OFFICER RECEIVES A CONDITIONAL DISCHARGE IN A BIZARRE CASE

Sometimes when police officers misbehave you can see that ethical weakness or simple human greed are behind their bad behaviour. This case is definitely different. Last Saturday's Waterloo Region Record carried this story titled "Local officer avoids conviction for fraud, obstructing police".

In this case the officer wasn't attempting to get out of trouble or blame for an incident; in fact quite the opposite. His son had crashed his car in a single vehicle accident in the wee hours. The recently separated officer received a phone call from his wife telling him to "fix" it and "fix" it he did. His wife drove their son home and dropped him off at the accident scene. He phoned the police and took full responsibility for his son's accident.

Unfortunately this included defrauding the insurance company who paid both for the damage to his car as well to a damaged bus shelter. Months later the police were advised that they had been lied to. No mention of who did that but it hardly seems likely that it was some independent, third party witness. The inevitable happened and the officer was charged with fraud and obstruction.

The officer is still awaiting Police Act charges to be completed. His conditional discharge from the courts is a break for him. That said clearly he knew what he was doing was both wrong and criminal but we all can be blindsided by family from time to time. This is a tough one.