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Twisted
| Spitting | Fantino
| Toronto Police |
Marc Beausoleil
- Teen returning to class:
Girl was expelled last year after arrest in brawl
- But charges stayed
due to `sloppy' police work
LOUISE BROWN, EDUCATION
REPORTER, Toronto Star, Jan. 8, 2004
After being expelled from school
for almost a year over aggravated assault and weapons charges
a judge has since thrown out, a Toronto teen will be allowed
to return to class in time for second semester next month.
The 17-year-old has been attending
a small strict-discipline program since being expelled last February
for her part in an all-girl brawl outside Oakwood Collegiate
Institute in which two students were injured.
While a judge stayed the charges,
which wrongly labelled her the ringleader, the school had no
choice but to expel the student under Ontario's new zero-tolerance
policy because she wielded a metal pipe during the fray, said
Sheila Ward, who chairs the Toronto District School Board.
"What killed her was that
pipe, because under the Safe Schools Act, a principal is compelled
to expel any student that causes injury with a weapon, whether
it's a gun or an ashtray," Ward said yesterday.
The girl, who cannot be identified
under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, had never been in trouble
before, but she was denied bail and spent two weeks in jail because
of what the judge called "sloppy" and "misleading"
police work.
In an interview yesterday,
her mother said reading books from the jail book cart kept the
teen from "losing it" during the time she shared a
cell with a prisoner who suffered from seizures, under frequent
"lockdown" at the Vanier Centre for Women.
The girl, a strong B student,
was expelled indefinitely from any public school in Ontario for
violating the Safe Schools Act. It requires a principal to expel
a student who commits an assault with a weapon that causes injury
requiring medical attention.
The teen enrolled in a new
alternative program for expelled students run by Queen's Park.
While there, she earned nine credits, completed mandatory counselling
and now qualifies to return to a public high school for the rest
of Grade 11, Ward said.
Trustee Patrick Rutledge yesterday
called on the Toronto Police Services Board to set aside a seat
for a school trustee as a way of improving understanding between
schools and police.
"At least five or six
times every day there are interactions between the police and
schools, but often the police don't understand we operate under
different procedures than they do."
But Alan Heisey, the new chair
of the police services board, said reserving a seat for a trustee
could be tricky, even though he has called for the board to be
expanded by two seats.
"It's an interesting idea,
but there are a large number of stakeholders who could make claims
for a seat on the board - members of the aboriginal community,
for example, or the African Canadian community," he said.
Student agreed to be
expelled
Would have lost classes otherwise: Lawyer critical of Ontario
policy
LOUISE BROWN, Toronto Star
EDUCATION REPORTER, January 7, 2004
In what seems like an academic
Catch-22, a Toronto teen accused of assault last year agreed
to be expelled so she could continue her studies rather than
fight the expulsion but lose access to classes, her lawyer says.
The girl, whose charges were
thrown out of court last month because of "sloppy"
police work, spent the last four months of Grade 10 and the first
four months of Grade 11 in a small, strict program for expelled
students away from her neighbourhood school for no reason, lawyer
Paula Rochman said.
Add to that the two harrowing
weeks the girl spent in jail awaiting bail, and the whole experience
has changed the young woman's life, she said in an interview
yesterday.
"I couldn't believe it
- she had to agree to being expelled in order to continue her
studies, which she really wants to do and go on to university,"
said Rochman, who describes the teen as a "wonderful student"
who had not been in trouble before being involved in a brawl
outside Oakwood Collegiate Institute last February in which two
students were injured.
In a ruling Dec. 22, Madam
Justice Sheila Ray of the Ontario Court of Justice stayed aggravated
assault and weapons charges against the student, who is now 17,
citing "misleading" and "embellished" accounts
by the police officer investigating the incident.
Toronto police Chief Julian
Fantino has ordered an investigation into the case, and the Toronto
District School Board is expected to announce today whether the
student will be readmitted to a regular public school to finish
her schooling and have the expulsion wiped from her school record.
Under Ontario's Safe Schools
Act, students who have been expelled from public school may carry
on studying at a special "strict-discipline" school
paid for by Queen's Park in the hopes of returning to the regular
system. If they oppose the expulsion, however, their academic
status is placed in limbo and they're not eligible for the special
program.
