4 Hamilton police officers to begin trial on fake tickets

Four Hamilton police officers accused of falsifying tickets are expected to appear in Ontario Court of Justice in Hamilton on Monday to begin trial.

The four officers are members of Hamilton's ACTION team known mostly for patrolling downtown, and were charged after a probe begun in late 2014.

Then-Chief Glenn De Caire announced the charges against five officers in June 2015 after an investigation into discrepancies with 32 tickets.

The four scheduled to begin trial on Monday are all constables Bhupesh Gulati, Shawn Smith, Stephen Travele and Daniel Williams. Each initially facedrelated charges like conspiracy, fabricating evidence and breach of trust.

A fifth officer, Const. Staci Tyldesley, began a preliminary hearing on similar charges last month.

Detectivesbegan an investigation when tickets were found in a service shredder box.The tickets in the books that should have to be given to the person being ticketed were still attached. The tickets were logged with the courts and counted as police statistics, but were never handed out.

The investigation included talking to some of the people named in the tickets, and all of those tickets have since been withdrawn, De Caire said last June.

At the time the charges were announced, the head of the police officer's union, Clint Twolan, acknowledged that cases like these can damage public perception.

"(Officers) do the best with what they have," he said. "I understand public perception and I understand why your opinion wouldn't necessarily be a positive one based on what's going on right now, butI don't want people judging the rest of the Hamilton Police officers."

TheACTION strategy is at the centre of not only the local debate over police interactions with minorities and marginalized populations, but also the provincial overhaul of policing, carding and protecting minority rights.

DeCairemodeled Hamilton's ACTIONteam on hotspot anti-violence work he pioneered in Toronto. He's now left policing for a job atMcMaster, and the team faces big questions about its future, including thetools it uses to be proactive, like carding.