The events began when Bonds was stopped by police for no reason on Rideau Street. They ran her name through their computer and nothing came up, so they told her to keep walking home.
But after a few steps, she turned back and asked the officers why they had bothered to stop her in the first place, and things took a rapid turn.
The officers then arrested her for public intoxication, but that arrest, according to Lajoie, was unlawful because she was not drunk — not even close, the judge ruled.
That was just the beginning,
Internal investigation now being conducted on the behaviour of the Officers involved. If I didn't know better and have supreme confidence in the police department's mental health testing I might be tricked into suspecting we have a wee bit of a sadistic bastard on our hands here.
A judge has condemned a handful of Ottawa police officers for subjecting a female prisoner to “an indignity” in a strip search of the young woman, who had her shirt and bra cut off by a male officer, only to be left partially clad in soiled pants in a jail cell for three hours.
Moments before Stacy Bonds, a 27-year-old theatrical make-up artist with no criminal record, was stripped of her clothes by Sgt. Steve Desjourdy, she was also the victim of “two extremely violent knee hits in the back by Special Constable (Melanie) Morris, and (had) her hair pulled back and her face shoved forward,” Justice Richard Lajoie said.
A police station videotape had captured the events of Sept. 26, 2008.
Lajoie made an oral ruling on Oct. 27, deciding to stay a charge against Bonds of assaulting police. In his ruling, the judge severely criticized the officers’ actions, saying “there is no reasonable explanation for Sgt. Desjourdy to have cut Ms. Bonds’ shirt and bra off, and there is no reason, apart from vengeance and malice, to have left Ms. Bonds in the cell for a period of three hours and 15 minutes partially clad and having soiled her pants, before she received what is called a blue suit.
“That is an indignity towards a human being and should be denounced.”
Desjourdy cut off Bonds’ shirt and bra with scissors after she was forced to the floor with a plastic riot shield in the police department’s booking room.
It’s not the first time Desjourdy has been under investigation. Days before this 2008 case, he kicked and Tasered a female prisoner in the cell block twice. In 2009, he pleaded guilty under the Police Act and was demoted for three months from sergeant to constable.
Yup a real gentleman that one, he has such a way with the ladies.....
2 comments:
Have you noticed how all the genuine cases of police misbehaviour (it looks like this is another, unless there's something we don't know) a key witness has been a CCTV camera? As long as there are credible privacy safeguards in place, I like CCTV: it's a great leveller against tyranny.
I think I see, you think having cameras everywhere is a valueable tool to keep the rulers in line by being witness when they act badly?
I need to go somewhere and bang my head on something softer..
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