The ethics board has already found that officers did not conduct a thorough investigation and abused their power
Two police officers from the Service de police de la Ville de Gatineau have been suspended for arresting Radio-Canada journalist Antoine Trépanier in 2018 while he was looking into a source for a story.
Benoit McMahon, an administrative judge, gave the police ethics board Verdict Monday.Sgt. Mathieu La Salle Boudria was suspended for 10 days, and Lt. Paul Lafontaine was suspended for 12 days.
The officers were accused of breaking two parts of the Quebec police officers’ code of ethics.
In December, the board decided that the officers who were involved in the arrest didn’t do a full investigation and used their power in a bad way.
In a public decision, it was said that Boudria “messed up” his investigation and didn’t do enough to understand what was going on at the time of the arrest. It was also found that Lafontaine had agreed to the arrest even though he knew his colleague had cut corners.
During a journalistic investigation, they were caught
On March 13, 2018, Trépanier was arrested after Yvonne Dubé, who runs the Outaouais branch of Big Brothers Big Sisters, filed a complaint with Gatineau police.
Trepanier was looking into Dubé after he found out that she had lied about being a lawyer and worked as one without a license.
On March 12, Trépanier called Dubé and asked her for a formal interview.
Dubé turned down the interview at the last minute, even though he had agreed to do it at first. The next day, Trépanier sent her an email asking to change the time of the interview.
Dubé then called the Gatineau police and said that Trépanier was harassing him illegally. Trépanier was arrested that night.
Two days after the arrest, Trépanier released a report in which he said that Dubé had been practicing law without being a member of the Ontario Bar Association for several months before Big Brothers Big Sisters hired her.