Alberta court upholds decisions to suspend two former Edmonton police officers without pay
CBC
An Alberta court has upheld suspensions without pay for two former Edmonton police officers — one with an alleged pattern of workplace sexual harassment and one accused of unlawful force in an off-duty assault of an Indigenous man.
The two men, along with a third former member of the force, applied for a judicial review of their 2022 suspensions.
The requests were dismissed for Scott Carter, a detective accused of assault, and Mark Coates, a sergeant accused of harassment, according to a Jan. 3 court decision from Court of King's Bench Justice James Neilson.
Neilson allowed the application from Richard Abbott, a former Edmonton Police Service staff sergeant who was taken off duty without pay over issues in complying with COVID-19 disclosure policies and a speech he made at a 2022 Freedom Convoy protest.
All three, none of whom still work for EPS, argued that the Edmonton police commission had failed to properly assess whether EPS Chief Dale McFee had found the "exceptional circumstances" necessary to order the suspensions without pay. The police commission has to review and confirm decisions to remove officers from duty without pay within 30 days.
Neilson's decision includes rarely disclosed details from the police chief's reasons for each suspension as well as the commission's subsequent internal reviews.
The judge said the commission shouldn't have confirmed Abbott's suspension because the oversight board failed to recognize McFee's reasoning was "based on a possible misapprehension of the facts and evidence."
But for Carter and Coates, the judge ruled McFee's reasons for relieving them from duty without pay were "clear, intelligible and justifiable."
Scott Carter was suspended without pay on Feb. 8, 2022. He had 25 years of experience with EPS at the time.
At issue was his alleged conduct on the night of July 6, 2021, while he was off duty having dinner with his wife at a downtown restaurant.
According to McFee's notice removing Carter from duty, the officer's wife said she saw someone tampering with her car across the street.
Carter reportedly went outside and confronted two Indigenous people, a teenage girl and a 34-year-old man, "who were just walking together in the vicinity." The chief's notice says Carter tackled the man, and the girl reported that she pulled out a knife to defend him, but the man held her back while trying to distance himself from the officer.
Two on-duty EPS officers stopped and came over to help end the altercation. According to McFee's notice, when one officer tried to pull Carter away, he turned around and shoved him, then tried to continue the assault. When the other officer tried to get between him and the man, Carter allegedly grabbed and pushed him while saying, "Don't you know who I am?"
Eventually, Carter identified himself as an EPS officer and reportedly told the officers that the two people on the street had interfered with his vehicle and the girl "pulled a knife" on him. More police arrived and arrested the pair.
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