Excellent clip that say's it all.............Poor Michael Bryant!

Hamilton cop charged in domestic assault

December 18, 2009
John Burman
Haldimand OPP have charged a five-year-veteran Hamilton police officer with assault following an off-duty domestic incident.

The officer, who lives in Haldimand, was arrested Tuesday. His name will not be released to avoid identifying the complainant.

The officer has been re-assigned from operational duties to administrative tasks.

Hamilton police spokesperson Catherine Martin said the OPP were called in to investigate because the alleged assault occurred in this jurisdiction.

The officer is charged with three counts of assault.

He will appear in court in Cayuga Jan. 13.

This incident is the second time in 48 hours an area police officer has been charged with assault following a domestic argument.

An off-duty Halton police officer was charged Wednesday after the Halton police investigation involving the accused and his former common-law wife of two years.

The officer has been arrested and charged with assault, uttering death threat and criminal harassment.

He was a uniform patrol officer assigned to Milton.

He has been suspended from duty with pay.

The Spec

Ontarians will suffer without extra hospital funds: critics

Ontario residents should expect to pay for more health-care services and endure longer lineups if the Liberal government follows through on its threat to freeze funding for hospitals next year, critics said Thursday.

Health Minister Deb Matthews has reportedly warned hospitals that she may freeze their budgets starting in the spring because the province is grappling with a $24.7-billion deficit — the largest in its history.

The most hospitals can hope for is an increase below last year's 2.1 per cent, which critics say is so meagre it has already forced hospitals to close beds and cut services.

The Liberals are now pleading poverty after foisting a health tax of up to $900 per person on Ontario taxpayers, said Progressive Conservative health critic Christine Elliott.

"The reality will be that a lot of hospitals are going to have to start cutting services to the public, and that's directly in contrast to what the minister originally said," Elliott said in an interview.

"I think taxpayers have every right to be outraged about this."

$154M shortfall
More than a third of Ontario hospitals — 61 in total — couldn't balance their books last year, amounting to a $154-million shortfall.

That number will only grow if the government starves hospitals of a much-needed cash infusion, critics say.

Patients will be forced to travel further for health care, wait longer for a hospital bed and may even have to fork over cash for services, said Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition.

"It means that we'll likely see attempts to close more of the small and rural hospitals," she said.

"It means that more services like physiotherapy will be cut and people will have to pay out of pocket for them ... It means longer lineups in the ERs because there's not enough hospital beds."

Premier Dalton McGuinty vowed in October to help cash-strapped hospitals through tough economic times, but there are signs that a freeze on hospital funding is imminent.

'Plan for zero per cent next year'
A spokesman for Lakeridge Health Network, which runs three hospitals and three specialty sites in east-central Ontario, refused to comment Thursday on how a funding freeze would affect its finances.

But in an earlier interview, CEO Kevin Empey suggested that any hospital hoping for a bigger increase in the next provincial budget is "dreaming."

"The signals from the government are: plan for zero per cent next year," he said.

Some hospitals are already on financial life support and are borrowing heavily to meet payroll and other essential costs, Mehra said.

Ontario's 159 public hospitals receive about 85 per cent of their funding from the province through 14 Local Health Integration Networks, which were set up by the Liberals three years ago to make local health-care decisions and dispense funding.

Hospitals are forbidden from running deficits by law, but many receive waivers from the LHINs because they've agreed to balance their books.

CBC.CA

Complainant praises OPP officers after case dropped!

Two Ontario Provincial Police officers should have been commended, not investigated, says the woman whose domestic violence complaint eventually led to disciplinary charges against the officers.

On Wednesday, the OPP withdrew the charges of neglect of duty and deceit against Supt. Ken MacDonald and Insp. Alison Jevons, concluding a drawn-out internal disciplinary process.

MacDonald used to head the OPP unit that investigates internal corruption and Jevons was a senior investigator in the unit.

Both were investigating a complaint from Susan Cole, who said her estranged husband, Robert Alaire, a provincial police sergeant, had beaten her car with a baseball bat outside their Gananoque, Ont., home in April 2004.

Cole alleged the OPP officers responding to her complaint did not arrest her spouse but instead asked her to leave the house.

