Orillia OPP officer convicted of assaulting woman during arrest

[Michael Jack]

OPP Const. Bailey Nicholls must also complete 150 hours of community service

An Orillia OPP officer convicted of assaulting a woman outside a holding cell has been handed a suspended sentence along with 15 months of probation.

Const. Bailey Nicholls will also have to complete 150 hours of community service as part of her sentence, handed down by Justice John Olver on April 4 in a Collingwood courtroom.

Following the sentencing, the Ontario Provincial Police Association — the association that represents the OPP’s uniformed and non-uniformed employees — announced it would file an appeal of Nicholls’ conviction on her behalf

Nicholls was charged by the province’s Special Investigations Unit in January 2021 and was found guilty in October 2023 of assault causing bodily harm.

In levying the sentence, Olver said he weighed the options of a suspended sentence and a conditional sentence of six months, noting the suspended sentence was a “fitting balance” that demonstrated the need for the public to see an appropriate administration of justice.

Shannon Hoffman had been brought to the police detachment after being arrested for public intoxication in September 2019.

She was instructed by officers to remove her jewelry prior to going into a holding cell. Nicholls became impatient, and forcibly tore off Hoffman’s necklace after she made two unsuccessful attempts to unclasp it.

While trying to take off her rings, the situation escalated to the point where Nicholls grabbed Hoffman by the throat and pushed her into the cell bars. Hoffman later required stitches to close a head wound.

The Crown had been seeking a conditional sentence of 12-to-15 months, given Nicholl’s personal circumstances of being a new mother.

Defence counsel Mike Miller asked for a conditional discharge, or a suspended sentence with probation.

Some of Nicholl’s family members were in the courtroom for the sentencing, along with several members of the Ontario Provincial Police Association (OPPA).

Following the sentencing, Nicholls got into the back of a vehicle driven by an OPPA member.

Olver reviewed a number of mitigating factors in his decision, noting Nicholls didn’t have any prior disciplinary issues and volunteered for several community organizations.

He also noted the 24 letters of reference provided to the court by the constable’s supporters and the “overlapping themes of honesty, compassion and empathy.”

However, Olver said, those letters were “a contrast to how (Nicholls) had conducted herself,” and that he found it difficult to reconcile an incident that appeared to be a “complete aberration of her character.”

Police officers, Olver said, “are human beings, like everyone else, and are subject to lapses of judgment.

“There is an expectation that they are to be accountable to their conduct, both good and bad.”

Olver noted aggravating factors in his sentencing, including the power imbalance between Nicholls and Hoffman, the impact on the victim and her family, as well as Nicholl’s efforts to minimize the offence, both in her testimony during the trial and through the investigation by the SIU.

The OPP’s Professional Standards Branch is also reviewing the complaint against Nicholls, and is waiting for the outcome of the criminal proceedings.

https://www.simcoe.com/news/crime/a-fit ... 7065c.html

[Michael Jack]

Constable Bailey Nicholls of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) was handed a suspended sentence after being convicted of assaulting an Orillia woman during an arrest more than four years ago - a sentence that will likely save her job in law enforcement.

Justice John Olver found Nicholls guilty of assault causing bodily harm in October. He admonished the officer, saying that were it not for her having a one-year-old boy to care for, along with other circumstances, she would likely have been sentenced to 30 to 45 days behind bars for her conduct.

The judge also told Nicholls, "If there is not a lesson in all of this for you, then maybe you should not be a police officer."

Security video released from inside a holding cell in 2019 revealed the interaction between Nicholls and a 43-year-old woman arrested for public intoxication.

Nicholls grew increasingly frustrated with the woman as she tried to remove her jewelry and became physical with her, including breaking her necklace, grabbing her throat, and forcefully pushing her head into cell bars, resulting in the woman sustaining a head injury requiring five staples.

Olver criticized Nicholls for providing misleading and conflicting accounts of the incident, failing to document it properly, and obstructing the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) probe. The judge highlighted the pivotal role of the surveillance footage in holding Nicholls accountable for her actions.