Rochman's client passed Grade
10 last year in the program, called the Strict Discipline Demonstration
Project, which she described as essentially a supervised correspondence
course above a downtown restaurant.
The program, in its third year
as a province-run pilot project, is meant to help expelled students
avoid a one-way ticket to a dead end, said Bruce Cameron, central
co-ordinating principal of school services for the Toronto public
board.
- Cameron would not comment
on this case but said "if there was a clear sense there
had been a miscarriage along the line, there would certainly
be a willingness to take measures to try and deal with that."
-
-
- Fantino orders probe
of officer in the jailing of girl
- Student, now 17, endured
expulsion and two-week detention in Vanier
By CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD,
Globe and Mail, Jan. 6, 2004
Toronto Police Chief Julian
Fantino has ordered an investigation into the conduct of an officer
whose admittedly "lousy" investigation led to a teenage
girl wrongly spending two weeks in jail.
And Patrick Rutledge, a trustee
with the Toronto District School Board, which expelled the teenager
solely on the strength of the officer's allegations against her,
has asked the board to "act quickly" in reviewing her
expulsion.
The moves follow a story by
The Globe and Mail last week which detailed the stinging decision
of an Ontario Court judge who concluded the officer, Detective-Constable
Marc Beausoleil, had both bungled the original investigation
of the incident and then misled the court.
Just before Christmas, Madam
Justice Sheila Ray stayed the charges against the girl, and was
sharply critical of Detective-Constable Beausoleil for his "cavalier
attitude toward the liberty" of the girl, as well as for
the "serious injustice" which took place because of
his shoddy investigation.
The girl, who turned 17 last
Friday and cannot be identified under the provisions of the Youth
Criminal Justice Act, was one of five teenagers arrested after
a fight near her west-end high school.
It occurred last Feb. 4. In
his synopsis, Detective-Constable Beausoleil inaccurately portrayed
the girl as the instigator of the fight -- one of 13 significant
errors he admitted the 10-paragraph-long document contained.
As a result, she was charged
with two counts of aggravated assault and two weapons-related
offences.
But where three girls were
released at the police station and a fourth held overnight pending
a bail hearing, the girl in question was kept in custody -- because
of Detective-Constable Beausoleil's misleading synopsis -- for
13 nights until her lawyer, Paula Rochman, persuaded another
judge to release her.
She was held in the youth wing
of the Vanier Centre for Women in Brampton, was strip-searched
before and after every court appearance, and was so distressed
by the experience that Ms. Rochman and a guidance counsellor
at her school were worried she might not survive her incarceration.
The girl had never been in
trouble with the law and comes from a family with a mother that
Judge Ray described as "remarkable." The teenager,
an oldest child, was a responsible caregiver to her siblings,
the court found.
Though she was also a good
and responsible student -- one of those "who always shone,"
according to the guidance counsellor -- the school board invoked
its zero-tolerance "safe school policy" and immediately
expelled her.
She has spent the past school
year at a tough-discipline school, where the emphasis is on prompt
attendance and where students take their lessons by correspondence.
The girl who had been held
overnight was arrested while her father was walking her to school
one morning, The Globe has learned, by Detective-Constable Beausoleil
and another officer, both of them in plainclothes. Her father,
not believing the two were police officers, tried to protect
his daughter, and was later criminally charged with assaulting
police.
The girl was later acquitted
of one charge, and the others had been withdrawn.
Yesterday, Ms. Rochman wrote
to both Chief Fantino and Sheila Ward, chair of the school board,
demanding an investigation and that her young client be immediately
allowed to return to a regular school and any mention of the
expulsion erased from her school records.
But even before Ms. Rochman
sent her letter, Chief Fantino told The Globe yesterday morning
that, "On basis of the information provided to me, I've
directed Internal Affairs to carry out an . . . investigation."
Mr. Rutledge, the trustee, also wrote the board before Ms. Rochman
sent her letter to Ms. Ward.
The lawyer is concerned not
only with her client's situation, but also with the policy that
sees students who are merely accused subject to such "drastic
punishment." Ms. Rochman said that though the girl protested
her innocence throughout, and denied the allegations, the board
policy is such that a student who asserts innocence is out of
school pending a hearing, which could take months.
"What kind of fairness
is that?" Ms. Rochman asked. "And what kind of fairness
has been done in this case when the very same information relied
on to expel [the girl] comes from an officer who misled a court?"