MacDonald and Jevons investigated Cole's complaint and concluded the responding officers had not followed proper procedure.

Very helpful, very honest and forthcoming, " Cole told CBC News on Wednesday, speaking about the two officers.

"They were one of the very few people I met that would actually listen to what the facts were and what was going on."

Union complained
After MacDonald and Jevons determined Cole's complaint was handled poorly, the police union filed a complaint against them, alleging they failed to follow proper procedure.

OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino then ordered an investigation into the matter. That probe agreed with the union, and Fantino moved in 2006 to charge the two officers with neglect of duty and deceit for their handling of the investigation.

"I think they got charged when in fact they should have gotten a commendation," Cole said Wednesday. "I don't want to use colloquialisms, but it was the big blue wall [that] closed in around my husband and the other officers involved."

Cole said she's pleased MacDonald and Jevons may now be able to finish what they started.

"I'm very excited that they may be able to pursue the domestic violence policy that they discussed," she said. "Under the current system, the spouse of an officer is basically unprotected."

Witch hunt alleged
MacDonald and Jevons fought claimed they were victims of a witch hunt orchestrated by Fantino and the head of the OPP union, the Ontario Provincial Police Association.

Fantino was to appear in court Wednesday for a defence cross-examination.

But the charges against the two officers were abruptly dropped in the morning, with prosecutor Brian Gover saying only that "this matter has been resolved to the satisfaction of the prosecution and the subject officers outside the discipline process."

Retired justice Leonard Montgomery, who had been hearing the disciplinary case, welcomed the decision.

"In my view … this settlement is in the interests of the officers and the interests of the administration of justice."

Accused of bias
Last fall, Fantino tried to get Montgomery removed from the proceedings, claiming he was biased. The allegation came when Montgomery expressed concerns after Fantino changed his evidence.

In November, Ontario's Appeal Court ruled Montgomery was not biased against Fantino.

Montgomery in turn complained Gover was trying to intimidate him and decried any government involvement in the quasi-judicial process.

The whole process has so far cost more than $500,000 in public money.

With files from The Canadian Press

CBC.CA

Charges that involved top cop dropped against OPP officers

Charges against two senior Ontario police officers have been dropped — effectively ending a disciplinary process that threatened to tarnish the reputation of the head of the province's police force.

The charges against Supt. Ken MacDonald and Insp. Allison Jevons were thrown out on Wednesday when the hearing resumed at OPP headquarters in Orillia. MacDonald used to head the unit that probes internal corruption and Jevons was a senior investigator in the unit.

They were both charged with neglect of duty and deceit. But the two officers claimed they were victims of a witch hunt inside the Ontario Provincial Police force being orchestrated by OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino and the head of the OPP union, the Ontario Provincial Police Association.

The decision also comes more than a year after Fantino began a series of legal moves aimed at having Justice Leonard Montgomery removed from the case because of remarks he made during the proceedings.

The motion was rejected by a divisional court and upheld last month by the Ontario Court of Appeal.

On Wednesday, when the hearing was scheduled to resume, the charges against the two officers were dropped — and that means Fantino will not have to return to the witness box.

The disciplinary case centred on an investigation that looked into why OPP supervisors in eastern Ontario looked the other way when a local officer allegedly took a baseball bat to his wife's car. When MacDonald and Jevons concluded there was misconduct, the police union filed a complaint claiming major problems with the whole investigation.

Fantino, who was new to the job as commissioner, ordered a review of the findings. He later agreed with the union and charged the two senior officers with neglect of duty and deceit for their handling of the investigation.

MacDonald and Jevons, however, fought back and in the process made their own allegations. Part of their evidence was an email in which the union said it wanted to "Take down MacDonald."

MacDonald and Jevons also claim Fantino bowed to union pressure.

Days before charging MacDonald, another senior officer testified Fantino said, "Are you going to execute the disloyal one, or am I?" The senior officer made notes of the comments.

The defence claimed that when Fantino learned those notes were about to become evidence, the officer was told he was being transferred to North Bay.

Lawyers for the two accused officers said that amounted to witness tampering.

During his testimony Fantino called the allegations "hysterical nonsense" and denied he was bowing to pressure from the OPP union.

Fantino also denied any personal vendetta against MacDonald and Jevons.

CBC.CA