SIU finds OPP officer largely at fault in Toronto crash

Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has found that an Ontario Provincial Police officer was “largely at fault” for driving an unmarked cruiser through a red light and into a woman’s car in Toronto, but that his driving did not meet the threshold for a criminal charge.

SIU Director Joseph Martino released his decision on Thursday in the July collision at Jane Street and Sheppard Avenue West, which left a 59-year-old woman with a fractured rib. Martino referred the officer’s conduct to the OPP Commissioner’s Office and to Ontario’s Law Enforcement Complaints Agency for review.

According to the director’s report, the officer had been conducting a traffic stop on Sheppard Avenue West late on July 22 when the automated licence plate recognition system in his unmarked Dodge Durango flagged a possibly stolen vehicle passing by. He alerted Toronto police, wrapped up the stop and set off after the vehicle.

He approached the intersection with his emergency lights on while facing a red light. Video from the cruiser shows he slowed for pedestrians, sounded his siren four times and then accelerated into the intersection with the lights still on but no siren, the report said. The woman was driving north on Jane Street through a green light when the cruiser struck the driver’s side of her Honda at 11:58 p.m.

Data recovered by the SIU shows the cruiser was travelling about 36 km/h one second before impact and about 27 km/h at impact. The woman’s car was going about 47 km/h when it was hit, after she braked hard in the final half second. She was taken to Etobicoke General Hospital.

Martino considered whether the officer committed dangerous driving causing bodily harm, which requires a “marked departure” from the care a reasonable person would show.

“I accept that the SO is largely at fault for the collision. He ought to have stopped completely before entering the intersection, and then only continued through the intersection when it was safe to do so,” Martino wrote, referring to the subject officer.

He found the officer had his emergency lights on, had sounded his siren and had slowed to minimal speed before accelerating, and concluded that he “simply failed to see” the woman. Martino characterized the officer’s actions as “a momentary lapse of attention that did not amount to a marked departure from a reasonable standard of care.”

Martino said the record showed possible contraventions of sections 19 and 27 of the Police Code of Conduct. The officer declined an SIU interview and declined to provide his notes, as is his legal right. The SIU does not name officers or the people injured.

The SIU, a civilian agency, investigates incidents involving police that result in death, serious injury, sexual assault or the firing of a gun at a person. The decision was announced in an SIU news release.

Earlier this week, the SIU cleared a Hamilton officer after a cruiser window was smashed and cleared a Sudbury officer in an arrest that fractured a man’s rib.

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