Head shot comment penalty reduced for Toronto cop

Article content

Talking to his partner about shooting a fellow Toronto cop in the head did not constitute a threat or justify reducing the officer’s rank for six months, the Ontario Civilian Police Commission has ruled.

After Const. Kehui Li pleaded guilty in June 2023 to one count of discreditable conduct for making the comment after a tense domestic call, Superintendent Shane Branton reduced his rank from third to fourth class constable for six months at a hearing of the Toronto police tribunal. The demotion would have cost Li about $5,470, according to the Toronto Police Service pay scale.

Article content

“The hearing officer erred in principle by erroneously assigning heightened weight to the seriousness of the misconduct by deciding it was tantamount to a criminal offence,” said a recent decision from the three-member Ontario Civilian Police Commission.

Li appealed Branton’s six-month demotion, arguing docking him three days’ pay would be a more appropriate penalty.

The commission allowed his appeal. It decided that forfeiting seven days of pay, or about $1,680, “addresses the seriousness of (Li’s) conduct and provides a deterrent effect, while also giving weight to progressive discipline and (his) ability to reform.”

But the constable still has to take the anger management program Branton ordered him to complete.

Li was working the night shift at 11 Division on Feb. 6, 2022, when he got a call to take photographs of a crime victim.

After another officer he’d had a disagreement with left the scene, Li told his partner: “I was so mad that I was going to shoot him in the head.”

Article content

Article content

Li “made the comment in a monotone voice, but it shocked (his partner) who asked if it was a joke and said she did not find the comment funny,” according to an agreed statement of facts in the case.

After reflecting, Li decided he needed to work things out with the officer he’d had a conflict with that night, so he called him and apologized, saying he’d been caught up in the moment. They planned to “sit down to talk things out,” but that never happened.

There’s nothing in the agreed statement of facts to indicate Li or his partner ever told the other cop about the shooting comment. Li made it when he and his partner were alone together in their police vehicle.

Li argued successfully that Branton made a “fundamental error” by equating his shooting comment to a criminal threat.

At the penalty hearing last year, Branton said Li’s “conduct itself was on the serious end of the spectrum because even though it did not result in a criminal charge, in some situations it could have.”

The superintendent also said for “a fully uniformed officer equipped with a firearm, to threaten to shoot another officer in the head is unconscionable.”

Article content

Li had argued his “utterance was not a threat” as it was “made in the past tense” in private, after the officer he was complaining about had left the scene.

But Branton found last year that the comment was a threat.

“The public has an expectation that officers will behave professionally at all times,” the superintendent said at the time. “PC Li’s response of threatening to shoot a co-worker over a disagreement is completely unacceptable and unimaginable. With the increase in gun violence and the scrutiny of the police it is concerning that after all the training PC Li had very recently received, he chose to escalate a situation to threatening a person with a firearm.”

The commission agreed with Li that Branton “erred in principle” by considering Li’s statement to his partner a criminal threat

The Toronto Police Service argued that Li’s “words were meant to intimidate and instill a sense of fear.”

Branton’s conclusion that Li’s conduct “met all of the elements of the criminal offence of uttering threats erroneously heightened the seriousness of the threat,” said the appeal decision.

“The commission finds the hearing officer’s analysis of the seriousness of the misconduct, and its negative impact on the public’s trust in policing, cannot be divorced from his repeated emphasis that the utterance in question was a ‘death threat’ that he found met the elements of a criminal offence.”

Article content