Ironically, Ms. Rochman noted
in her letter, the girl's mother is an experienced teacher with
the Toronto board. "I am sure no one appreciates more than
her the importance of a safe school environment for our children.
But something went fundamentally wrong here."
The board, she said, has "an
obligation to review what happened and to ensure it never happens
again."
cblatchford@globeandmail.ca
- Independent police probe
urged
- 16-year-old girl
detained on officer's 'misleading' account
- Lawyer says investigation
should consider perjury charge
TRACEY TYLER , LEGAL AFFAIRS
REPORTER , Toronto Star, January 6, 2004
A lawyer has called for an
outside police investigation into the case of a 16-year-old girl
who was denied bail and jailed for two weeks after a Toronto
officer gave a court a misleading account of a fight.
Toronto criminal lawyer Paula
Rochman is asking Chief Julian Fantino to have an independent
police force investigate whether the officer involved should
be charged with perjury or obstructing justice.
In a letter sent to the chief
yesterday, Rochman also asked that the Toronto Police Service's
professional standards unit look into the matter and that the
officer's immediate supervisor be informed of the facts so he
can take appropriate action.
Constable Mike Hayles, a Toronto
police spokesperson, said yesterday that Fantino had already
asked the professional standards unit to look into the case to
see how accurately a court assessed the situation in a recent
decision.
In a ruling on Dec. 22, Madam
Justice Sheila Ray of the Ontario Court of Justice stayed aggravated
assault and weapons charges against the teen, finding that her
Charter rights were violated when she was detained on the basis
of a "misleading" and "embellished" account
of the crime provided by the officer in charge of the case.
Detective Constable Marc Beausoleil's
"sloppy" investigation and poor record-keeping, Ray
said, produced an unfair, unbalanced synopsis of the crime, which
led a court to wrongly conclude that the 16-year-old was the
ringleader of a brutal, premeditated attack on another girl across
the street from Oakwood Collegiate Institute last Feb. 4.
The officer himself conceded
that his investigation was "lousy," the judge added,
noting the synopsis contained 13 errors or inaccurate suggestions,
including:
The fight was the result of
a long-simmering feud, and the 16-year-old led the victim to
the crime scene and hit her with a metal pipe.
The victim was left with a
broken nose requiring surgery.
A mob of 20 to 30 other people
was also armed with metal pipes used in the attack.
In an interview, Rochman said
as far as she knows, there has been no other case in which a
court has been asked to remedy a situation where an accused person
was denied bail on the basis of unreasonable or misleading information.
But what happened to her client isn't an isolated incident, she
added.
In fact, speakers at a recent
conference held by Ontario's Criminal Lawyers' Association suggested
that misleading police reports could be contributing to the growing
number of people held in pretrial custody. There are now more
inmates in Ontario jails awaiting trial than serving sentences;
62.7 per cent are charged but not convicted.
Rochman's client, who cannot
be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, spent two
weeks in custody at the Vanier Centre for Women and was released
after a bail review. Three other youths arrested in the incident
were released from the police station and a fourth was set free
after a bail hearing.
'Lousy'
investigation landed girl, 16, in jail
By Christie Blatchford,
Jan. 2, 2004
TORONTO -- A Toronto police
officer whose shoddy and misleading investigation of a youth
fight saw a 16-year-old girl wrongly spend two weeks in jail
and expelled from her high school has been blasted by a judge
for the "serious injustice" done to the teenager.
Worse, Madam Justice Sheila
Ray of the Ontario Court said in a Dec. 22 judgment in which
she stayed the charges against the girl, Detective Constable
Marc Beausoleil showed both in his original probe of the incident
and in his evidence "a cavalier attitude towards the liberty"
of the teenager.
Based solely upon the officer's
written synopsis of the fight last Feb. 4, the girl, who can't
be identified under provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice
Act, was detained in custody by another judge after her arrest,
Judge Ray said.
And that brief, 10-paragraph-long
document contained 13 significant errors, Judge Ray found, and
gave, in essence, an unfair, unbalanced and "embellished
version of the information the police had at the time."
It inaccurately portrayed the
girl -- who was charged with two counts of aggravated assault
and two weapons-related offences -- as the likely instigator
of the fight, suggested "metal pipes" were used, cast
the incident as the result of a long-standing feud, and pointed
to serious injuries to two of the participants.
