A man arrested for drug crimes was racially profiled by the Ontario Provincial Police in Leamington, a judge of the Superior Court ruled, considering the evidence against him as a result.
Judge Martha A. Cook acquitted man for one of the charges after the crown prosecutors withdrew the second.
“This is not a nearby case,” Cook wrote in the decision published in December.
“The jurisprudence is consistent and clear … the anti-negral bias, whether implicit or of another type, must be denounced as anathema of the rule of law and the integrity of our justice system.”
The case dates back to December 2020, when OPP Melodie Gratton and Mitchell Smithson officers placed a black BMW for several minutes and followed the parking lot of a 7-eleven, according to judicial documents.
CBC does not name the driver because there are no pending charges against him.
There are no reasonable reasons to stop the driver: failure
The ruling pointed out that, according to the officers, the driver left his car and began walking towards the store, and arrested him so that they could perform a sobriety control under the road traffic law.
When asking the driver for his license, vehicle registration and insurance vouchers, the police said, they noticed what they thought it was cannabis in the car.
Then they cited the cannabis control law as reasons to search both the driver and the vehicle, discovering substances that believed they were cocaine crack, cocaine powder and oxycodone.
The driver and the passenger were accused of possession of a substance of Annex 1 with the purpose of traffic.
But Cook said the officers had no authority to detain the driver under the road traffic law because he was parked in a private parking at that time.
In addition, he said, they had no right to use their powers of customary law to detain people suspected of crimes because they were not right to suspect that the driver was affected.
“PC Gratton did not observe any problem with how the driver walked,” Cook wrote.
“She didn’t smell any alcohol to the driver’s breath while talking to her. He had no glassy eyes.”
The officers said they had followed the BMW because it was traveling slowly, but did not document the speed of the car, added the judge.
Without any reasonable basis to suspect that the driver had committed a crime, the actions of OPP officers violated their constitutional rights to be free of arbitrary detention, Cook said.
She dismissed as a claim of an unnecessary officer that she asked the driver for her license to verify her motor skills.
Cook described several differences between the treatment of the black driver and the treatment of his white passenger to help reach his conclusion of racial prejudice, saying that the officers:
- Prioritized to look for the driver on the passenger.
- I did not know where the passenger was during much of the stop, despite his concern declared for security.
- He requested assistance with a man in custody but never mentioned the passenger.
- He only arrested the passenger after the officer who joined them on the scene told them to do it.

“Having carefully considered all circumstances, I find that racial stereotypes on black crime and danger reported how the officers tried [the driver] In every step of his interaction with him, “the judge wrote.
The police had no reasonable reasons to arrest the driver, he said, because the evidence used to justify the arrest was seized as a result of an illegal detention.
OPP maintains the highest level of professionalism ‘
The crown denied that any of the stops, detention or search for man was contaminated by a racial or infringed profile in their rights of the letter.
CBC tried to comment from the officers through OPP and did not receive an answer.
An OPP spokesman told CBC that he is reviewing the decision and that “he does not approve of any form of profile that contravenes the Ontario Human Rights Code or the Charter of Rights.”
“We are still committed to defending the trust and trust of the communities we serve,” said the spokesman in a statement.
“We will continue to strive to maintain the highest level of professionalism, compassion and respect when serving the province of Ontario.”
The man’s lawyer in Cook’s decision said is “the right failure”, and praised that the trial was well reasoned and driven by fact.
“What I hope is that this is a learning opportunity and that our entire police, not only the OPP, has the opportunity to really evaluate why they are doing what they are doing,” said Patricia Brown.
“You should not feel that you cannot drive down the street in a good car … without being arrested by a police officer … it seems that it is something we should not have a conversation in 2025, but unfortunately we still are “
Brown’s client told CBC, through a text message from the lawyer, who is trying to recover his life after being unjustly attacked by officers who were supposed to serve and protect him, and have to borrow to pay his defense .
The expert says that the case is served as a learning opportunity
Danardo Jones, an associate law professor at the University of Windsor, studies the criminal procedure and race and law.
He said that it is time for the courts to hold the police for the racial profile because too often, they say in favor of the officers.
“Where a judge says: ‘Hey, it’s not even close. This was clearly racial profile’, [that] He tells you that this officer clearly did something that was very, very shameless, “Jones said.
He said the case will probably get a lot of interest from academics and could provide a teaching opportunity for police officers and those involved in the legal system.
“This case, in fact, is quite clear,” he said, “but I wonder how many clear cases have been lost because perhaps there is a certain amount of grace given to police officers, or perhaps because the lawyer Defender is poorly equipped to make the arguments. “
There have been efforts to provide professional development to lawyers on issues such as cultural competence and institutional bias, which could help them defend customers who face these cases, Jones said, but it is not clear if they have been effective.

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