The defence maintains Nicholls acted out of fear for her safety.

Nicholls was placed on 15 months of probation, ordered to undergo impulse control or anger management counselling, and complete remedial use-of-force training. Additionally, she can't have contact with the victim, must provide her DNA for the criminal database, and fulfill 150 hours of community service.

The OPP Association intends to appeal the guilty verdict, asserting Nicholls' innocence and challenging the judge's interpretation of evidence and law. The association says Nicholls did not use excessive force and should be exonerated.

Justice Olver emphasized the breach of public trust and the seriousness of Nicholls' actions, underscoring the need for accountability within law enforcement.

In an email to CTV News, the OPP stated, "We recognize that it can be deeply troubling when a police officer is convicted of or even accused of a criminal offence. The OPP is a very large service, and serious breaches of the law or professional standards by our members are rare. We hold our officers to the highest standards of professionalism and are committed to ensuring that we maintain the public's trust."

With the criminal proceedings concluded, Nicholls could face further disciplinary action under the Police Services Act.

https://barrie.ctvnews.ca/opp-officer-c ... -1.6834053

[Michael Jack]

A hot-tempered OPP officer has narrowly escaped with her badge after being convicted of assaulting an Orillia woman in 2019.

OPP Const. Bailey Nicholls was given a suspended sentence in connection with the beatdown, CTV News Barrie reports.

That break will likely save the combustible constable’s law enforcement career.

In 2019, Nicholls was captured on security video having a violent interaction with a 43-year-old woman who had been arrested for public intoxication. But the young cop grew increasingly frustrated with her charge as she attempted to remove her jewelry.

Nicholls then became physical with the woman, breaking her necklace, grabbing her by the throat, and slamming her head into cell bars. The woman suffered a head injury requiring five staples.

The young cop was convicted last October of assault causing bodily harm. Justice John Olver said Nicholls caught a break because she has a toddler son, otherwise she would have been looking at 30-45 days in the slammer.

“If there is not a lesson in all of this for you, then maybe you should not be a police officer,” the judge told her, CTV reported.

The jurist also lambasted Nicholls for her misleading and conflicting accounts of the encounter and obstructing the SIU investigation. But he added the surveillance video told the tale of the tape.

Her lawyers claimed that Nicholls acted out of fear.

Instead of jail, Nicholls faces 15 months of probation and has been ordered to take impulse control or anger management counselling, along with complete remedial use-of-force training. In addition, she can’t have contact with the victim, must provide her DNA and perform 150 hours of community service.

Her union plans to appeal the guilty verdict, CTV News reported. The OPPA claims the judge misinterpreted the evidence and Nicholls should be cleared.

The OPP said in a statement: “We recognize that it can be deeply troubling when a police officer is convicted of or even accused of a criminal offence. The OPP is a very large service, and serious breaches of the law or professional standards by our members are rare. We hold our officers to the highest standards of professionalism and are committed to ensuring that we maintain the public’s trust.”

Now, Nicholls could be facing more woes under the Police Services Act.

Another female OPP officer landed in hot water last October when she allegedly broke into her ex-boyfriend’s Barrie home and battered his new gal pal, leaving the woman in “terror.”

Const. Amanda Farrell was allegedly on duty at the time of the alleged incident. None of the charges have been proven.

Chantelle Stamcos told CTV News of the September 2022 incident: “It was 15 minutes of terror. It was very scary. She was in full uniform, hand on her weapon most of the time.”

The cop allegedly used the door’s security keypad, entered the house and confronted her ex-beau and his new flame. Farrell reportedly began yelling at Stamcos.

Farrell later claimed that her ex-beau allegedly assaulted her during the time they dated. CTV reported that charges were filed but later dropped.

Farrell was later charged with break-and-enter with intent to commit an indictable offence, two counts of assault, criminal harassment, mischief, and forcible confinement.

