EX-COP CONVICTED IN DRUG RAP

Claims He Was 'Set Up' In Halfway House Search

A FORMER Toronto cop and convicted drug dealer was found guilty yesterday
of trafficking heroin. Abraham Bailey, 55, was two days away from full
parole on a seven-year, eight-month sentence for cocaine and heroin
trafficking, when he went into cardiac arrest during a random drug search
at a Keele St. halfway house in June 2002.

Justice Bruce Young said paramedics pulled 4.5 grams of heroin -- contained
in two sandwich bags -- from inside the mouth of an unconscious Bailey, a
facility inmate.

The judge will sentence Bailey on March 29.

Young said prosecution witnesses observed Bailey acting strangely while
eating a sandwich, gurgling and smoking when he was pulled into an office
where he collapsed.

Bailey spent two weeks unconscious in hospital.

When he awoke, Bailey said he was "set up" and he'd never taken drugs, only
sold them.

Young rejected defence lawyer Harry Doan's suggestion that the drug samples
were contaminated by "sloppy handling" when they were tossed on to the
floor during resuscitation.

Bailey said he'll appeal.

"How could I eat a sub sandwich, smoke and ingest two bags of heroin
(simultaneously) is beyond me?" Bailey said in an interview.

"I'm no saint. I did a crime, but what they did to me is not right."

As a 14 Division constable, he fatally shot a drifter named Alexander
Misztal, 51, who had confronted him with a replica handgun in 1977. He took
early retirement in 1996.