Give police chiefs this power
Ontario police chiefs should have the power to suspend bad police without pay. Period.
It costs provincial taxpayers millions of dollars each year to pay police officers accused of misconduct and even breaking the law.
In the most outrageous cases — and they are legion — this is not just a flagrant waste of public money, it’s a searing betrayal of public trust.
For years, police chiefs have called for revisions to Ontario’s Police Services Act to deal with this problem.
Now, thankfully, Ontario might have reached the tipping point for change.
More than 100 police boards in this province responded to a recent survey by the Ontario Association of Police Services Boards and when the results were released this week, every one of them agreed the law should change. Chiefs need the authority to suspend without pay officers charged with serious misbehaviour, they said.
In this community, Waterloo Regional Police Chief Bryan Larkin this week reiterated his support for the Ontario government to rewrite the law in this way.
Chief Larkin has as much reason as anyone to be urging reform. A former Waterloo Regional Police officer, Craig Markham, could be the poster boy for the campaign.
After receiving his full salary — estimated at $350,000 — while on suspension for three years, Markham sent a letter to the regional police department that bragged about his punishment as if it were an extended vacation.
His initial offence was serious and stemmed from a 2011 incident in which Markham gave confidential police records to suspected members of the Hells Angels. He was charged criminally with breach of trust, pleaded guilty and was given a conditional discharge in October 2012.
Despite being fired after a formal hearing, Markham appealed the decision and received his salary during a lengthy appeal process. After that appeal was dismissed, he was ordered to resign. He quit in February 2015. There are other cases that are just as infuriating. Ontario’s 12 largest police boards paid $16.9-million to officers facing disciplinary proceedings between 2005 and 2009. In 2012 alone, the payout reached $6.4-million. And in January 2016, no fewer than 50 officers with four of Ontario’s largest police departments were getting their paycheques while suspended for misconduct.
It’s not always wrong to pay a suspended police officer before that person has had a formal hearing or gone through the courts. The principle of being treated as innocent until proven guilty should generally apply to police as much as anyone else. And there are cases where officers suspended with pay are later cleared of all wrongdoing and return to work.
But it’s also possible for officers who have behaved badly or broken the law to drag out the disciplinary process to their financial benefit.
Ontario is the only province which requires police departments to maintain pay for all suspended officers. Only if the officer is sentenced to prison can chiefs revoke a suspended officer’s salary.
It’s time for this to change when the Ontario government updates the Police Services Act later this year.