An off-duty Toronto police officer guilty of assaulting a teenager during a “Kijiji deal gone bad” has been handed a suspended sentence and 12 months probation.

Const. Calvin Au was also given a three-year weapons ban by Superior Court Justice Jennifer Woollcombe inside a Brampton, Ont., courtroom Wednesday.

“I am very concerned that despite his all of his police training and experience, Au demonstrated the inability or unwillingness to assess a situation and then to use reasonable force,” Woollcombe said.

“Rather than engage the de-escalation tactics he has been taught, he went directly to using excessive force in a situation where there were many other better options. His judgement was extremely poor.”

Au was found guilty of assault, but not guilty of assault causing bodily harm, in November for the April 26, 2021, incident involving 19-year-old Chadd Facey.

That day, off-duty Toronto police Const. Gurmakh Benning agreed to meet Facey to purchase an Apple Watch after he had posted on Kijiji to sell it.

2:08
Assault trial for Toronto cop begins

During the trial, court heard Benning had asked Au, his partner, to accompany him, given he viewed Au as more tech savvy and wanted him to authenticate the watch. Facey negotiated a price of $400 with Benning.

Dressed in plain clothes, the two met Facey in the parking lot at Beryl Ford Public School on Ironshield Drive, near Cottrelle Boulevard and Highway 50, in Brampton for the transaction.

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Benning had purchased the watch before realizing it was counterfeit. Facey took off and following a five-minute foot pursuit with Au, Benning caught up to him and got his money back.

At the trial, Benning testified that Au took Facey down, without saying anything, because he thought Au didn’t know that he had already got his money back.

Au testified, in his own defence, that he didn’t know Benning had got his money back and took down Facey because he was going to arrest him. However, he did not identify himself as an officer or say he was arresting Facey. Woollcombe said she found that problematic when she delivered her ruling.

Woollcombe said in her ruling she found Au used force that was “excessive and unreasonable.”

“The take down unnecessarily increased the risk of injury to Facey when there were other less forceful options available to Au.”

2:01
An off-duty Toronto Police officer has been charged with manslaughter.

Au was originally charged with manslaughter, but the charge was later downgraded to assault causing bodily harm. At the beginning of the trial, an agreed statement of facts was entered that said “the Crown is not in a position to allege that Facey’s death was caused by the interaction with Au.”

Benning had called 911 and told the dispatcher about the “Kijiji deal gone bad” before the off-duty officers took off. Facey had called his friends who had earlier dropped him off at the location where the transaction took place after the rip-off. The friends testified they arrived on scene after the assault and picked him up.

A few hours later, Facey’s friends noticed a bump on his forehead. He later died in hospital because of an intracerebral hemorrhage.

Woollcombe found that the forensic evidence was not clear on how Facey got a bruise on his forehead and said the Crown failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Au was guilty of assault causing bodily harm.

Crown prosecutors were asking Au to serve four months in custody, followed by 12 months’ probation, as well as a five-year weapons ban and DNA order. Au’s defence was asking for a conditional discharge and said a DNA order was not necessary

Woollcombe said Wednesday Au needed to be sentenced for the assault he was convicted of, and not for causing Facey’s death.

“The sentence imposed on Au for this assault must not seek to punish him for Facey’ death or the devastation that his death has brought to his family,” Woollcombe said.

“I’m mindful that any conviction will put Au’s career in jeopardy. I do not think it is necessary to impose … a sentence that will inevitably result in his dismissal.”

Woollcombe ruled Au should have no communication with Facey’s family, take anger management counselling as directed by his probation officer and be subject to a DNA order.

Should he remain employed by the Toronto Police Service, he should take remedial training and 50 hours of community service focused on improving relations between police and the Black community, Woollcombe ruled.

“While the evidence before me suggests that this incident has caused a loss of public confidence in the police within the Black community, there is no evidence that either Au or Benning was influenced in any way by the fact that Facey was Black,” Woollcombe said.

“They were motivated by the desire to retrieve the $400 paid for the fake watch. Race was irrelevant to them.”

Au has been suspended with pay since the charges were laid, and is still facing charges under provincial legislation governing policing.

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Authorities in Quebec say they are looking for an important witness in the search for three-year-old .

Provincial police say investigators are looking for a woman who worked and lived on a farm who they believe met the child’s 34-year-old mother, Rachel-Ella Todd, sometime on Sunday between 9:45 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., in either in southwestern Quebec or Ontario.

Officers say the woman speaks both English and French and was wearing an apron with the word “abondance” across the front.

Todd was arrested and charged Tuesday with unlawful abandonment of a child after she reported her daughter as missing Sunday in Coteau-du-Lac, Que., about 50 kilometres west of where she was last seen in Montreal’s LaSalle borough.

Authorities say Todd parked her SUV outside a store in Coteau-du-Lac, went inside and told staff she couldn’t find her daughter.

Todd briefly appeared via video conference from a police station in Vaudreuil Tuesday before being detained at the Leclerc prison in Laval.

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Crown prosecutor Lili Prévost Gravel told reporters she opposed the accused’s release due to the seriousness of the charge.

She will appear again Wednesday afternoon to set a date for a bail hearing.

The child is described as three-feet tall, has brown hair and brown eyes and was last seen wearing a white long-sleeve shirt with pink on the collar and grey pants.

The mother had been driving a 2007 grey Ford Escape with a “Baby on Board” sticker in the back window and the licence plate K50 FVE.

Officials are asking anyone who sees the girl or has information about her location to call 911. Witnesses can report tips anonymously.

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Police in LaSalle, Ont., say that residents of the community may have become the latest victims of a disturbing TikTok door-kicking challenge.

According to police, a number of people living in the Ramblewood neighbourhood had to deal with attempted break-and-enter and mischief incidents between 11:30 p.m. on Friday to 2 a.m. on Saturday.

In each incident, police say the front doors to the homes were kicked in before suspects fled the area.

“The incidents may be part of a TikTok challenge where participants kick the front doors of homes and then run away while filming the incident,” a release from police read.

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“The acts may cause undue distress on the home residents and can result in criminal charges for those who choose to participate.”

Police in LaSalle — which lies on the Canada-U.S. border just south of Windsor — join a growing list of services across Canada that have been forced to issue warnings about the challenge in which individuals bang, kick or damage a home’s door and run away, while documenting the incident on the social media platform.

Over the past few years, there were incidents in Cobourg and Port Dover in Ontario, as well as an incident in Squamish, B.C., which escalated into an altercation that sent two people to hospital.

In that incident, a homeowner who’d been dealing with the issue for a number of years, placed fishing wire outside his front door to catch the alleged culprits in the act.

The man told Global News that he and his wife landed in hospital as a result of the ensuing melee.

2:34
TikTok challenge turns confrontational in Courtenay

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