COMPLAINTS AGAINST BAD COPS

Cops are no different than anyone else.  There are excellent cops,  good cops, bad cops and really rotten cops.

Some cities are plagued with really bad cops. Minneapolis is plagued with many bad cops. That police force has as many as 2,000 complaints filed against their cops.  And yet, its police force was still a rotten police force. 

It has 800 police officers. That could mean that each cop has a minimum of at least two complaints filed against him or her or some have many complaints against them like the cop who killed Floyd.  That cop  had 18 complaints against him yet he was still kept on the police force. After he killed Floyd, he was kicked off the force and is facing many years of imprisonment.  

I live by a policy that if anyone does me wrong and they don’t apologize to me for what they did to me, I punish them. Let me tell you how I punished four bad cops who did me wrong and were foolish enough to not apologize to me for what they did to me.    

A police sergeant in the area where I lived in the last century was stupid enough to put a notice on the detachment’s bulletin board that listed my name and my licence plate number and a warning to the cops in that detachment that I was not a friend of the police.  When I learned of that stupid act of that sergeant, I filed a complaint against him. As a direct result, his next promotion was subsequently delayed for the next five years because of that stupid act. Years later when an opening for the positon of the deputy police chief was published, his name was taken off the list of applicants because of the really stupid things he did while on the police force. He immediately resigned from the police force.  

 The next cop that did a stupid thing to me charged me with knocking out a retired boxer with my 18-inch flashlight. He knew that I used my fist after the former boxer grabbed me from behind because the ex-oxer’s wife and ahis adult daughter told the cop that I used my fist. I was acquitted and the judge chastised the ex-boxer and told him that he deserved what I did to him. I subsequently filed a complaint against the cop and his promotion was  also held up  for five years.

One day I was tailgated by a driver and he went through a red light at a high speed. I spoke to the officer in our town’s  detachment and he chose to do nothing about my complaint. I wrote the chief of police and asked him to remove that officer from our local detachment and put him on the road so that he could learn how to be a good cop. A week later, he was removed from that detachment and put on the road to learn how to be a good cop.   

I
n April, 1978, there was a big fire in Oakville, Ontario. I was on the scene hours after it started and because I knew the private investigator hired by the insurance company to investigate the cause of the fire and since we were both private investigators, he  hired me to conduct the investigation. I was told that a Canadian National Railways trainman ran into the building to warn everyone that sparks from their engine started a grass fire and the flames got into the rear of the building. Stored in the building were hundreds of 45-gallon barrels of oil. Everyone escaped and the building and everything in it was destroyed. I remember when I was nearby, I saw barrels of oil  shooting into the sky and exploding.

The trouble facing the insurance company was that no-one could prove that the man who came into the building was with the CNR Railway and of course the railway denied liability. My job was to find evidence that the man who warned the employees in the storage building was in fact with the CNR. All I had to go on was that he wore an orange toque on his head and that he was seen talking with the fire chief on the scene. The fire chief and the CNR denied that such a man was talking to the fire chief.

It took me a week to solve the problem. I went to hundreds of homes around the neighbourhood and spoke with everyone that was on the scene. I looked at their photos of the fires and even developed their film for some of them. Then at the end of the week, I found a slide taken by a spectator which showed a man wearing a CNR uniform standing next to the fire chief. He was also wearing an orange toque on his head. The case was solved and the CNR subsequently paid eleven million dollars in damages as a settlement.

While I was at the fire scene when it was ongoing, I was told by an obnoxious cop, Thomas  Sinkovitch who was a 59 year-old constable  with the Halton Police Department to get out of the area. I got permission to remain and then I later complained about the obnoxious cop that evening. He read my complaint and charged me (unbeknown to me until a week had passed by.) with obstruct police for refusing to get out of the area as per the cop’s order.  The trial lasted one day a month for five months. The issue was whether or not he had the right order a newspaperman to get out of the area of a disaster. I was also a syndicated newspaper columnist at that time.

The crown attorney was a decent guy who would always call me and my lawyer into his office to discuss his next strategy after the trial was concluded for the day. Because the judge erred in law ( The then attorney General of Ontario later confirmed that.)  I was convicted and given a $200 fine. Later, I was pardoned by the Federal cabinet on the same day as my birthday.

Seven years later, Thomas Sinkovitch was appointed as the chief of police of Strathroy, a small city in Southern Ontario. 

   

I have always believed that the higher a person gets in life, the harder that person’s fall will be and that is why I waited seven years before I punished him.  

I decided to go after this obnoxious cop who had lied throughout his testimony. Nothing I was trying to punish him was working. The Ontario Police Commission was ignoring my complaint. Later I discovered why. It was that Commission that recommended that Thomas Sinkovitch get the appointment as chief of police of Strathroy, Ontario.

I complained to the  provincial The ombudsman of Ontario who then told the Ontario Police Commission that  if it didn’t investigate my complaint, the ombudsman would do it and make its findings public.  The Commission investigated my complaint and told the small city’s council that they should fire Sinkovich.

     
 While Sinkovitch was the chief of police in Strathroy years after he framed me, he was pissing off the citizens and officials of that city so when I learned of it, I rode in the town with guns blazing so to speak and gave the mayor everything I had on  their police chief.               

As soon as I returned from the United Nations crime Congress being held in Milan in in Italy in 1985 in which I was an invited speaker, the  town’s city council scheduled a hearing in a few days  after I returned to Ontario. I agreed to attend the hearing and denounce Sinkovitch. Wild horses couldn't have stopped me from riding into that town.

Just before I spoke, three of the police chief's friends spoke and praised him. The Ontario Police Commission Report (given to me days earlier by one of the three Commissioners) said that he acted as if he was Caesar.

When it was my turn to speak, I turned to the hundred or so citizens attending the hearing and said, "I find myself in a situation, not unlike that of Mark Anthony when he was addressing the citizens of Rome upon the demise of Caesar.”

I then pointed to Sinkovitch and said, “I will quote “Mark Anthony. I am not here to praise Caesar. I am here to bury Caesar."

The place exploded. Many of the citizens stood up. There was clapping and whistling.

Within an hour, the chief of police was fired without pension. He later went to court and was awarded one' years salary. The last I heard of him was that he was a security guard somewhere in Ontario.

Ever since, no police officer in the Province Ontario has done anything to me that would piss me off.  I treat police officers with respect and they also treat me with respect.