OPP DNA DRAGNET: The wrong thing for the right reason?
A violent sexual assault. Police racing the clock. A controversial step that helped solve the crime, but which critics charge was 'clearly discrimination.'
Author of the article:Jonathan Juha
Publishing date:Mar 13, 2022 • 1 day ago • 6 minute read • 10 Comments
OPP Insp. Dwight Peer speaking at a 2013 news conference in London as police announced the arrest of Henry Cooper, a migrant worker from Trinidad and Tobago, following an investigation into a violent sexual assault near Vienna, in Elgin County. (Free Press file photo)
OPP Insp. Dwight Peer speaking at a 2013 news conference in London as police announced the arrest of Henry Cooper, a migrant worker from Trinidad and Tobago, following an investigation into a violent sexual assault near Vienna, in Elgin County. (Free Press file photo)
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A violent sexual assault. Police under pressure from a ticking clock. A controversial step that helped solve the crime, but which critics are calling “clearly discrimination.” Both sides — lawyers for the migrant workers targeted in a DNA sweep, and local Provincial Police — have made their arguments to a human rights tribunal. As they await a ruling, reporter Jonathan Juha spoke to experts and people on both sides about the investigation, the complaint and whether police did the wrong thing for the right reason.
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VIENNA — Near the end of a chilly, wet, late-autumn Saturday in this Southwestern Ontario village nearly nine years ago, a woman who lived alone stepped out on her porch for a smoke.
A man burst from the shadows, put a knife to her throat and dragged her into the house. He blindfolded her, bound her with shoelaces, sexually assaulted her and threatened to kill her if she called police.
The Oct. 19, 2013, attack sparked a sweeping police probe around the Elgin County community. Within six weeks, provincial police had charged Henry Cooper, a 35-year-old migrant worker from Trinidad and Tobago. He later would plead guilty to sexual assault with a weapon, forcible confinement and uttering death threats, drawing a seven-year prison term.
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“There was a huge expectation that the OPP would be able to find out who was responsible for this senseless crime,” OPP Insp. Dwight Peer said at the time. “It’s my hope that this apprehension will begin the process of healing so necessary in incidents such as this.”
Case closed? Not quite. Not even close, in fact.
The victim had described her attacker as a Black man and likely a migrant worker, based on his accent – details that would open a crucial door for investigators, but give rise to troubling concerns for civil-rights activists.
More than eight years after the vicious attack shook this tiny rural community, the OPP defended its actions in a discrimination case argued recently before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.
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At the case’s core is a police DNA dragnet targeting migrant workers in the area – a move police contend helped crack the case, but lawyers for 54 migrant worker applicants call discriminatory and racial profiling.
The legal and ethical question, in essence, is this: Do the ends justify the means?
Would it have been better for police – knowing most migrant workers were set to fly home soon, with harvests done – to conduct a more precise search for the suspect, even if that meant risking the perpetrator’s escape and the victim never seeing justice?
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Cooper was one of the few workers who refused to co-operate with the DNA dragnet, leading police to zero in on him. Officers got his DNA from a cigarette butt and other evidence and matched it to a DNA profile of the suspect generated from a sexual assault kit and evidence left at the scene. He was arrested before his scheduled departure from Canada.
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The DNA sweep of migrant workers was clearly an effective investigative strategy, but one critics have ripped as racist – arguing it was too broad, based only on race and ignored other characteristics described by the victim.
The suspect, for instance, was described as Black, five-foot-10 to six-feet tall and clean-shaven. But investigators collected samples from workers who were much older and much taller or shorter, and ignored other alibis provided by workers.
“The OPP treated all Black and Brown migrant farm workers they encountered as potential suspects, even those that cannot possibly have been responsible for the crime,” Shane Martínez, pro bono counsel for the workers, said during the recent human rights hearing.
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Chris Ramsaroop, national organizer with the non-profit group Justice for Migrant Workers, wonders if police would have taken a similar step if they weren’t dealing with a marginalized group like off-shore farm workers with precarious jobs.
Part of a seasonal migrant workers program, Henry Cooper worked at this Elgin County farm a few kilometres from the home of the woman Cooper sexually assaulted. (JONATHAN JUHA, The London Free Press)
Part of a seasonal migrant workers program, Henry Cooper worked at this Elgin County farm a few kilometres from the home of the woman Cooper sexually assaulted. (JONATHAN JUHA, The London Free Press)
Southwestern Ontario’s vast farm belt, especially its fruit and vegetable sector, relies on thousands of temporary foreign workers on its farms and in its massive greenhouses. The work is often difficult manual labour that many Canadians won’t do.
“There’s a reason why this happened in rural Ontario,” Ramsaroop said of what he called “racialized policing” tactics.
“This is a vulnerable population, and I think everybody expected that there would be no response, that there would be no public outcry,” he said. “It’s concerning that this DNA sweep happened, how it happened . . . and it sets a dangerous precedent.”
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There may be an explanation for police ignoring finer points of the victim’s description, one criminologist suggested, noting “some features that may be described” are “more reliable than others” for police.
“If somebody says that the person was white, well, there’s no sense in searching in a predominantly Black community, right?” said Paul Whitehead, a former longtime Western University professor. “On the other hand, if somebody tells you the height or the weight of a person, that’s apt to be somewhat less reliable, because it’s more difficult to determine.
“You can’t just take a few characteristics and think that alone is going to help you identify the suspect or the perpetrator. It’s important to have a broad enough view to be able to test for DNA or have people not give samples in the first place.”
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The DNA sweep targeted people who matched the general description of the suspect and who worked on five farms in the area at the time of the attack, said Christopher Diana, a lawyer who represented the OPP at the human rights hearing.
“The OPP had good reason to be confident of the general description of a migrant worker,” he said. “But the OPP also knew that the victim’s description of the height, build, age and appearance may not be accurate.”
Whitehead, however, does not give the police probe a free pass.
Brad Fishleigh, then an OPP inspector and commander of the force’s Egin County detachment, announces the arrest of a 35-year-old migrant farm worker from Trinidad and Tobago in a violent rural sexual assault during a 2013 news conference in London. (Free Press file photo)
Brad Fishleigh, then an OPP inspector and commander of the force’s Egin County detachment, announces the arrest of a 35-year-old migrant farm worker from Trinidad and Tobago in a violent rural sexual assault during a 2013 news conference in London. (Free Press file photo)
“Just because they happened to find the right person doesn’t mean that they did the search correctly,” he said. “The test of whether the search was done correctly is not the outcome; the test is how that search conforms to the rules and best practices for police doing searches.”
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That view was echoed by Derek Silva, an associate professor of criminology at King’s University College in London.
“I think people often focus too much on whether or not this will make it harder for police to do their job,” he said.
“I think the other the other side of the equation . . . is that moments like these, if it is determined that (police) acted inappropriately, are . . . absolutely foundational to keeping police accountable and making sure that they’re not overstepping their powers and their authority.
“That is an important function of democracy that we can’t forget.”
The victim of the crime soon moved from the home, nearby residents say. Free Press attempts to contact her were unsuccessful.
Martínez is seeking $30,000 in damages for each worker he’s representing in the case.
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If the tribunal finds there was a violation of Ontario’s human rights code, another hearing will be scheduled to decide on “non-monetary and systemic remedies” for the migrant workers and prevent similar cases in future.
Marla Burstyn is presiding over the case for the tribunal. Her decision is expected within six months.
jjuha@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/JuhaatLFPress
A violent sexual assault. Police racing the clock. A controversial step that helped solve the crime, but which critics charge was 'clearly discrimination.'
torontosun.com
enette Wilford
