Constable Elias Mouawad, shown in Toronto earlier this month, ran a licence plate search for a suspect whose phone was being wiretapped by police, according to a statement of facts laid out in court.EDUARDO LIMA/The Globe and Mail
A Toronto Police constable charged as part of the large-scale Project South investigation pleaded guilty to unauthorized use of a computer Monday, in connection with a licence plate query he conducted for a former boss at a security company.
Constable Elias Mouawad was 24 years old and had only been with the police service for about a year and a half when he was swept up in February in what York Regional Police detectives have called the largest police corruption probe in Canadian history. It has led to charges against seven active Toronto Police officers, one recently retired constable and nearly 20 civilians.
Constable Mouawad was not a direct target of Project South and only came on to investigators’ radar because he ran a licence plate search for a suspect whose phone was being wiretapped by police, according to a statement of facts laid out in the courtroom. Information from the licence plate search was then relayed to an alleged organized crime figure at the centre of the corruption probe.
Defence lawyer Peter Brauti said despite the constable’s one-off involvement, a Google search of his client’s name yields pages’ worth of news articles about Project South.
“Some will always think he’s this corrupt cop from Project South,” Mr. Brauti said. “And that’s a very high price to pay for a single computer check.”
Mr. Brauti argued his client deserves a conditional discharge (meaning he would not have a criminal record provided he abides by agreed upon conditions) in order to give him a chance at keeping his policing job. The Crown, on the other hand, argued for a four-month conditional sentence, stressing the need for deterrence and denunciation.
“This is a case of an officer knowingly breaching his oath, and by that act, allowing criminals – even though he may not have subjectively intended it – by his carelessness, to co-opt and compromise the Toronto Police Service,” Crown attorney Sam Walker said.
The Project South probe, led by York Regional Police, began in June of last year, after the alleged attempted killing of a Toronto South Detention Centre correctional officer at his home. Investigators have said they worked backward after the attempted hit, and determined a Toronto Police constable, Timothy Barnhardt, had used confidential police databases to leak information about the guard to an alleged large-scale drug trafficker, Brian Da Costa.
As part of the investigation, police received judicial authorization to run wiretaps on a number of suspects in the project, including Constable Barnhardt, Mr. Da Costa and his alleged associate Daljit Singh, who runs private security companies that Constable Mouawad used to work for.
In mid-January, police listened in as Mr. Singh and Constable Mouawad spoke by phone about a licence plate query that Mr. Singh had asked him to do for “his boy.”
“Why does your boy need a photo of the thing?” Constable Mouawad asked Mr. Singh, who was at an industrial complex in Mississauga with Mr. Da Costa at the time, according to an agreed statement of facts submitted in the case Monday.
Mr. Singh told him they “just wanted to see if that was the right people.”
“Like he wants his ID photo?” Constable Mouawad asked, according to the facts.
Mr. Singh confirmed, assuring him “it’s nothing bad.”
Less than an hour after Constable Mouawad looked up the plate for a Black Chevy Tahoe rental car through confidential TPS databases, the agreed facts note Mr. Da Costa was observed climbing into the passenger seat of that very vehicle, parked in Vaughan.
The driver linked to the vehicle and nature of their association with Mr. Da Costa are unknown, the facts say. There’s no evidence that Constable Mouawad knew about any of it.
When Constable Mouawad was arrested on Feb. 4, he agreed to provide a statement, and handed over the passwords to his computer and phone.
He did not believe there was any nefarious reason for the request, the facts said, and he only ran the licence plate because Mr. Singh had been a “caring boss” while he’d worked for him.
Constable Mouawad, now 25, has been suspended from TPS without pay since his arrest, and has lost roughly $75,000 in wages as a result, Mr. Brauti said.
Court heard Monday that he has wanted to plead guilty since he was charged. But due to the massive amount of disclosure the Crown had to sift through, it was not prepared to accept a plea until recently.
Former Toronto police officer charged in Project South probe gets 10-month conditional sentence
Typically, these types of data breaches result in discipline proceedings and a few days’ docked pay, Mr. Brauti said in his submissions Monday. If this case wasn’t part of Project South, he argued, none of them would even be in that courtroom.
“We’d be in the police tribunal, and we’d be doing a joint submission for 10 days’ pay,” Mr. Brauti said.
Mr. Singh is charged under Project South with fraudulently obtaining a computer service. His lawyer Harval Bassi declined to comment Monday, as the matter is still before the courts.
Mr. Da Costa, who faces an array of charges, was released on bail of $1.5-million in March, only to have it revoked after a bail review in May. He too appeared briefly in court Monday, where his application for a bail review was dismissed.
Constable Barnhardt also remains in custody, after losing two bids at bail.
The charges against them have not yet been tested in court.
Justice Catherine Rhinelander reserved her decision on sentencing in Constable Mouawad’s case Monday. He is scheduled to return on Oct. 19. (A second charge he faced – breach of trust – was withdrawn as part of his plea.)
At the conclusion of court Monday, Constable Mouawad read out an eight-minute apology letter, accepting responsibility for his actions and vowing to learn from his mistakes.
“To this day, every time I see a police car rushing with their lights and sirens to a call, my heart would cry out, hoping that one day I could be back in that car again, and continue making a positive impact.”