An Ontario widow searching for answers about why the police misconduct in her husband’s death was deemed “not serious” had her day in an Oshawa courtroom on Tuesday as her lawyer urged a panel of judges to require the Ontario Provincial Police hold a hearing in the case.
The judges peppered a police lawyer with questions about why Courtney D’Arthenay seemed to get cut out of the the process during her complaint that a speeding officer accidentally struck and killed her husband, and was only provided a boilerplate explanation for why.
“The heading for your section is ‘Public complaints.” It starts with the public, doesn’t it?” asked Justice Sean O’Brien, speaking to OPP Lawyer Jason Tam.
The Justice was responding to assertions by the OPP that this stage of the complaints process against officers in Ontario is “a discipline process in an employment matter between an employer and an employee.”
When it comes to what rights the complainant should have at that stage, Tam argued, “Their rights are minimal.”
The hearing came almost four years after D’Arthenay’s husband Tyler Dorzyk was killed in September 2020 as he crossed a road in Midland, Ont. in the dark and the rain. The driver, Const. Jaimee McBain, was found to have been speeding in a section of the road where the speed limit dropped temporarily.
D’Arthenay complained, and an investigation by the Office of the Independent Police Review Director found there were serious grounds to believe McBain and another officer had committed misconduct.
But the OPP determined that misconduct was “not of a serious nature” and so D’Arthenay didn’t have a right to a hearing.
The letter didn’t give an explanation, beyond a generic list of factors that the decision makers could consider.
“I just didn’t understand it,” D’Arthenay said outside the courthouse.
“I think shocked is the best word.”
It wasn’t the first time: a CTV News investigation found 20 letters sent to complainants where the OPP repeated the same paragraph word-for-word, once two times, in cases from neglect of duty to unlawful use of force.
D’Arthenay’s lawyer, Justin Safayeni, said he hopes the judges will see that sending complainants’ families form letters isn’t good enough.
“We are hopeful that what the court says will send a strong message not only to the OPP, but to other police forces that when they’re making these kinds of determinations, at the very least, they need to transparently explain themselves,” he said.
The lawyer representing McBain, James Girvin, said she wanted to apologize for the terrible accident.
“There isn’t a day that goes by that she doesn’t think about this. And she is going to, through myself, apologize on the record and provider her condolences,” Girvin said.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association intervened in the case, with lawyer Will McDowell telling the court that the public needs to be considered in police misconduct hearings.
“It’s a situation that has to change,” he said. “There’s a duty to explain why these things happened, and if there’s no discipline, why there’s no discipline.”