Officers' misconduct charges dropped

Constables accused of failing to locate murder victim will speak to recruits on lessons from case'

- WENDY GILLIS

Tess Richey was killed in 2017. Her mother, who found her daughter's body 40 metres from where two Toronto police officers had searched earlier, says the outcome is a squandered chance at justice.

In a surprise move, professional misconduct charges against two Toronto officers accused of failing to locate the body of murder victim Tess Richey in 2017 have been dropped, an outcome her mother — who found her own deceased daughter in a stairwell — called “deeply disappointing.”

Six years after Const. Alan McCullough and Const. Michael Jones were charged in a series of failures stemming from an allegedly botched search for Richey, a police prosecutor on Monday withdrew all charges against the officers, opting instead for a “restorative approach” where neither cop is guilty of misconduct.

In a hearing that lasted less than five minutes, prosecutor Mattison Chinneck said the officers would instead face “alternative” consequences, including losing 40 hours pay and speaking to new police recruits about “the lessons that can be learned from the case … in the spirit of better preparing the officers of the future.”

The outcome brings a sudden end to a high-profile case that sent shock waves across the city in November 2017, when Richey, 22, vanished after leaving a nightclub in the Gay Village. Kalen Schlatter was later convicted of first-degree murder after Richey was discovered strangled to death and sexually assaulted at the bottom of a stairwell.