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Michel
Dumont | Sandra
Crockett |
Robert Elliot
Charges dropped,
man sues Durham police
CBC - Sep 12 2003
Oshawa, Ont. -An Oshawa man
who says he was beaten and unfairly labelled as a pedophile has
launched a $2.3-million lawsuit against the Durham Regional Police.
Robert Elliott said his troubles
began last year after he moved to a new neighbourhood in the
Oshawa area. Shortly after the move he stopped his car to ask
two young newspaper delivery girls about delivering to his house.
"[It was] brief and to
the point," Elliot said. " 'Do you deliver the newspaper
to my house? Do you deliver to my street? No? No? Okay great,
see you later.' [Then] I drove away."
But someone who witnessed the
exchange called the Durham Regional police and reported it as
a suspicious incident.
A short time later Elliot said
a police officer appeared on his door and began to question him.
"'Did you ask two girls
about a newspaper today?' I said yes," he recalled. "[The
officer] said 'Did you ask them to get in your car?' I said I
most certainly did not. I don't like where this conversation
is going -- this conversation is over."
Police said at this point that
Elliot tried to slam the door on the officer, but he said the
officer forced his way into his residence and wrestled him to
the ground in a chokehold.
Shortly 20 police cruisers
were at his house and he was charged with assaulting the officer
and resisting arrest.
"I will swear on a bible,
I did not do that," he said. "I did not assault a police
officer and resist arrest. I may have resisted trying to protect
my head from being pounded into my own porch."
This week a judge threw out
the assault charges against Elliott and cast doubt about the
police officers side of the story.
Elliott is suing the force
for unlawful arrest, assault and damages for the public embarrassment
of being labeled as a pedophile.
The officer and the Durham
police aren't commenting on the suit. They have a month to file
their defence.
Copyright © 2003 Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation - All Rights Reserved
Durham police sued over
strip search
March 15, 2003
(Toronto Star ) Jeb Taylor
says he was sitting on the curb in front of his house in Oshawa
last September, talking on his cordless phone, when police charged
him with being intoxicated in a public place.
The 29-year-old former OPP
cadet says he was arrested, handcuffed, taken to a police station,
strip-searched and kept in a cell until noon the next day.
The charge was later thrown
out of court, but an angry and bitter Taylor has launched a lawsuit
against the Durham Regional Police Services Board and three officers
for his "unlawful" arrest and strip search.
"It's outrageous. The
guy is in front of his own house, not causing any disturbance,
not bothering anyone. He admits he had a drink. ... (But) they
had no basis for doing what they did," his lawyer Barry
Swadron said. "They arrest him because he's belligerent,
though they don't use that word, they say he wasn't co-operating."
According to the statement
of claim filed in Ontario Court of Justice on Wednesday, Taylor
was handcuffed, "forced against the police cruiser with
his chin making contact with the hood of the cruiser" and
searched, before being taken to Durham's nearby 17 Division,
where he was strip-searched and processed on a charge of being
intoxicated in a public place.
The allegations made in the
statement of claim have not been proved in court. No statement
of defence has been filed yet. Durham Region police spokesperson
David Selby confirmed the board was served papers yesterday,
but said the force's policy is not to discuss matters before
the courts.
Taylor said he was ordered
to remove his clothes: khaki shorts and an orange shirt.
"I didn't know it was
coming," a visibly agitated Taylor said, sitting in Swadron's
downtown office. "I'm paraded into a room where I guess
they do that and asked to remove all my clothing, which I did
... I stood there, I think I spread my legs out.
"What did they see in
my behaviour that would warrant the search over the hood of the
cruiser, and then a strip search?"
At Taylor's one-day trial in
Whitby court on Jan. 20, the two arresting constables, William
Graham and Chris Oerlemans, testified they were responding to
a report that a man was passed out on Beatrice St. W. at about
6:15 a.m. last Sept. 22.
They arrived to find a man
seated on the curb and talking on the phone with a glass nearby,
which Graham testified Taylor said was whiskey.
The officers testified that
when they asked Taylor to end his phone conversation, he refused
and started shouting. That's when they noticed he had alcohol
on his breath, Graham told the court.
The officers then asked Taylor
to go inside. Taylor, who said he was outside to avoid disturbing
his roommate, refused, insisting he wasn't intoxicated. The Justice
of the Peace agreed, saying there was "no evidence of intoxication"
and dismissed the charge.
Taylor admits he "mouthed
off" to officers because he felt harassed on his own property.
He believes the officers arrested and strip-searched him because
they didn't like his attitude.
The constables testified they
arrested Taylor out of concern for his safety and conducted the
strip search as a matter of routine policy. "For every person,
regardless if we have any hint of weapons or not, we search,
given the fact that they may have weapons on them, which may
cause concern for his safety or ours," Graham said in court.
Taylor was held until noon,
when he was released. He immediately filed a complaint with Durham
police, which he says was rejected as "vexatious."
Taylor was employed as a police
cadet by the OPP at the Whitby detachment from December, 1998
to August, 2001. He also attended and graduated from the Ontario
Police College in Aylmer.
Taylor says he decided to approach
Swadron after reading about how he handled the case of Thomas
Kerr, the homeless man who alleged he was beaten by Toronto police
officers. The case did not reach a verdict, but Kerr received
an undisclosed settlement.
Taylor is claiming $600,000
in damages. His parents are also claiming $50,000 each and his
sister $25,000.
Strip searches, said Swadron,
should only be done "very sparingly, in only limited, selected
cases, and this is certainly not the case."
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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
