A Black defence lawyer who says Durham Regional Police officers slammed her head into a desk inside an Oshawa courthouse has filed a $7.1-million lawsuit against the police services board and five officers. The suit comes after York Regional Police, brought in to investigate, found “no reasonable grounds” to charge any of them.
Sudine Riley was working in a courthouse interview room at the Superior Court of Justice on Jan. 23 when uniformed officers challenged her presence. Durham police say they arrested and charged her under the Trespass to Property Act. Her lawyer, Neha Chugh, said officers acted with “rage, disrespect and contempt.” According to the statement issued by Riley’s counsel, her head was slammed into a desk, officers put their knees on her back and neck, and she was taken to the basement cells bleeding and swollen. Her headscarf was ripped off and her skirt raised in the process. Chugh has said Riley is Black. The allegations in the lawsuit have not been tested in court.
The Criminal Lawyers’ Association said at the time that the incident raised “serious human rights concerns” and called for an independent investigation, arguing a police service should not examine its own officers. “All lawyers must be able to work in safety and security within Ontario’s courthouses,” the association said. Toronto defence lawyer Anita Szigeti, with more than 33 years in practice, called it unprecedented in her career and warned it could push women, racialized women in particular, out of the profession.
Durham police said they were looking into it “with the utmost seriousness” and then referred the criminal allegations to York Regional Police. On July 29, York announced there were “no reasonable grounds” to support charges against any officer involved. Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, the civilian body that investigates serious injuries and deaths involving police, did not invoke its mandate because the case did not meet its criteria. The matter was referred to the Law Enforcement Complaints Agency to assess possible misconduct.
That is the gap the lawsuit now has to fill. In Ontario, when the injury is not judged serious enough for the SIU, one police service decides whether another’s officers committed a crime, and a complaints body reviews conduct later. A Black woman who was a lawyer, in a courthouse, identified with the legal system itself, still had no independent investigator look at what officers did to her. Black Ontarians without a law degree have far less to stand on.
A civil suit changes the question. It does not ask whether a prosecutor can prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. It asks a judge to weigh what happened, and it forces the officers and the board to answer under oath, with the courthouse’s own records in play.
The defendants have not yet filed a defence in the case. The Law Enforcement Complaints Agency review is still pending, and Riley’s lawyers have said she intends to pursue every avenue for accountability.
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