DRUG SQUAD FALLOUT RAGES

Chief faces heat amid corruption allegations

Miller wants assurance it won't happen again

Some officers face internal police hearings, but there will be no further
criminal investigation of claims that police tried to silence witnesses
during an RCMP-led corruption probe, Chief Julian Fantino said yesterday.

Fantino's comments came amid a storm of reaction to the release of court
documents relating to the two-year probe of the central field command drug
squad.

Some allegations include claims that potential witnesses were threatened by
officers, raising concerns that problems inside the force go deeper than the
charges laid two weeks ago.

Also yesterday, Mayor David Miller asked the chief to report on how to
maintain public confidence in the force, while prominent lawyer Clayton Ruby
called the internal handling of the investigation 'a disgrace.'

Fantino told a news conference that 'attempts have been made' to investigate
the alleged intimidation of witnesses described in sworn affidavits from the
RCMP-led probe.

The task force's two-year investigation ended Jan. 7 with charges against
six officers. Four others were named as 'unindicted co-conspirators.'

Fantino said some of the 17 officers investigated have been exonerated but
did not know how many. Others will be probed by the professional standards
and internal affairs units.

'We've only dealt with the criminal piece, as you know,' he said. 'But
there's other sidebar issues that will have to be dealt with by Police Act
charges.'

The chief gave no hint of what charges could be filed.

Miller said Fantino had assured him yesterday that he would report to the
police board on how to maintain public confidence in the force.

'Like every resident of Toronto, I want to be assured that this is an
isolated case, and that every step is being taken to make sure that,
whatever led to this, those conditions don't exist in future, and it won't
happen again,' Miller said. 'It's not acceptable.'

Ruby, one of three criminal lawyers calling for a royal commission into the
handling of the corruption allegations, said the affidavits released Monday
suggest corruption was broader than Fantino acknowledged.

The affidavits were filed in support of a Department of Justice effort to
overturn the conviction of a heroin dealer, and were sealed until Monday.
Three appeal court judges ordered the information released despite
objections from lawyers representing the six officers, who said it might
interfere with their right to a fair trial.

The allegations include claims that drug squad officers lied in court, beat
up a drug dealer, took money from safety deposit boxes, and pocketed
jewelry, narcotics and cash while doing searches.

'The disgrace is, and this is Fantino's failure, is that he's done nothing
with all this evidence,' said Ruby. 'By the standard over which charges get
laid by police, as opposed to against police, many more charges would have
been laid.'

Ruby said the handling of the scandal has damaged the reputation of the
entire force.

'It leaves all the honest officers under a cloud, because we don't know who
the people are that are crooks, in the view of (RCMP Chief Superintendent
John) Neily, and unprosecutable in the view of Fantino. . Fantino will have
succeeded in creating his theory that this is a few bad apples, an isolated
event, and we now know that it's not isolated.'

Lawyer Edward Sapiano, who raised concerns about drug officers several years
ago, said any public inquiry must go beyond just the officers now involved.

'We absolutely have to have a public inquiry, either before or after the
criminal trials, that looks into police operations and actions. But it must
also look at the inner workings, or non-workings, of the justice department,
the office of the Attorney-General of Ontario and the two levels of courts,
the Ontario Court of Justice and the Superior Court,' Sapiano said.

'The public and interested parties should be asking themselves ... How is it
this was allowed to go on for so long and to such a degree under the noses
of the prosecutors and the judges?' Sapiano said.

In the affidavits unsealed this week, Neily, the RCMP officer who led the
probe, said investigators consulted with crown attorneys, isolated stronger
cases and concentrated on those with the best chance of conviction.

The task force laid 40 criminal charges against six former members of the
Central Field Command drug squad, involving offences ranging from assault
and extortion to theft and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

At the time of the arrests, Fantino said the allegations were 'isolated and
confined.'

But a glimpse into the 2 1/2-year investigation by Neily's task force
suggests otherwise.

Neily, in one of several affidavits sworn in a bid to keep sealed court
records that might jeopardize the investigation, states the investigation
was impeded by police tactics of terrorizing witnesses and a refusal by
suspected officers to co-operate with investigators.

From day one, Neily stated, his 31-member team, largely composed of Toronto
police investigators, faced a hostile reception from the police rank and
file.

'We are receiving very little co-operation from witness police officers of
the Toronto Police Service, and in fact, it can be fairly stated that
witness police officers are antagonistic towards this investigation,' he
wrote in one affidavit.

Those willing to speak as witnesses faced potential recrimination, he
stated.

In one case, an officer who had co-operated with an earlier phase of the
investigation heard indirectly 'that he would get his kneecaps broken for
having talked to the internal affairs investigators,' according to an
affidavit sworn by former internal affairs officer Detective Sergeant Randy
Franks.

Officers weren't the only ones worried about speaking out.

An informer who provided information later stopped talking to investigators
after 'he had been pulled over by five unknown persons and threatened with a
gun,' Franks wrote in his affidavit. 'The assailants told the witness that
if they found out that it was him (who had co-operated with the
investigation), he was dead.'

Neily also worried for the safety of the non-police witnesses, stating that
if their identities were made public, they would have to be admitted to the
witness protection program.

Neily described how charges of theft, fraud and forgery against three
officers, laid in connection with the force's informant fund, were dropped.
The cases unravelled, in part, after an integral witness 'expressed extreme
fear for his safety, recanted, had intentionally injured himself, threatened
further self-mutilation if forced to testify and was ultimately assessed by
the crown as unreliable,' he stated.

At one stage, Neily stated that 'evidence of criminal activity' included 17
members of the Central Field Command Drug Section - 11 more than were
charged earlier this month.

At the time, Neily wrote he was planning to identify only those suspected of
committing the most serious crimes. The others, he hoped, 'may become
witness officers' and will be subject to review under the Police Services
Act, he stated.

By his last affidavit, submitted to the court last June, Neily had whittled
the number down to 12 officers. The others may have conducted themselves in
ways that were 'unprofessional or on the borderline of criminal behaviour,'
but his team didn't have strong enough evidence to charge them, Neily wrote.

The probe, which cost about $3 million, was a huge undertaking. It involved
26 officers, five support staff and outside professionals, including
forensic accountants, and criminal intelligence analysts who looked at
patterns of officer behaviour.