FORMER TORONTO COP FACES DRUG CHARGES

When Abraham Norman Chesley Bailey was arrested at his Coffee Time
doughnut shop in Toronto last Friday, and charged with a sheaf of drug
trafficking offences at a place frequented by local high school
students, his former colleagues at the Toronto Police department and
senior officers to whom he had once reported sniffed and expressed
various degrees of shock, horror, and disgust that the 19-year veteran
had allegedly ``gone bad.''

That, at least, is what they said on the record.

Privately, most of those who know the 49-year-old former constable
weren't in the slightest surprised. As one officer at 31 Division,
where Mr. Bailey worked for at least a decade of his 19 years on the
mean streets of Toronto, said yesterday, ``What most people said
around here when they heard was, `I'll believe it when I see him
convicted' '' -- meaning no one was at all taken aback that Mr. Bailey
was in trouble again, merely skeptical that any of it would stick to
him.

In fact, if there is anything surprising about Mr. Bailey, it appears
it's not that he finds himself in difficulty -- he's facing a raft of
charges of trafficking in heroin and cocaine, as well as running a
common gaming house, from his North York coffee shop -- but that he
managed to survive for almost two decades on the country's biggest
police force.

``Put it this way,'' says one of his former superiors, now a member of
the force's upper command, ``and I wouldn't say this about anyone else
who worked for me, but I always kept my gun in my tophand drawer when
he came in to see me, and I'm not kidding, either.''

Though Mr. Bailey, known as ``Ace'' or ``Chris'' on the force, joined
in 1975 and served throughout the 1980s, leaving under a cloud in 1996
- -- he was facing two internal Police Act charges of discreditable
conduct -- he was in many ways a throwback to an earlier, looser style
of policing, a colourful character who made a lot of ``good pinches
[arrests]'' but often, allegedly, in a less-than-orthodox manner.

``Who knows if he framed them [the suspects],'' one source ruminated
yesterday. ``He'd bounce prisoners up, wipe the walls with them. Guys
[other officers] would put up with it, because that's our own internal
police culture.''

When police suspected he was allegedly dealing hard drugs -- a
definite no-no in the police world -- and was allegedly heard bragging
he could ``smell a UC [undercover officer]'' a mile away and saying he
didn't give a hoot who his buyers were, they put Mr. Bailey under
surveillance. Though these rumours swirled around Mr. Bailey for
years, nothing was ever proven. And it was only when the drug
trafficking allegations came to light did many of his former
colleagues consider that he'd crossed the line, which provides an
interesting glimpse into the subculture of even one of Canada's most
progressive police forces at the dawn of a new century: Roughing up
prisoners may be okay; framing suspects is arguably tolerable if
they're believed to be guilty anyway, but dealing heroin to young
people? Well, that's beyond the pale.

The stories about Mr. Bailey, a native Newfoundlander who addressed
everyone -- suspect or partner -- as ``Buddy'' and who for years has
worn a gaudy Star of David on a thick gold chain around his neck,
though no one who worked with him knows him to be Jewish, are legend,
even considering that a police force can be the most gossip-prone
organization in the world.

He was known as a notoriously dreadful dresser in his off hours, prone
to wearing black slip-on dress shoes with a pair of stiff, cheap blue
jeans and any one of a series of inexpensive acrylic pullovers, a
thin, short, and unprepossessing guy who nonetheless when in uniform
inspired a certain respect from the riff-raff with whom he dealt daily.

One officer who worked with Mr. Bailey in the public housing projects
in the northwest part of Toronto where 31 Division sits, laughed
yesterday as he remembered how, as they would walk into a complex to
make an arrest, the drug dealers would scatter and immediately lapse
into the thick patois of the Caribbean. Mr. Bailey, his Newfoundland
accent overriding his efforts to sound Jamaican, ``would taunt them
right back.''

The National Post attempted in vain to confirm one infamous tale about
Mr. Bailey, whereby he is alleged to have physically threatened a
fellow officer who reportedly had taken up with his ex-wife and who
had made the mistake, shortly after hooking up with the woman, of
coming into the division and complaining bitterly that the car Mr.
Bailey had left behind with the ex-wife was sorely in need of
replacement. ``You better get us a new car,'' this officer is alleged
to have told Mr. Bailey, who allegedly flew into a rage.

