Paid to stay home

Police suspensions across Ontario have cost taxpayers approximately $134 million over the past 11 years, according to an exclusive database compiled by CBC News that surveyed reports about hundreds of officers who were sent home with pay after being accused of misconduct or breaking the law.

The investigation collected publicly available information about officers across 44 police departments including the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), Toronto Police Service, Peel Regional Police and Ottawa Police Service. 

The research reveals 453 suspensions for a wide variety of allegations including drunk driving, fraud, drug trafficking, manslaughter, sexual assault and intimate partner violence. 

These cases represent less than two per cent of the approximately 25,140 officers currently on duty in 61 communities.

• To read about the methodology, scroll to the bottom of the story.

The OPP and Toronto police reported the highest number of suspensions in the  province, but theyre also the largest forces with 5,993 and 5,100 sworn officers respectively. 

Among the trends CBC uncovered: 

• The median length of time for a suspension was 553 days, or about a year and a half. The longest suspension has lasted nine years and the shortest was one day.  
• More than one-third of the allegations against suspended officers involved gender-based violence including sexual assault, intimate partner violence and sexual harassment. 
• The majority (87 per cent) of suspensions were accompanied by a criminal charge.
• Nearly half of all officers suspended and convicted of a crime returned to work. Just under one in 10 were fired.
• The vast majority were constables, but all ranks were represented including chiefs and deputy chiefs. 
• Eleven officers were suspended multiple times during the past decade.

This is more comprehensive than anything else that exists, said Erick Laming, an assistant professor of criminology at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., referring to CBCs findings.

"These are the cases that really anger people and piss people off, right? And I think they have a right to feel that way, because we are at the end of the day paying these officers to be collecting their salaries, in some cases after conviction."

Laming is one of four researchers specializing in policing and justice policy who examined CBCs findings, along with two former police chiefs and a provincial union executive. 

CBC also interviewed several former and current suspended officers who complain that criminal allegations are too often investigated by their own colleagues. They say chiefs are too quick to suspend and judicial processes are too lengthy, resulting in suspensions that can drag on for months or years.

Police chiefs in Ontario have long called for more authority to fire problematic members and suspend officers without pay, as is the policy in other jurisdictions in Canada.

Until recently, Ontario was the only province that required all suspended officers receive their full pay to stay home, unless they had been denied bail or sentenced to imprisonment.

While new legislation was brought in on April 1, many wonder if much will change.

No agency or government office tracks or makes public the total number of suspensions in the province. Critics say it leaves the public in the dark about the scope of suspensions, the allegations that led to them, and their outcomes.

The public can't have confidence in the accountability system if they don't know about it, said Kate Puddister, a professor at the University of Guelph who researches criminal justice and public policy.

Your findings provide a lot of evidence to suggest that we should be really looking at police budgets more critically.

Every police officer in Ontario must comply with a code of conduct from the moment they are hired. If suspected of violating this disciplinary code or breaking the law, their chief can suspend them.

Suspensions with pay remain largely supported by Ontario police unions, which maintain that unless an officer is convicted of wrongdoing, they are entitled to the presumption of innocence.

We really try and ensure that members are provided with a fair process when they're facing serious allegations, said Mark Baxter, president of the Police Association of Ontario.

Based on CBCs analysis, the suspension policy has cost millions every year. 

The cost of suspending 438 officers for a total of more than 306,000 days since 2013 using their salaries from the Ontario Sunshine List or salary data from Statistics Canada amounts to a grand total of $134,018,648.44. 

The combined sum is roughly equivalent to the entire 2023 operating budget for Ontarios London Police Service, a force that employs 651 officers and serves half a million residents. 

Since January of this year, the 83 police officers currently suspended across Ontario have already cost taxpayers more than $3.6 million to stay home. 

Among the most expensive suspensions in CBCs findings are some high-ranking and high-paid staff, such as a deputy chief in Ottawa who was paid more than $650,000 for two years to remain off the job.

It's not monopoly money. This is real, said Laming. If an officer is found guilty they should have to pay that money back. I mean, that's kind of the argument that we see."

Based on CBCs research, the 10 longest-running suspensions over the past decade include five suspended officers with the OPP, three with Toronto police and two with Durham Regional Police Service.

At the top of the list is OPP detective sergeant James Christie, a former police union executive who was suspended in March 2015 over allegations of fraud. 

He and two co-accused officers were found not guilty in the criminal case, though he pleaded guilty to discreditable conduct. Nine years after his suspension began, he remains off work. The OPP confirms Christie remains suspended but would not say why.

Over that period, the suspended sergeant has taken home more than $1.5 million in pay, not including benefits.

• More than a dozen Peel cops found guilty of crimes keep jobs 

Former OPP officer Jason Redmond is also on the list of the top 10 suspensions. He was suspended in 2015 and finally lost his job in the summer of 2023. Redmond is now serving nine years in prison for a series of high-profile sexual assaults.

The OPP commissioner told CBC the force had attempted to fire Redmond since 2018 when the constable was convicted of drug trafficking.

Over the course of his seven-and-a-half-year suspension, Redmond took home close to  $1.3 million.

You have these egregious cases like the Jason Redmond case that spans eight years, and clearly the guy was charged and convicted, said Laming. That's how our legal system works, unfortunately, for these incidents. It does take time.

How much time exactly? 

At least 390 of the 453 suspensions CBC has analyzed lasted longer than 90 days, and 315 suspensions continued for a year or more. 

I mean, that's ridiculous, said Greg Brown, a former Ottawa police officer who now conducts research and litigation consulting for law firms in Canada and the U.S.

