ONE LUCKY ROGUE

When corrupt and crack-addicted Toronto cop Richard Staley appeared in
court last week to face the music, Mr. Justice Harry LaForme must have
heard the violins playing.

Staley, himself, was prepared to go to jail. In fact, the 27-year police
veteran had already packed -- having stuffed a toothbrush, clean underwear
and a pack of smokes into a plastic bag in anticipation of his first
overnight behind bars.

Prosecutor David Finley wanted at least a year. The police department's
internal affairs unit wanted a firm message delivered. Instead, Judge
LaForme heard a different tune and sent Staley home for 18 months of house
arrest.

Lots of crime, but no hard time.

To the two internal affairs officers who brought Staley down -- Det.-Sgts.
Mike Earl and Bryce Evans -- there are three things they find disturbing
about the judge's perceived leniency.

Those three things are the handguns on the streets right now, no doubt in
the wrong hands, and undoubtedly there because Rick Staley followed pattern
and traded them to feed his addiction to crack cocaine.

Staley told police he had "lost" them. And the police don't believe him for
a second, particularly since he told them after his arrest he "might be
able to point them in the right direction" towards their eventual recovery.

So far, however, he has pointed them nowhere.

From the outside looking in, it might be easy to feel some sympathy toward
Const. Richard Staley. In his file, after all, are 30 police commendations,
including rescuing a child from a burning building and pulling a teenager
from a smouldering car moments before it burst into flames.

Discredit to Force

But then there's the flip side.

There's the Const. Richard Staley who spent five of his 27 years in the
Toronto police on paid suspension from duty, meaning almost 20% of his
career was spent being a discredit to his uniform.

There's the Richard Staley who told private security police at an off-track
betting outlet that he was an undercover drug cop and instead of busting
the dealers loitering about he became one of their clients.

It's all on tape, collected after the private security cops became
suspicious of Staley and decided to roll their cameras. That video, in
fact, will be part of the presentation the two detectives will deliver in
three weeks at a police internal affairs convention.

"Staley's case is a textbook internal affairs case," Det.-Sgt. Earl said.
"It has it all -- drugs, corruption, breach of trust, and a cop in deep
with the bad guys.

"I thought Staley was going to jail, and so did he."

It was back in 1992, shortly after the death of his mother, that Staley
began to derail. Divorced and living with another woman, he became the
subject of an Emergency Task Force response to a 911 call about a man with
a loaded gun.

Staley, hallucinating from a medication overdose, was arrested in his
Beaches district home, where police found registered weapons littering the
house, as well as scores of rounds of ammunition.

Suspended with pay for three years as the result of 16 Police Service Act
convictions, Staley would later blame that suspension with contributing to
his further fall from grace.

Loitered in Park

"He complained of time spent sitting on a park bench with his pet
cockatoo," Det.-Sgt. Earl said. "And what kind of people would he meet
there? More drug dealers, naturally, and more of the 'wrong' types."

What sank Staley for good, however, was his growing dependence on crack
cocaine and, when finally back in uniform, his handing over confidential
police information to his crack dealer.

Once arrested, the dealer was quick to roll over on Staley, telling police
he paid him off in coke to "make the charge go away."

"It didn't take long to have the case locked up," Det.-Sgt. Earl said,
indicating everything fell into place, from Staley's phone records right
down his fingerprints being found on the criminal record document he had
turned over to his drug dealer.

When they searched his locker, they found the kicker -- three crack pipes
in the breast pocket of Staley's uniform.

In the believe-it-or-not category, the guns seized during the raid on
Staley's home back in 1992 were eventually returned to him. As luck would
have it, they are also the same weapons he claimed in court to have since
somehow "lost."

"My worst fear, of course, is that one of those guns is going to kill
someone," Det.-Sgt. Earl said. "Maybe even a cop.

"And that's what I find most disturbing of all. He was once one of us."