Toronto's Finest Pants on Fire

This week has not been kind too Toronto cops and their credibility. Judges in two separate cases questioned their honesty one saw an officer acquitted of assault causing bodily harm and threatening charges and in the other charges including impaired driving, assault to resist arrest against a Toronto man were stayed. What these two case had in common was the comments of the respective judges. Both accused the officers testifying in these cases of playing fast and loose with the truth while under oath. In the former calling police testimony “inherently incredible” and in the latter “indifferent to the truth”.

 These cases also share something else in common  in each the SIU wasn't notified as the law requires and only found out about these serious assaults causing injury from court rulings.

As disturbing the notion of our cops behaving like lawless thugs and perjurers is there are further and perhaps more disturbing allegations of police misconduct in the Costain case. Costain's lawyer says that all through the trial police tried to bully and intimidate her and her client.

 “It was gruesome, the whole trial was just gruesome,” Shemesh said Thursday. “It was 11 days of lying, cheating police officers.”
Shemesh said officers showed up en masse at court, surrounded her and Costain in an elevator, followed her to her car after a hearing and even took cellphone pictures of her in the courthouse. When the camera incident was raised in court, it caused such an uproar it almost brought the case to a halt, she said.
The officer who took the picture was put on the witness stand and refused to show the judge his cellphone to prove he had not taken the picture. Shemesh said it so enraged the judge that he raised his voice with the officer before ordering him out of the courtroom, raising questions about whether the judge should recuse himself.

What the hell is it going to take before judges grow a set and start jailing these bastards for contempt at the very least. I mean c'mon refusing to show the judge your phone, attempting to intimidate the defence council, not to mention obvious perjury.

Sadly this is not new but a continuation of a long standing issue. What is new is the requirement for the crown to forward the judges comments to the chief, but if you are expecting Blair to take serious action against these officers may I remind you of the G20

When those charged with enforcing our laws are in effect above the law there can be no justice