There's no reason for suspensions to be going on this long, he said. The whole system really could be renovated to save a fortune. There's absolutely no reason why the police couldn't litigate those in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days."

CBC's research also tracked the outcomes for officers following the conclusion of their suspension, and any related disciplinary or criminal proceedings including appeals.

We found that in almost half the cases in which there was a criminal conviction, the officer ultimately returned to work. One in four of the convicted officers resigned and nine per cent were fired.

The amount of taxpayer dollars that are spent on police officers that aren't doing their job, for me that fits into the larger conversation about rising police budgets and arguments about what are we getting for giving more and more of our tax dollars, said Puddister. 

But the CBC data results arent surprising to the provinces police union representatives, who say the 453 suspensions represent a small minority to begin with.

When you look at the number of members who returned to work following a suspension, I think that really talks about, was there a need to suspend those members in the first place? asked Mark Baxter, president of the Police Association of Ontario.

Vern White, a former RCMP officer and former chief of police in Durham and Ottawa, has also examined CBCs findings. He thinks chiefs may be too quick to suspend an officer after an accusation because its been an easy option.

I always tried to put people into administrative roles until I had enough evidence that said if this is true, if the evidence is proven, then I will be asking for your job, said White, also a former senator.

Other Canadian police forces including the RCMP have a stoppage of pay option for serious cases. In Alberta, officers who are suspended without pay can only be compensated if theyre later exonerated.

Ontarios new Community Safety and Policing Act, implemented this month, will now allow chiefs to suspend officers without pay, but only under specific circumstances. 

It only applies to accusations of a serious, indictable offence committed while the officer was off duty, such as murder or aggravated sexual assault. And every decision to suspend an officer without pay would first go before an adjudicator.

We're brand new into the new act, so we'll have to see the way that it plays out, said Baxter.

But he says his union, which represents most officers in the province, does largely support the new provisions.   

The group representing chiefs isnt sure the new legislation will have much of an impact on suspensions with pay.

In all honesty, the small step that has been taken I don't think is going to bring them to par with other provinces, said Jeff McGuire, executive director of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police and a former chief in the Niagara region.

There still will be, in my view, a number of police officers that are on suspension with pay that the chiefs don't feel is appropriate, and I gather a lot of the public won't feel is appropriate either. 

CBCs analysis also uncovered some discrepancies between the number of publicly disclosed cases and the official figures provided by police departments.

Over the course of this investigation, CBC News contacted all 43 municipal police forces and the Ontario Provincial Police for clarifications and additional information on multiple occasions between December 2023 and March 2024. 

Some departments reported a significantly higher number of suspensions than what could be confirmed through public research. For example, CBCs database contains 12 suspension cases involving officers from the York Regional Police, but that same department told CBC it had recorded 52 suspensions in the past decade.

This is an iceberg, and how much of this do we really not even know? Not having that information is suspicious, and not disclosing that and not tracking that is always suspicious, said Laming.

Peel, London, York, Toronto and the OPP, along with several smaller police services, answered many but not all of the questions posed by CBC. 

Sault Ste. Marie, Brantford and Windsor police departments instructed CBC to file freedom of information requests, while Bellevilles service would not comment on suspensions as theyre considered an internal disciplinary matter.

While the Ottawa Police Service now lists officer suspensions in police board minutes, neither that force nor its freedom of information office would provide any detailed information or clarify any questions about specific suspensions. 

Part of the conversation is the money spent, said Puddister. Will the new Police Act change that? But I think another huge part of the conversation is the lack of transparency surrounding this, and why transparency is so essential for police oversight and accountability. 

METHODOLOGY: How CBC compiled Ontario police suspension cases

This database was compiled by CBC News and represents 453 suspensions with pay that occurred between January 1, 2013, and April 9, 2024, involving 438 police officers (including some with multiple suspensions) from 44 police forces across 61 Ontario municipalities. The information was compiled and verified through multiple news sources, police/SIU releases and court/disciplinary records.

The database includes the Espanola Police Force, which was taken over by the OPP in October 2018, because it suspended one officer in 2017. Five police forces did not report any suspensions in the period examined: Aylmer Police Service, Deep River Police Service, Gananoque Police Service, Niagara Parks Police Service and Strathroy-Caradoc Police Service. Indigenous police forces, which fall under federal jurisdiction, are not included.

Several police services provided CBC with their total number of suspensions since 2013. Some of those totals were far greater than what CBC found through public reporting. By contrast, this investigation uncovered more suspension cases in Hamilton and St. Thomas than those police services reported to CBC.

To evaluate costs, CBC News calculated the difference in days between the exact start and end date of each suspension. For 69 suspensions with missing dates (15.3 per cent), the median suspension length (553 days) was applied. The salaries of officers were obtained through Ontarios Sunshine List. For 94 (20.8 per cent) of the suspended officers whose exact salaries were not on the list, a median salary of $103,035 was used in the calculation, based on labour data from Statistics Canada on police income from the same period. CBC then multiplied the number of days an officer was suspended by their estimated daily earnings. 

We found 25 suspension cases in which officers weren't named publicly (5.5 per cent). In 38 cases (8.4 per cent), suspension outcomes were not disclosed. In one case, only the year in which the suspension began was provided.

Research and data compilation: Julie Ireton and Malcolm Campbell (Oct. 2023 April 2024)

Data verification & analysis: Julie Ireton & Valerie Ouellet (Jan. April 2024)
 

CORRECTION | A previous version of this story said Waterloo police answered many but not all of the questions posed by CBC. In fact, Waterloo police did answer all the questions.