Singh "has been placed in a special handling unit and has had limited access to counsel and the outside world since then," his lawyer Christopher Lutes said at a brief hearing on Wednesday. Singh has been held at the maximum-security Toronto South Detention Centre (TSDC) since he was arrested in October 2024 at his then residence, on the 34th floor of Toronto's former Trump Hotel.
None of the officers were in court Tuesday because they got their lawyers to file a designation of council for them. That designation means they can skip out on a chunk of their court proceedings and have their lawyer or sometimes another appointed counsel under them, like a paralegal show up for them instead, as outlined in the Criminal Code.
The province's inspector general of policing is holding a news conference Monday morning to give an update on whether they will investigate the Toronto Police Service after seven of the force's officers and one former officer were arrested and are facing corruption charges. Ryan Teschner will begin the announcement at 10 a.m. and CBC News will stream it live in this story.
The inspector general, a relatively new arm's-length position tasked by the province with overseeing policing, was asked to investigate Thursday after eight current and retired Toronto officers were charged in an organized crime and corruption investigation. The case immediately raised questions about whether systemic issues contributed to organized crime's alleged infiltration of the ranks, said Kent Roach, a University of Toronto law professor and contributor to several high-profile police inquiries. Those questions, he said, are best answered by a civilian-led investigation.
Paris prosecutors on Monday requested six-year prison sentences for two former narcotics squad police officers who replaced confiscated cocaine with sugar paste. The defendants, Thierry C, 60, and Christophe J, 50, were members of the French capital's nighttime anti-drugs taskforce but were expelled from the police following their arrests in December 2022. Along with prison sentences, the prosecutor requested the confiscation of €600,000 from the bank account of Thierry C. and a €200,000 fine against Christophe J.
He describes turning to steroids after several spine injuries in the line of duty, the nightmares that haunt him from the day a tried to save a 2-year-old girl who drowned in a backyard pool, and the fateful morning where FBI armored cars drove onto his lawn and burst into his home with flashbang grenades while he poured milk into his kids' cereal bowls.
We demand a fair, transparent and just discipline process. What we have now is broken and riddled with petty vindictiveness, incompetence and outright corruption. When an official document is altered, with white-out, of all things, to reach a different conclusion, it should spur the police chief, city manager and city attorney to demand reform and hold wrongdoers accountable rather than doubling down to protect corruption.
