# Officer Sues Toronto Force



## kwflatbed (Dec 29, 2004)

*PHINJO GOMBU*
_Toronto Star_










A 34-year-old police officer has launched a $2.5 million lawsuit against the Toronto Police Service, alleging negligence and malice in the way the force's internal affairs unit investigated and charged him over criminal harassment and firearm offences.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, alleges that the charges against Const. Michael Henry, all of which were withdrawn or thrown out by a judge, were actually an attempt at retribution for a failed business venture of his in which five fellow officers had invested.

The statement of claim contains allegations that have not been proven in court.

Police officials would not speak about the lawsuit. "We don't comment on ongoing litigation," said police spokesperson Mark Pugash.

The 38-page suit, filed by lawyer Louis Sokolov, outlines a messy series of events that preceded Henry's arrest 11/2 years ago. He was strip-searched at the time and held in solitary confinement for two weeks as he awaited a bail hearing.

Henry alleges police investigators were negligent and that the investigation was conducted with malice, resulting in a violation of his Charter rights.

The claim details an internal affairs fraud investigation against Henry last year, which resulted in no charge being laid, and criminal harassment charges involving a female officer that were withdrawn at the start of the trial.

"I know of no other similar case where a police officer was subjected to this kind of treatment by fellow officers," Sokolov said. "For no good reason, an innocent man was thrown in jail, kept under house arrest and had his reputation and career destroyed."

At the heart of the claim is the suggestion that internal affairs investigated Henry because the wife of one of the police officers who invested in his failed computer software venture worked alongside the unit's investigators. In his statement of claim, Henry alleges that the police officer, angry that the venture had failed, complained to internal affairs that Henry had stolen money from the company.

Henry says he was notified of the fraud probe but was neither questioned nor charged.

Instead, the claim states, Henry was arrested by internal affairs in connection with other incidents involving alleged harassment of a female officer and two instances where he allegedly handled a firearm carelessly and pointed it at fellow officers.

The criminal harassment charge was laid at about the same time as the fraud probe took place, though the female officer had told fellow police she didn't think she would be harmed, the claim states.

The suit claims she and Henry were friends, and that she was not the source of the investigation. The statement also claims that investigators didn't bother to properly investigate Henry's relationship with the female officer, including an email she wrote indicating that they might date if they didn't work together in the same division.

The statement of claim suggests that senior officers and internal affairs were told, falsely, about a conversation in which the woman's roommate and another officer allegedly discussed Henry's "stalking" of the female officer and her fear of him.

The suit alleges that investigators, when interviewing the female officer and her roommate, asked leading questions to suit their own purposes, and acted with "tunnel vision."

In the course of their probe, the claim says, investigators heard about two other incidents involving Henry allegedly pointing a gun at fellow officers.

In both cases, the statement says, investigators began drafting arrest documents even before the "victims" had been interviewed.

In one instance, one of Henry's colleagues recalled how Henry had pointed a gun at him as he was wrapping up a routine traffic stop. Henry said he had accidentally bumped into his colleague while checking a weapon that had been malfunctioning. The victim officer had not complained at the time.

At trial, a judge threw the charge out, saying he believed Henry's version of events.

In the second gun charge, another of Henry's colleagues, a friend, told internal affairs investigators that he thought he had seen Henry's gun out of its holster one day inside a police cruiser. The claim states that he told investigators he didn't know if the gun had been pointed at him.

That second gun charge was withdrawn by investigators at the start of Henry's trial.


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