Action officers back in court

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Four officers on trial for writing false provincial offence tickets heard from another of their alleged victims in a Hamilton courtroom today. These are officers who walked, or rode bikes or horses in their downtown beat in 2014, the time of the alleged offences. They are supposed to give provincial offence tickets when they see an infraction like panhandling close to traffic or drinking alcohol in public. Often court has heard the same people are always getting tickets, people who don’t care and have no means to pay them. The allegation is that these officers were writing tickets sometimes after just seeing an infraction while they were watching surveillance cameras from inside the station and they weren’t bothering to hand a copy of the ticket to the offender.

David Vaughan appeared to be aiming for laughs the moment he entered court, loudly wishing everyone a good morning and pretending to steal the Bible after swearing to tell the truth and then, asking for beer instead of water on the witness stand. He then pointed at Constable Bhupesh Galati in court and said he didn’t want to get him in trouble. He also thought he recognized the other three officers on trial, Daniel Williams, Shawn Smith and Stephen Travale. After testifying, Vaughan told reporters he’d be upset if officers were, as alleged, writing his name on tickets without talking to him.

Some witnesses in this trial are said to owe 10’s of thousands in fines, which would be a problem if say, they wanted to get a drivers’ license. The next witness was Constable Ed Penner, who was in the mounted police unit with the accused Shawn Smith in 2014 and also wrote many tickets, often from the back of his horse. Writing while on horseback is challenging, he said. Penner testified that if people refused the tickets he was writing, he would just throw out their copy and file the other copies. He saw Smith write plenty of provincial offence tickets too, but never one not warranted, he said.

Officers were asked to set goals for themselves, including the number of tickets they would issue every month but Penner says they never talked about falsifying tickets to make the monthly quotas. Absolutely not, he told the court.

Another officer, Staci Tyldesley, is also implicated in this fake ticket scheme but she’s opted to be tried by a jury, so she will be tried separately and she’s expected to testify for the crown when this case resumes tomorrow morning.