Last October, the OPP said in a statement to CTV: “We cannot comment on the matter as it deals with intimate partner violence. As the matter is now before the courts, it would be inappropriate to comment.”

https://torontosun.com/news/provincial/ ... 19-assault

[Michael Jack]

An Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officer is coming forward to share how he stumbled across a video of a troubling jailhouse assault, setting into motion a chain of events that would eventually result in a conviction but would also prove devastating to his mental health.

Const. Charles Ostrom told CTV News he was accidentally exposed to the video of Const. Bailey Nicholls assaulting a woman in cells at OPP's Orillia detachment, after finding a report attached to the case wasn't accurate.

"It was as far from what I had read in the report as imaginable. I thought, 'I'm seeing a crime. I'm witnessing a crime.' Albeit four months later, but I'm witnessing a crime," Ostrom said in an interview.

Ostrom had already been off work in 2013 when he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with two suicide attempts in three weeks. He returned to work 14 months later on reduced duties, allowing him to stay away from anything traumatic.

If the report attached to the video had indicated the assault it contained, Ostrom said he would have avoided it. Instead, it sparked his PTSD and pushed him to report it, passing information to a retired officer that would make its way to the OPP Commissioner and the province's police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), he said.

The video would prove crucial to the conviction of Nicholls for assault causing bodily harm. Nicholls was given a suspended sentence on Thursday by Justice John Olver.

In the video, Nicholls can be seen getting increasingly frustrated with a woman who had been arrested at an Orillia bar. She breaks her necklace, grabs her throat, and pushes her head into the cell bars. The woman can be seen bleeding from the head – an injury that required five staples to close.

Olver found Nichols provided misleading and conflicting accounts of the incident and failed to document it properly. She was placed on 15 months' probation. The Ontario Provincial Police Association has said it plans to appeal the verdict.

Ostrom said he is still off work but believes the sentence is a crucial step in his return. He said he had seen other assaults on the job that weren't dealt with properly and is calling for change.

"I wasn't able to begin to heal until there was the appropriate accountability," he said.

The number of mental stress injury claims at the OPP has risen from 50 in 2015 to a high of 180 in 2019 and has dropped back to 152 in 2023 – still some three times as many, WSIB statistics show.

The amount of benefit payments across all types of injuries shows a rise from about $6.4 million in 2013 to $20 million in 2023, according to the WSIB statistics.

Former OPP Commissioner Chris Lewis said the force is much more open to mental health claims than it has been, and more people are taking advantage of them.

"Does this mean they are forgetting about the stigma and are bravely putting their hands up and trying to seek help in bigger numbers? Or does this mean that there are more numbers overall to put their hands up?" Lewis said.

The OPP said it has worked to destigmatize mental health in the last few years and is trying to promote a culture that focuses on the well-being of its members.

Ostrom wants the OPP to take mental health concerns more seriously and listen to officers' concerns.

"I would like to see it stop. I would like to see every member of the OPP be able to hold their head high and have the dignity that they are entitled to have as a human being," he said.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/opp-officer- ... -1.6835970

[Michael Jack]

An Ontario Provincial Police officer has spoken out about video of a jailhouse assault that triggered his PTSD and prompted him to report a fellow cop to the Special Investigations Unit.

Const. Charles Ostrom told CTV News he stumbled on a video of Const. Bailey Nicholls assaulting a woman in a cell at OPP’s Orillia detachment, after finding a report attached to the case wasn’t accurate.

“It was as far from what I had read in the report as imaginable. I thought, ‘I’m seeing a crime. I’m witnessing a crime.’ Albeit four months later, but I’m witnessing a crime,” Ostrom said in an interview with CTV.

He had been off work in 2013 when he was diagnosed with PTSD and attempted suicide twice. He returned to work 14 months later on reduced duties, allowing him to stay away from anything traumatic.

Ostrom said he would have avoided the video if he knew it would spark his PTSD.

It pushed him to report the incident to a retired officer who passed the information to the OPP Commissioner before it was handed to the SIU.

The video was critical to the conviction of Nicholls for assault causing bodily harm.

She was given a suspended sentence on Thursday by Justice John Olver.

In the video, Nicholls is seen with a woman who was arrested at a bar.