And none of that was true,
Judge Ray said, noting that, in fact, witnesses had described
another girl as the instigator, that the injuries were much less
serious than described, and that police seized only one pipe.
Yet because of the way Det.
Constable Beausoleil described both the fight and the girl's
purported role in it, she was the only one of five young women
who were charged to be detained.
Three others who were arrested
were released directly from the police station, with a fourth
being released at a bail hearing the next day.
The judge appeared almost bewildered
by Det. Constable Beausoleil's testimony, variously describing
him as "cavalier, defensive" and not showing "complete
candour before the court on some issues," and noting that
on some points "he chose to change his story again and again
and contradict himself."
Det. Constable Beausoleill
himself admitted his investigation was "lousy."
The judge fairly said that
at an early stage in a complex investigation, especially with
unco-operative witnesses, it is understandable if police sometimes
either don't have all the information or make mistakes in their
synopsis of events.
"There would have been
nothing wrong with him telling the court that later on in the
investigation, he found out he was wrong and he felt badly about
it and thought afterwards that she [the teenager] should have
been released," Judge Ray said. "But whatever has gone
wrong in an investigation, there is no excuse for lack of candour
with the court. The best thing to do when there has been a poor
investigation is for an officer to be straightforward about it."
But the quality of Det. Constable
Beausoleil's investigation, she said, coupled with "the
number of issues he was uncertain about and contradicted himself
on, plus his lack of candour" rendered his testimony "highly
problematic."
The girl spent two weeks in
the youth wing of the Vanier Centre for Women in Brampton with
a mentally ill cellmate who appeared to have an eating disorder
and who was frequently vomiting.
She was so devastated by being
in jail that both a teacher and guidance counsellor at her school,
and her lawyer, Paula Rochman, were seriously concerned about
her.
Ms. Rochman saw her for the
first time at a routine court appearance during her incarceration
and found the girl simply shattered. "She kept saying, 'I
am not going to make it in here,' " Ms. Rochman told The
Globe and Mail yesterday. "I was really afraid she might
be suicidal."
The girl was particularly humiliated
by the routine strip searches that followed her court appearances.
Ms. Rochman has a daughter the same age, and knows all too well
the extraordinary modesty young girls often have about their
bodies. "That just destroyed her," she said yesterday.
The ordeal was also excruciating
for the teen's family, Ms. Rochman said.
The mother, described by Judge
Ray as a "remarkable" woman, is a hard-working single
mom who has brought up her children to respect the law. The girl
is not only the oldest child, but a responsible caregiver for
her younger brothers, and seeing their big sister taken away
in handcuffs from the family home was particularly crushing to
them.
The girl's mother is so responsible
that when police first contacted her and said they wanted to
speak to the girl and asked the mom to call them, and the woman
found her telephone temporarily out of order, she bundled her
daughter and the younger children in the car and actually began
driving to the police station, stopping at a pay phone to tell
the police she was en route.
As Judge Ray noted, the mother
"would have provided excellent supervision" and was
"ready, willing and able to do so" had the girl been
released on bail. But Det. Constable Beausoleil "sought
her detention," and the Crown attorney, armed with only
the officer's "highly misleading" synopsis, concurred.
The judge found no intention
to mislead the court on the part of the Crown.
With the girl facing the charges
and in custody, Det. Constable Beausoleil, Ms. Rochman said yesterday,
then visited her school to complain that a teacher and high-school
guidance counsellor had testified in her support at a bail review
hearing.
The school invoked the Toronto
District School Board's "safe schools policy" and expelled
the girl, although Ms. Rochman fought unsuccessfully to have
the suspension made only temporary.
As a result, the teenager,
described by the guidance counsellor as "always one of the
students who shone" and "university-bound," spent
the past year, Grade 10, at a special tough-discipline school
where the student body is predominantly male, and where students
essentially report for class and then do their classes by correspondence.
Her status is to be reassessed
next week.
Det. Constable Beausoleil,
a 14-year veteran officer who is now with the intelligence section,
could not be reached for comment yesterday.
But Ms. Rochman will write
to Police Chief Julian Fantino and the Crown attorney's office
on Monday to ask that the officer be investigated for obstructing
justice.
cblatchford@globeandmail.ca
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Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
