Port Hope officer sentenced to probation on assault charge

Source:NORTHUMBERLAND TODAY
Port Hope Constable John Kelly Steeves should be able to continue on his job, in spite of probation conditions imposed upon his plea of guilty to an assault charge Friday in the Ontario Court of Justice in Cobourg.

Breach-of-condition charges were withdrawn against the 51-year-old accused, in spite of the fact that he admitted breaching a condition forbidding any intake of alcohol by ordering and consuming a bourbon at a licensed Port Hope establishment last October.


The ban was a condition of his release after he was arrested last March and charged with assaulting his common-law spouse.

Last March 17, Crown attorney Jim Hughes explained, a female police officer who was a friend of the victim passed along information of the incident to another female police officer and asked her to look into it.

When contacted on March 18, the victim said she had been concerned about Steeves's drinking. He was apparently intoxicated on March 15, when they began to argue.

During the course of the altercation, he grabbed her by the arm hard and squeezed it, and also yelled at her.

She still had bruising on her upper left arm when she spoke with the police officer, but did not want to pursue the matter. She changed her mind after March 20, when Steeves showed up at her residence and behaved in an intimidating manner.

"It was a difficult time for everybody involved," Hughes acknowledged, including the fact that officers who showed up to arrest Steeves were his own professional colleagues.

Steeves's record includes a prior breach-of-condition conviction from 2007, the Crown added. For that reason, the nature of the domestic nature of the assault and the alcohol problem (and given that alcohol can act as a disinhibitor), Hughes asked for a weapons prohibition and a DNA order.

In ordering a conditional discharge and a three-year probation, Justice William Babe agreed with the DNA order. But he advanced the opinion that a weapons prohibition could compromise Steeves's ability to carry out his job, which he has held for more than a decade.

So could an order to remain away from the victim in a small town like Port Hope, Babe added.

The victim has since lost the house they shared, but she has found a new apartment near her place of employment. As a result, Babe noted, Steeves's release conditions ordered him not to be in the area of Port Hope bounded by Walton St. to the north, Pine St. to the west, Queen St. to the east and Augusta St. to the south. Except when required to be there by his job, Babe ruled, Steeves will be forbidden by the conditions of his probation to be in that area.

He must also remain away from her at all other times and locations as well.

As for the firearms prohibition, Babe opted in favour of a probation condition that forbids the possession of any weapon by Steeves except when required by his job to carry one.

Hughes noted that two long guns had been seized from the accused's residence, and he was not aware whether they were properly licensed or whether Steeves had proper clearances to acquire them. At any event, he said, they will remain with the Port Hope Police Service for now.

Defence counsel Marc Bebee said that his client had already begun counselling on his own to address his alcohol problem.

Babe ruled that other counselling be part of his probation, including the Partner Assault Response Service program plus any other counselling -- such as alcohol or anger-management counselling -- his probation officer deems advisable.

cnasmith@northumberland today.com