Nicholls is seen pushing the woman into jail cell bars causing an injury that needed five staples.

Olver said Nichols gave misleading accounts of the incident and failed to document it properly.

She was sentenced to 15 months of probation, which her union — Ontario Provincial Police Association (OPPA) — plans to appeal.

Ostrom said he wants the OPP to take mental health concerns seriously.

“I would like to see it stop. I would like to see every member of the OPP be able to hold their head high and have the dignity that they are entitled to have as a human being,” he told CTV.

The OPPA says it stands behind members.

“We have a duty to represent all of our members, which we are doing, and will continue to do,” OPPA spokesman Scott Mills said Saturday. “The case in question is being appealed.”

https://torontosun.com/news/provincial/ ... fellow-cop

[Michael Jack]

A retired Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) sergeant is sharing the story of how he tipped off the provincial force to the existence of a troubling video of a jailhouse assault by an officer, in a frustrating experience he says demonstrates a blind spot in police accountability.

But Ret. Sgt. Robin Moore said he was told in a letter by OPP brass there wasn’t even misconduct – even though years later a judge would convict the officer, Bailey Nicholls, of a crime: assault causing bodily harm.

“It was actually surreal. It was hard to believe that this was going on,” Moore told CTV News in an interview, where he went public for the first time about the lengthy ordeal.

The saga began on Sept 7, 2019, when Const. Bailey Nichols can be seen on surveillance video grabbing a woman arrested for public intoxication by the neck and shoving her head into cell bars at the Orillia detachment.

The incident wasn’t reported to the police watchdog, the SIU, at the time, even though the woman was bleeding and needed five staples.

The OPP have said that the woman got medical assistance and extent of her injuries weren’t clear to officers at the time, and have said subsequent internal investigations didn’t get the information necessary to report to the SIU or to allege misconduct.

Moore said he heard about the video from a contact inside the police service, Const. Charles Ostrom. Ostrom has already told CTV News about how harmful it was for him to see the video, which he said didn’t match incident reports. Ostrom said he tried to report the incident internally, but it didn’t go anywhere.

“There is a fear of reprisals in that organization, if you speak out,” Moore said. “So he would have been punished. But they couldn’t touch me."

Moore said he e-mailed OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique about the incident in April 2020, concerned that the incident had been badly handled and was being brushed under the rug.

“That’s a crime scene that should have been locked down immediately. And then the notifications made from there,” he said.

About a month and a half later, he got a letter from the professional standards bureau commander, Chief Supt. Marty Kearns.

“I can advise that in my capacity as the Bureau Commander of the Professional Standards Bureau, a review of this incident has been conducted and I am satisfied that all officers involved did not commit misconduct,” Kearns wrote in the letter, dated May 29, 2020.

Kearns has since been promoted to deputy commissioner of the OPP.

When CTV News asked the OPP how Kearns came to that conclusion, spokesperson A/S/Sgt. Robert Simpson said, “The initial decisions made regarding misconduct were based on the information that was available at the time… The information regarding the severity of the injury did not meet the threshold for SIU notification.”

Simpson said at that point, the OPP notified the SIU regarding the incident, but the agency did not invoke their mandate.

Moore believed the short timeline in their response was a sign investigators weren’t taking the case seriously so he also turned to the SIU. By July, the agency received information about the severity of the woman’s injuries and invoked its mandate at that point.

“The OPP was not provided this information,” Simpson said.

It’s not clear how much more information a police force would need beyond the video to find a reason to probe more deeply, said University of Toronto Criminologist Patrick Watson.

“It has to be a very, very high threshold of threat for a police officer to use that kind of hold or restraint on an individual,” Watson said.

Watson said the case demonstrates the need for an independent agency to investigate, which the province has in the form of the SIU.

“[The OPP] believed it reflected reasonable conduct. And I think this does raise issues for concern about the OPP interpretation of events versus a citizen’s interpretation of events,” he said.

The criminal case isn’t over – Nicholls has said she feared for her safety in the moment, and the Ontario Provincial Police Association has signalled its intention to appeal.

