Pubdate: Tue, 19 Jun 2012
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2012 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Author: Peter Small
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?236 (Corruption - Outside U.S.)

FRAUD CHARGES PART OF EVIDENCE NOT HEARD BY JURY IN DRUG COP CORRUPTION TRIAL

Four of five former drug squad officers on trial in the city's 
largest cop corruption case were previously charged with defrauding 
the Toronto police force.

For the sake of trial fairness, however, references to these 
so-called "Fink Fund" allegations were not heard by a jury that began 
deliberations Tuesday.

Raymond Pollard, 48, Joseph Miched, 53, Steven Correia, 45, Ned 
Maodus, 49, and their former boss, John Schertzer, 54, are variously 
charged with conspiracy to attempt to obstruct justice, perjury, 
extortion, theft and assault.

The former members of the elite Team 3 of Central Field Command drug 
squad were charged by a Toronto police Special Task Force in 2004. 
Their trial began Jan. 16.

The jury did not hear, however, that on Nov. 22, 2000 Pollard, 
Miched, Correia and Schertzer were charged - along with four other 
officers - with theft, fraud, forgery and breach of trust in their 
use of the police "Fink Fund," a cash reserve to pay informants.

Those charges were stayed on Feb. 13, 2002 because the Crown feared 
they would compromise the larger investigation into the allegations 
now before the jury.

The first formal charges against any of the defendants - Schertzer, 
Maodus, Miched and Correia - were internal disciplinary allegations in 1998.

A Toronto police complaint investigator alleged two drug suspects had 
been unjustly detained, strip-searched and their homes searched 
without a warrant in October 1997.

However, a hearing officer dismissed those charges on a time-related 
technicality.

The jury also did not hear that Maodus - who along with Schertzer is 
charged with assaulting pot dealer Christopher Quigley - has a 
previous conviction for assault.

In 2007, he was given a conditional sentence after pleading guilty to 
assault causing bodily harm, pointing a firearm and uttering threats 
based on complaints from a woman who cannot be identified.

Maodus was charged in this case after OPP tactical response officers 
arrested him at his Orangeville-area home in March 2002. There they 
found weapons and drugs: four tablets of ecstasy, 3.5 grams of heroin 
and 45.5 grams of cocaine.

But a judge later excluded the drugs and weapons from a trial, ruling 
the OPP breached Maodus' Charter rights by making a warrantless entry 
on to his property, cutting his phone wires, flattening his car tires 
and strip-searching him in his driveway.

At the time, Special Task Force investigator Bryce Evans got wind of 
Maodus' arrest.

As OPP officer Jill Manser prepared an application for a search 
warrant to look for weapons in his home, Evans asked if STF 
investigators could tag along on her search so he could look for 
property belonging to the Toronto police.

Alternately, the OPP could bring the goods out of Maodus' house for 
Toronto police to examine, he suggested.

The OPP officer rebuffed his overtures as improper but promised to 
keep an eye out for Toronto police property.

After her search, the Special Task Force executed its own warrant and 
found 67 police memo books that Maodus was keeping in his basement, 
despite being under the chief's orders to surrender at least 17 of them.

Maodus tried to exclude the notebooks from the trial, arguing they 
had been obtained through an improper search. Justice Gladys Pardu 
agreed his rights were breached, but admitted the notebooks 
nonetheless, ruling that excluding them would come at too high a cost 
to justice.

In addition, the jury did not hear that in 2008, while on bail for 
the charges in the case now before the jury, Maodus was fined $1,500 
for soliciting a woman for prostitution - a Toronto undercover police officer.

The jury also did not hear bizarre evidence that, starting in April 
2005, investigators in the cop corruption probe were sent on a wild 
goose chase looking into what appears to be phony evidence planted 
against Schertzer.

A short, anonymous list of foreign bank accounts purportedly 
belonging to the retired veteran detective found its way to the 
Special Task Force. An "asset tracing" investigation was begun, but 
the Crown later determined that the information was false.
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