A Québec constable who announced on Facebook he would not ticket people under the province’s Covid curfew has been banned from policing for a year. A provincial Police Ethics Tribunal noted thousands of Facebook friends shared the protest message.
“Whether there were real consequences or not resulting from the Facebook posts, the fact remains it encouraged people to distrust the government and could even have led to civil disobedience,” wrote Isabelle Coté, the adjudicator in the case. “The Constable did not act on a whim. He had time to think about it and posted his message more than once.”
Constable Maxime Ouimet, a veteran policeman, quit his job and did not attend hearings in the case. He was banned for one year from applying for any position as a peace officer in Québec for breaching the police Code Of Ethics.