Two more reasons to mistrust police

Public confidence in policing has been shaken like a rag doll in a week where one senior Toronto officer is fighting to retain her rank at a disciplinary hearing and another veteran Toronto officer has been found guilty in criminal court of stealing from dead people.

- ROSIE DIMANNO

Public confidence in the Toronto Police Service has been further shaken this week, writes Rosie DiManno.

Both are severe breaches of trust. Both have brought the Toronto Police Service into disrepute. Both have smeared the reputation of the police force that employs them.

Supt. Stacy Clarke, "deeply sorry," had already pleaded guilty to seven counts of misconduct under Ontario's Police Services Act for providing confidential interview questions to six Black officers she'd been mentoring in advance of their exam for promotion to sergeant.

Const. Boris Borissov has been criminally convicted of stealing a luxury watch and credit cards from a suicide victim in one case, an apparent natural death in another, possessing and driving a stolen car and misusing police databases in what court heard sounded very much like a scheme to obtain vehicles by fraud, with an accomplice, to resell.

The comeuppance for Clarke, after closing arguments on Friday, won't be delivered until possibly midsummer. At the hearing, her character was vouched for by former police chief Mark Saunders, among others, and scores of community supporters attended daily. Clarke has explained that, in a flash of desperation she profoundly regrets, she'd been trying to help level the playing field for Black officers within an institution historically beset by career-limiting anti-Black racism. There was no profit in the cheating for her.