Criminally charged cop now focus of professional misconduct case

A London police officer LONDON who is under house arrest while facing string of charges for allegations involving ex-girlfriends is now the subject of a professional misconduct case.

Const. Steve Williams, 42, faces a combined 10 criminal charges including sexual assault, harassment and being unlawfully in a dwelling from two separate cases involving women he’d dated. Williams spent a week in the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre in November after being charged with breaching his release conditions for a third time. During a Tuesday conference call, it was revealed Williams now faces three professional misconduct charges under the Police Services Act, the law governing policing in Ontario and under which police forces hold disciplinary hearings into professional misconduct. The charges — neglect of duty and two counts of discreditable conduct — stem from a complaint to the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, a civilian oversight agency that handles public complaints of police conduct in Ontario.

The female complainant was on the conference call, as was Williams and his lawyer Bernard Cummins. Williams has been suspended from London police with pay — Ontario police chiefs can’t withhold salaries from suspended officers — since November 2017 after he was charged with sexual assault for an alleged off-duty incident involving an ex-girlfriend, who can’t be identified under a courtimposed publication ban. Three weeks after Williams was first charged, Waterloo Regional police charged him with two counts of criminal harassment, being unlawfully in a dwelling and making a harassing phone call. The complainant in the Kitchener-Waterloo case also can’t be identified under a publication ban. The three-year London police veteran has been ordered to live with his parents and is barred from leaving the house at any time except to sign in at the police station daily, to drop off his son at school or to go medical appointments.

The professional misconduct hearing was adjourned until March 18.