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CBC News has learned that recent criminal charges against an Ottawa police officer relate to alleged intimate partner violence and involve a police-issued Glock pistol.
Kingston Police announced the charges against the Ottawa Police Service officer in late April.
Court records show he is charged with:
- Assault.
- Criminal harassment (threatening conduct and/or repeatedly following and/or watching/besetting).
- Careless storage of the restricted Glock pistol issued to him by Ottawa police.
- Careless use of his police-issued Glock.
The officer is not being named by CBC News in order to protect the identity of the alleged victim, who is a civilian member of the Ottawa Police Service.
Reached by phone last week, the accused officer’s lawyer Mark Wallace declined to comment.
‘Serious allegations’
The Ottawa Police Service wrote in a statement that it “became aware of serious allegations on March 24,” then arrested the officer and charged him.
Court records show he was arrested March 27 and was initially charged with assault and criminal harassment.
Ottawa police then “promptly referred the matter to Kingston Police for further investigation,” the force wrote.
The officer is suspended from duty with pay. The weapons charges were laid later on by Kingston Police after further investigation.
Asked if it had any message for the public — and its own members — in response to a recent wave of gender-based misconduct allegations within its ranks, the Ottawa Police Service declined to comment.
That misconduct includes alleged and founded inappropriate searches of databases by two officers for information about women they were sexually interested in, sexual assault and sexual harassment allegations by female college students against an Ottawa police sergeant who recently died by suicide, and a sexual assault allegation against the president of the Ottawa police union that’s being investigated by Ontario’s police watchdog.
Do you have information to share on this story, or about any other justice participant? Write in confidence to kristy.nease@cbc.ca or call her office landline at 613-288-6435.
You can also reach her using Signal, an end-to-end encrypted messaging platform. Contact kristyneasecbc.613 or search her landline number listed above.
If you would like to send information anonymously, you can use CBC’s encrypted SecureDrop system: https://www.cbc.ca/securedrop/ Send it to the attention of Kristy Nease, and make sure to remember your account name and password.
You can also create a Proton Mail account and write to kristyneasecbc@proton.me, ideally from behind a virtual private network on a trusted device using public Wi-Fi.
