Police cheating scandal leads to demotion

'No room for noble cause corruption,' tribunal rules in controversial case

- WENDY GILLIS

Toronto police officer Stacy Clarke leaves police headquarters Wednesday after a police tribunal ruled she will be demoted from superintendent to inspector for two years as punishment for helping six Black officers cheat on a promotion exam. Many of her supporters gathered in the atrium to denounce the decision.

By leaking confidential exam questions to six Black officers, Supt. Stacy Clarke “played the lead role in perverting their moral compasses,” a police tribunal heard — becoming the “maestro” of a sophisticated promotional cheating scheme that rocked the Toronto police force and has now halted the senior officer’s meteoric rise.

Clarke’s orchestrated plan to help racialized cops get ahead amounted to “extremely serious” misconduct, tribunal adjudicator Robin McElary-Downer said in a much-anticipated penalty decision released Wednesday — a betrayal of her badge so great that Clarke, the force’s first Black female superintendent, needed to be stripped of her history-making rank.

“There is no room in policing for noble cause corruption,” McElaryDowner told a full public gallery inside Toronto police headquarters, referencing an unethical act aimed at achieving a greater good.

“Honesty and integrity are nonnegotiable character traits of a police officer. Supt. Clarke’s actions demonstrated both were absent,” she said, knocking Clarke down to inspector for two years and ruling she must reapply to regain her hard-fought higher rank.

Clarke pleaded guilty last year to seven counts of professional misconduct under Ontario’s police legislation after admitting she’d taken photographs of confidential interview questions and then texted them to six Black candidates who were taking part in the highly competitive sergeant’s promotional process in 2021.