WITNESS AT POLICE CORRUPTION TRIAL SAYS HE WAS 'PULVERIZED' WHILE IN CUSTODY

A one-time drug dealer was beaten so savagely by some of the police
officers accused in a massive corruption case that he feared for his
life, court heard Tuesday.

"I was semi-conscious, I was covered in blood from head to toe," said
Christopher Quigley, a key prosecution witness.

"I was terrified, I really thought I was going to die. I thought it
was possible they were going to kill me in this room."

Quigley, on the stand for a second day of the long-delayed trial of
five former Toronto drug squad officers, said he was punched, kicked
and chocked as the officers asked where he kept his drugs and money
until he lost consciousness.

"I was being pulverized," he said.

Quigley alleges the attack was unprovoked and began when the unit's
head, John Schertzer, hit him across the face after he was taken in
for questioning over stolen sunglasses.

He testified that he was later subjected to three sets of beatings by
another one of the accused, Ned Maodus, along with another officer who
is not part of the trial.

Steven Correia, the third officer accused, helped transport him in and
out of the interrogation room during his nine-hour detention, Quigley
said, at one point having to hold him up because he couldn't walk.

All along, Quigley testified, they asked him where he kept his drugs
and his money, threatening to ransack his apartment if he didn't comply.

"You better tell these guys what they want to hear or this is going to
go on all night," Quigley said Corrreia told him.

He complied, but asked they be careful with his dog, a Boston terrier,
from whom Quigley "cared deeply," court heard.

When he eventually got home, Quigley found his apartment was "torn
apart," items were missing, and his dog had been let out into the
street - although he was later found by the Humane Society.

The beatings ended as suddenly as they started, Quigley said, and he
was eventually taken to a cell where he started throwing up blood, had
trouble breathing, and had to be rushed to hospital, court heard.

Court also heard that only a portion of the $54,000 the officers
seized from Quigley was eventually returned.

Quigley's is the first of five cases the Crown intends to use to prove
the officers showed a pattern of violence, beating up and intimidating
suspects, stealing from them, conducting illegal searches, and then
lying to prosecutors to cover their tracks.

The case against Schertzer, Maodus, Correia, Joseph Miched and Raymond
Pollard goes back more than a decade.

Charges were first laid in 2004, but delays have slowed the case's
progress through the courts.

The men have all pleaded not guilty and none of the allegations have
been proven in court.