A constable with the Ottawa Police Service was suspended two weeks ago due to an ongoing disciplinary investigation involving allegations of inappropriate database searches, CBC News has learned.
The officer was suspended with pay on May 28, the force confirmed in a statement last week.
It relates to alleged misconduct under the Community Safety and Policing Act.
CBC is not naming the officer because he has not been charged. He joined the force in 2015.
It’s unclear if alleged inappropriate searches form part of or all of the accusations against him.
Database searches by other officers
The recent suspension comes as another officer, Const. Andrew Reesor, is facing disciplinary charges under the Community Safety and Policing Act for allegedly making 77 unauthorized database searches about 44 women, 27 men and six colleagues between January 2021 and October 2024.
Reesor’s reasons for the searches were “personal” and included “curiosity and attraction” and “boredom,” according to an Ottawa police request for an adjudicator to be appointed. The constable also “acknowledged he was aware such use was prohibited and constituted misconduct.”
The force wants Reesor’s employment terminated as a result, the request for an adjudicator states.
An aerial view of the entrance to Ottawa Police Service headquarters at 474 Elgin St. on April 21, 2026. (Michel Aspirot/CBC)
Another officer, Const. Jerome Rabiha-Stevens, was recently demoted for 18 months for using police and Ministry of Transportation databases to search for people he knows personally, and other members of the public. The unauthorized searches took place over more than a year.
In one instance, Rabiha-Stevens was on duty and saw his then partner and a man sitting in a vehicle in a Tim Hortons parking lot at about 1 a.m. He confronted her about what she was doing there, then reversed his police cruiser into the other man’s vehicle, damaging it.
In another instance, a woman Rabiha-Stevens was having a sexual relationship with said he seemed to know her home address without her having given it to him.
Chief to publicly discuss reports about officers
The latest officer suspension follows several recent CBC reports on allegations of gender-based misconduct by members of the Ottawa Police Service.
The reports include an allegation of sexual assault against Ottawa police union president Matthew Cox, allegations of sexual assault and sexual harassment made by college students against an Ottawa police sergeant who died by suicide in March, as well as assault, harassment and firearms charges against an Ottawa police officer stemming from alleged intimate partner violence.
The force’s oversight body, the Ottawa Police Service Board, announced last week that it had held a special private meeting with police Chief Eric Stubbs and his top brass to discuss “the seriousness of these matters.”
The board added that Stubbs has been asked to provide a public update on how the force is responding to these allegations at the board’s next regular meeting on June 22 — its first in-person meeting in more than three years.