{"id":789394,"date":"2026-07-09T00:45:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T00:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/789394\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T00:45:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T00:45:10","slug":"how-this-toronto-woman-successfully-got-her-traffic-tickets-withdrawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/789394\/","title":{"rendered":"How this Toronto woman successfully got her traffic tickets withdrawn"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Toronto woman labelled a ‘belligerent female’ by a police officer during a traffic stop last year has fought her tickets – and won. Jon Woodward reports. <\/p>\n

A Toronto charity director who was hit with hundreds of dollars in fines and labelled \u201cfemale belligerent\u201d in police files for disputing an allegation she ran a stop sign has fought her tickets and won.<\/p>\n

Vashti Anderson started her own search for evidence and unearthed police car and body camera video that showed her car definitely stopped at that stop sign, in a challenging ordeal that raised questions about the motivations of an officer who wrote the ticket.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was something I honestly didn\u2019t do. I wasn\u2019t guilty of it. I was so surprised. I knew I didn\u2019t do anything wrong,\u201d said the 62-year-old in an interview with CTV News, more than a year after she started her quest to prove that there was not a problem with her driving after all.<\/p>\n

She says perhaps most revealing was the police officer\u2019s notebook that was provided to her through a Freedom of Information request that described her as a \u201cfemale belligerent\u201d for standing up for the truth.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I saw the words \u201cbelligerent female,\u201d that blew my mind. That tells me the kind of police officer I was dealing with,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cI was quite shocked he would use such a term. It shows his bias right up front.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anderson was pulled over on April 6, 2025 at around 10 a.m. by an officer on Avon Drive near Eglinton Avenue West and Black Creek Drive.<\/p>\n

\"\"TPS body-camera footage A still from Toronto police body camera footage shows Vashti Anderson, who was stopped on Avon Drive. <\/p>\n

The body camera video shows the officer say, \u201cI saw you look once and you came right through the stop sign.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I didn\u2019t,\u201d Anderson says in response.<\/p>\n

She had left her driver\u2019s licence at home, which is a violation. The officer says on the video he\u2019s going to give her a break on that and returns to the car to write up the ticket.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to be very nice here,\u201d he says to his partner in the car.<\/p>\n

But that mercy disappeared when Anderson kept standing her ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re already getting a ticket, no matter what,\u201d the officer says, and as she again asserts her innocence, he says, \u201cListen to me, I\u2019m going to get you all the tickets. No problem, you\u2019re getting all the tickets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, records show the officer, Upinder Singh, issued a $110 ticket for running the stop sign, a $110 ticket for failing to provide a driver\u2019s license, and a $65 ticket for failing to surrender the insurance card, even though Anderson can be seen in the video trying to provide him an insurance slip.<\/p>\n

The officer appears to have rescinded the insurance ticket himself. Anderson didn\u2019t want to pay the remainder and have all that on her record, so she started an investigation of her own.<\/p>\n

She discovered a surveillance video from a nearby church that shows her blue Sedan stopping at the intersection.<\/p>\n

\"\"Surveillance camera This is a screengrab from a surveillance video from a nearby church that shows Anderson’s blue Sedan stopping at the intersection. <\/p>\n

Then she went further, requesting videos and records from the Toronto police through freedom of information. Their in-car video shows her car stopping at the intersection as well.<\/p>\n

The body camera video also shows the officer declaring that she has done something else that she was never given a ticket for: \u201cYou cut me off,\u201d he says in the video.<\/p>\n

\"\"Dashcam footage This footage shows a car stopped at a stop sign on Avon Drive. <\/p>\n

In his paper notes, the officer wrote, \u201cFemale belligerent. Said she\u2019s going to the police station to complain about me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Police notes A Toronto police note described Vashti Anderson female belligerent <\/p>\n

Fighting the ticket meant struggling through a bureaucracy, Anderson said. <\/p>\n

She faced a \u201csystem error\u201d at court, where the tickets were initially mistakenly upheld, and correspondence to her was sent to the wrong address.<\/p>\n

She said she was also rejected in her initial complaint at the Law Enforcement Complaints Agency, which told her in a letter she faced \u201ccriminal proceedings\u201d and an investigator was weighing the \u201cseriousness of the charges\u201d\u2014all of which was false as the tickets were laid under the Highway Traffic Act.<\/p>\n

LECA is entitled to reject complaints if the complainant still faces hearings at other courts or tribunals.<\/p>\n

Finally, Anderson had her hearing at traffic court, presented the prosecutor the videos and other evidence, and the tickets were withdrawn.<\/p>\n

\u2018This is all dead wrong\u2019<\/p>\n

But the whole thing should never have happened in the first place, said former Toronto Mayor John Sewell, who is now with the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is all dead wrong,\u201d Sewell said in an interview. \u201cThe body camera video shows she is clearly not belligerent. It\u2019s the officer who is belligerent.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the case is so clear Toronto Police should proactively review the case and the service\u2019s police chief should get involved directly in a discipline proceeding.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe chief has to come in and say, I\u2019m responsible for my officers, and I\u2019m going to make sure they\u2019re disciplined when they do something that clearly is wrong,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Toronto Police spokesperson Stephanie Sayer said in a statement that now that the charges are dealt with, an officer has followed up with her to let her know her complaint to LECA can proceed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe expect our officers to enforce the law fairly, act professionally, and treat all members of the public with dignity and respect. Where concerns are raised about an officer\u2019s conduct, there are established processes in place to ensure those concerns are reviewed and assessed appropriately,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

As for LECA, a spokesperson said the dismissal of Anderson\u2019s complaint was consistent with its policies but didn\u2019t address why their investigator described her charges as criminal when they were laid under the Highway Traffic Act.<\/p>\n

Anderson, who is the executive director of an agency called Women of Excellence Support and Relief Organization, said she\u2019s still looking for accountability.<\/p>\n

She said she wears the \u201cfemale belligerent\u201d label with pride, saying if she hadn\u2019t stood up for herself, she never would have gotten the video that showed she was in the right.<\/p>\n

\u201cI truly, truly, truly want accountability. And I\u2019m not only speaking for myself because I truly believe there are other cases out there. I just happen to be the one person who decided I\u2019m not going to sit and keep quiet,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Toronto woman labelled a ‘belligerent female’ by a police officer during a traffic stop last year has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":789395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[712,49,48,3302],"class_list":["post-789394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-apple-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/789395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}