Other stories were confirmed by people who were there when the
incidents in question happened.

In one such instance, Mr. Bailey, who was a member of ``B'' platoon at
31, joined some of his colleagues for so-called ``choir practice,''
the police custom of having a few beer on a Wednesday night after a
platoon's last shift on nights.

This night, a few of the boys headed over to Downsview Dells, a park
in the division, and one of them had far too much to drink and was
barely functioning. Mr. Bailey, trademark cigarette hanging out of his
mouth, a beer in one hand, pulled out his penis with the other and
casually relieved himself in the man's boot as he continued to talk to
the blissfully ignorant fellow. Sources say it was likely his right
hand he used to grab his organ -- the hand with the index finger
missing from the knuckle up, lost, as Mr. Bailey was fond of
mysteriously telling friends, who were wisely cynical, ``in Vietnam.''

That same night, Mr. Bailey and another colleague engaged in ``spit
swapping,'' whereby the two officers would spit into the air and catch
one another's spittle as it fell to earth.

He was frequently in trouble internally, but, as one former colleague
says wryly, ``he was slippery, too. People would start off wanting to
sue him and end up buying him dinner.''

On one occasion, when officers from internal affairs showed up at the
station to interview him about alleged misconduct, they set up, as
they always do, in a small room, tape recorder ready to go. Mr. Bailey
entered the room, and one of the officers said, ``You can sit over
there.'' ``I'm not sitting,'' said Mr. Bailey. ``What do you mean,
you're not sitting there?'' the officer said. ``I'm not sitting
down,'' Mr. Bailey snapped, and promptly pulled out a small tape
recorder of his own.

``What's that?'' the officer asked. ``A tape recorder,'' said Mr.
Bailey. ``I'm taping this, too.''

The interview ended then and there.

Another time, expected at headquarters downtown for a Police Act
trial, Mr. Bailey gravely approached his superior officer at 31 and
told him, ``You know, this time I'm going to go down there and plead
guilty.'' The supervisor took him seriously and said, ``Well, that's a
very mature attitude, officer. Good for you,'' to which Mr. Bailey
chortled and replied with a snort, ``Ha, ha. I lied.''

He was, eventually, ``done,'' as police lingo has it, on three
internal charges -- once in 1985 for insubordination, and in 1988 for
insubordination and neglect of duty. He was facing two discreditable
conduct charges when he quietly resigned from the force on March 31,
1996, which meant he couldn't be prosecuted. The charges were
withdrawn April 18.

Those charges were related to a criminal charge of sexual assault Mr.
Bailey faced a couple of years ago, and of which he was acquitted. He
had been under paid suspension for about the last year of his service
with the force -- it was at this time he apparently bought the
doughnut shop -- and it appears that when he saw the chance to leave
on with a modest early-retirement incentive that was being offered in
1996, he grabbed it.

In recent years, Mr. Bailey has been living at a North York apartment
building known as a haven for divorced officers.

The story that may best illustrate the difference between the way Mr.
Bailey has been officially portrayed since his arrest and the way his
colleagues truly remember him is his reaction to having fatally shot a
51-year-old man named Alexander Misztal in April of 1977.

This weekend, a local newspaper reported that after Mr. Bailey, who
shot Mr. Misztal through the window of his cruiser, had learned the
man had been carrying a toy gun, he sat down on the sidewalk and wept.

But officers who then worked with him at 14 Division downtown, where
Mr. Bailey had recently been transferred, told another version.
According to them, when Mr. Bailey returned to the station after the
shooting, he was ``happy and goofy'' and told colleagues he was
``going to be promoted'' instead. His story appears not the tragedy of
a man who, after decades on the street, succumbed to its wild life,
but rather the tragi-comedy of an out-of-time character who may have
come into the job looking to work the angles.

``Ace'' Bailey appeared briefly in court in Newmarket yesterday, where
he was remanded in custody for a bail hearing this morning. In
addition to the drug and gaming house charges, he is also facing two
counts of threatening death, dating back to last September, in
connection with an incident with a female security guard who had asked
him to move his car.

It is worth noting that in the small bail court yesterday, there was
no one present in support of the middle-aged, paunchy man in the black
dress pants and sweatshirt who used to be known as Badge No. 6600:
Even the members of the blue brotherhood have a point of no return.