The OPP says because the SIU invoked its mandate, it will review the incident, and isn’t ruling out further discipline for any officer involved.

Moore said he thinks the OPP brass should have seen earlier what he saw in that video – and what a judge saw too.

“They were trying to make it go away. They wanted me to go away, and I wasn’t going away,” he said.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/opp-brass-fu ... -1.6869790

[Michael Jack]

The actions of OPP officers including a deputy commissioner are now under the microscope after a CTV News investigation looked into how a constable who attacked a prisoner in a jail cell never faced misconduct charges even though she was later convicted of a crime.

The OPP dismissed any sanctions against Const. Bailey Nicholls after investigating for about a month and a half in the spring of 2020, and didn’t appear to discover a surveillance video of Nicholls grabbing the intoxicated woman and pushing her into cell bars.

OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique has now called for an independent investigation, said spokesperson A/S/Sgt Rob Simpson.

“To ensure transparency, Commissioner Carrique has requested that the Niagara Regional Police Service conduct a review of the OPP’s organizational response to the matter involving Provincial Constable Bailey Nicholls,” Simpson said.

The review comes after a series of CTV News stories outlined how the police watchdog the SIU wasn’t notified at the time of the assault in September of 2019, even though the woman was bleeding and needed five staples.

Another OPP Constable, Charles Ostrom, stumbled across the video of the assault while on desk duty for PTSD. He told CTV News he never would have watched it had the reports on file accurately described what happened.

Ostrom said he tried to raise alarms, but his efforts went nowhere. The incident sparked his PTSD symptoms and sent him back to treatment.

“It was as far from what I had read as imaginable,” said Ostrom in an interview in April. “I’m witnessing a crime.”

He told retired OPP Sgt Robin Moore, who in April of 2020 took the matter up directly with the OPP Commissioner, who tasked then-Chief Superintendent Marty Kearns with the file, who was then the commander of the force’s professional standards bureau.

“I can advise that in my capacity as the Bureau Commander of the Professional Standards Bureau, a review of this incident has been conducted and I am satisfied that all officers involved did not commit misconduct,” Kearns wrote in a letter to Moore dated May 29, 2020.

The OPP has said that it called in the SIU, but the agency did not invoke its mandate, and has said that the initial decisions regarding misconduct were based on “the information that was available at the time… the information regarding the severity of the injury did not meet the threshold for SIU notification.”

Moore turned to the SIU as well, which ultimately brought a charge against Bailey Nicholls, and she was convicted.

Kearns is now a deputy commissioner. When asked about the case at a news conference on police efforts to combat car thefts, he did not address it, instead saying, “Thank you, we’re here to talk about the success of Project Titanium.”

Documents obtained by CTV News show Nicholls is now facing a misconduct charge of discreditable conduct, “in that you were found guilty of an indictable criminal offense.”

Ostrom is still in treatment at Homewood Health Care. One factor in his condition is something called moral injury, which is a response to actions that go against strongly held beliefs.

Dr. Hygge Schiekle, a psychologist and researcher at Homewood Health Centre, said moral injury is common in law enforcement among front-line officers, but it can also come from behaviour inside a police service.

“Things where they didn’t do something, by values, they believe they should have done. Conversely, in terms of organizations, they can feel betrayed either by their colleagues or the organization as a whole, for the same two reasons: by things they did or didn’t do,” said Schiekle.

The number of mental stress injury claims at the OPP has risen from 50 in 2015 to a high of 180 in 2019, and dropped back to 152 in 2023, resulting in benefit payments for all injuries to about $20 million in 2023, according to the WSIB.

Ostrom intends to return to work and educate other officers about PTSD and the importance of mental health care. He was featured in a recent video from Homewood Health Centre.

"Continued recovery is essential, integral to remaining well and that it is a marathon, it's not a sprint. It has to be as much a part of your life, that mindset, that I'm going to keep up doing what I know I need to do. And I share that with everyone," he said.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/opp-commissi ... -1.6961899