“Officers Statement At The Location”

OK, I need advice on this and I'm hoping people can provide their views and good suggestions:

My wife was charged with failing to stop at a stop sign, T intersection, her direction is the only one with stop sign. As she made a right turn and approached the police cruiser, he exited his car and motioned her to pull over. Stated that he will be right with her, walked over to the car he had stopped earlier, handed over his/her a ticket and DL etc and came back to my wife stating she failed to stop. She argued that she did and he said "no ma'am, you didn't, and I have dash cam video of you"

Today I picked up copy of disclosure and it says no ICC (in car camera)

Now, according to the disclosure he had clear unobstructed view of the intersection and the sign etc.

When I went and parked my car where he was stopped, the view is more than 80% obstructed by a large light post and shrubs.

Here is the most important question, can I use the officer's statement about the dash cam video against him? If so, how should I go about it not to offend anyone, it is a bit delicate.

I don't see it being an issue unless there actually was a camera in the car and the officer didn't record the offence without some reasonable explanation as to why. If the officer failed to obtain/provide evidence, you might have something to argue.

If the officer simply stated there was a camera when there wasn't, I don't see it causing significant credibility issues on it's own. You could try and explore the issue at trial, but there could be a simple explanation. Maybe the officer was simply trying to elicit a confession, maybe the officer simply forgot for a moment that he didn't have a camera in his car that day. Without further evidence to show something nefarious, it's not enough to imply the officer perjured himself, etc.

Perjury is not lying in the public. It's lying under oath

Let's assume you can actually get the officer to admit (while on the stand) that he said there was a camera in the car even though he knew there really was not actually one... I don't think it will make a difference. The JP gets to "weigh" all the evidence given, so although this may look negative towards the officer, it will not have much weight because it is not relevent to the charge itself.

Also, the Police are allowed to lie while exercising their duties, just like they are allowed to speed, so again this means that even if he admits to it, the JP will barely consider it.

Now if you the officer takes the stand and says he did NOT say that and you have evidence (specifically video) that he did, then it would have much more weight because he lied on the stand.

First, I want to thank you all for your replies and advice.

Stanton wrote:I don't see it being an issue unless there actually was a camera in the car and the officer didn't record the offence without some reasonable explanation as to why. If the officer failed to obtain/provide evidence, you might have something to argue.

If the officer simply stated there was a camera when there wasn't, I don't see it causing significant credibility issues on it's own. You could try and explore the issue at trial, but there could be a simple explanation. Maybe the officer was simply trying to elicit a confession, maybe the officer simply forgot for a moment that he didn't have a camera in his car that day. Without further evidence to show something nefarious, it's not enough to imply the officer perjured himself, etc.

To the best of my knowledge, all unmarked traffic enforcement cruisers in Markham are equipped with cameras.

argyll wrote:Perjury is not lying in the public. It's lying under oath

You are 100% correct, I have no idea why I used that word, I guess I should be more careful in my choice of words.

Let's assume you can actually get the officer to admit (while on the stand) that he said there was a camera in the car even though he knew there really was not actually one... I don't think it will make a difference. The JP gets to "weigh" all the evidence given, so although this may look negative towards the officer, it will not have much weight because it is not relevent to the charge itself.

Also, the Police are allowed to lie while exercising their duties, just like they are allowed to speed, so again this means that even if he admits to it, the JP will barely consider it.

Valid points.

One more question (pulling a Lieutenant Columbo here), it looks to me like the disclosure was prepared by editing a template that was edited to fit this case, more or less, would I be right to assume this is relatively routine procedure for garden variety traffic stops?