson wrote in his decision.
And while LaCombe will have to give a blood sample for the national DNA databank as required by law, Watson declined to include his name in the national sex offender
registry. He said there is “virtually no likelihood that Michael LaCombe will be before the court again for any offence,” and “that the impact of the order on Michael LaCombe including his privacy and or liberty, would be grossly disproportionate to the public interest.”
Watson handed down his sentence on May 6, but took the unusual step of not reading the decision into the public record during the hearing in a St. Catharines courtroom.
He asked LaCombe if he understood the sentence as he wrote it, and then asked defence lawyer Dean Paquette and assistant Crown attorney Ian Bulmer if they wanted the decision read aloud. Both men said no.
Watson, who had to edit a single word in the document before its public release, did not make the decision available to The Spectator until Friday, five days after the hearing.
LaCombe’s victim — now also a police officer whose identity is protected under a court-ordered publication ban — came forward with allegations of sexual assault 15 years after the incidents happened. She reported the incidents to the Special Investigations Unit, Ontario’s police watchdog, in 2021. LaCombe was arrested shortly afterward and was suspended with pay. He retired from the Hamilton Police Service on April 15, four days before he would have faced a police disciplinary tribunal.
LaCombe, twice named Officer of the Month and a recipient of the Chief’s Pride Award for Community Service, first met the victim when she was a 13year-old Air Cadet and he was her 31-year-old instructor.
When she became an adult, LaCombe and his wife socialized with her. When she wanted to become a police officer, he said he would help.
The first sexual assault was in 2009, when he invited her on a ride-along in his police cruiser.
The second sexual assault, a few weeks later, was at a hotel.
During the trial, LaCombe admitted to lying to the SIU, which probes allegations of death, serious injury and sexual assault involving police officers, 17 times while under oath, a criminal offence.
While Watson says in his written decision that LaCombe’s conduct devastated the life of his victim, he rejected Bulmer’s portrayal of it as a predatory breach of trust, designed to manipulate the woman into a position where LaCombe could have sex with her.
While the victim trusted LaCombe because of their past relationship, Watson found the police officer had no direct authority over her, and so his actions were not a breach of trust in the legal sense.
Instead, Watson accepted the defence’s claim that LaCombe’s behaviour was the result of a failed attempt to cheat on his wife with the victim.
“I find (LaCombe) has led an exemplary life of public service, he has no prior record, this offence involved his ham-fisted attempt to engage in an extra marital affair with a friend, albeit with an extremely serious impact on (her),” Watson wrote.
Bulmer was seeking jail time for LaCombe, two years less a day, while Paquette recommended a conditional sentence of less than a year.
In his decision, Watson repeatedly pointed out how LaCombe suffered from the public exposure of the trial, was depressed and “has had a spectacular and cataclysmic fall from grace,” including losing his job and dealing a “near fatal blow” to his marriage.
“I find, as I stated, that Michael LaCombe had been specifically deterred given what has occurred in this case and there is no need to place him in real (jail),” Watson wrote. “I also find there is little to no likelihood that Michael LaCombe will reoffend. A conditional sentence in his case can satisfy the need for denunciation and deterrence.”
In addition to having to stay at home and give a DNA sample, LaCombe is forbidden from having any weapons or going anywhere near the victim, her workplace or residence.
At LaCombe’s sentencing hearing in April, Watson surprised the court by telling a sobbing LaCombe that he would not send the former cop to jail.
He said he gave LaCombe the advanced warning out of compassion for him and in the hopes it would relieve some of LaCombe’s “immense emotional strain.”
“I have no doubt that this has destroyed his life,” Watson said at the time. “At least I can give him some level of closure. I am sure the worry of whether you were going to go to real jail, as a former police officer, would be wearing on you.”