Race still a flashpoint in misconduct ruling against Waterloo
Const. Jesse Foster, whose decade-long policing record is otherwise unblemished, will learn his punishment by mid-December. His misconduct has been deemed not serious enough for him to lose his job
By Jeff Outhit Record Reporter Tuesday, September 21, 2021
CAMBRIDGE — Lawyers continue to argue racial implications after a white police officer wrongfully, violently arrested a Black woman on her front lawn.
Const. Jesse Foster is awaiting sentencing after a misconduct ruling found him guilty of using excessive force when he unlawfully arrested Natasha Broomes. In a sentencing hearing Tuesday under the Police Services Act, lawyers argued that Foster should forfeit three to 10 days of pay or time off as punishment.
Lawyers sparred repeatedly over race even though the misconduct ruling found Foster not guilty of racial bias.
“I think to suggest that race has absolutely no place in this discussion sort of ignores the reality of our factual situation,” prosecutor Jessica Barrow said.
Foster wrongfully arrested Broomes in her front yard in Cambridge at 5:30 a.m. on July 29, 2017. She had just driven home and stepped out of her car after dropping her son off at his job.
Her red SUV matched a vehicle description connected to an armed Black man police were seeking. Broomes, wearing pyjamas, had no connection to the suspect but Foster persisted in thinking she might.
When Broomes exercised her right to not identify herself, Foster swept her off her feet, forced her to the ground and tried to handcuff her. She screamed in pain after recent surgery and yelled for help, fearing the officer was about to shoot her.
Adjudicator Debra Preston, a retired Toronto police superintendent, found Foster guilty of excessive force and unlawful arrest but concluded that Foster acted out of poor judgment rather than racial bias.
“In my view and Ms. Broomes’s view, this event was clearly about race,” lawyer Davin Charney, acting for Broomes, told Preston. “There’s nothing that can convince Ms. Broomes that if a white woman without dreadlocks had gotten out of that car, that things really would have unfolded the same way.”
Defence lawyer Ben Jefferies argued that race has no place in sentencing because Foster was cleared of racial bias. Asserting otherwise contradicts the misconduct ruling and “undermines, quite frankly, the integrity of this process,” he told Preston.
Foster, whose decade-long policing record is otherwise unblemished, will learn his punishment by mid-December when Preston sentences him. His misconduct has been deemed not serious enough for him to lose his job.
Charney told the hearing that Broomes, 44, has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and suffers panic attacks as a result of the arrest.
She mistrusts police, has trouble sleeping, and has required therapy. The fallout has affected her ability to work, her relationships and her family. “It’s been a life-changing event for her,” Charney said.
Jefferies told the hearing that Foster’s mental health has suffered under the shadow of a four-year prosecution.
“Const. Foster has been branded by the media headlines as a racist, as someone who racially profiled an individual that he dealt with in his professional capacity. And for four years pending this hearing, he’s borne that public humiliation,” Jefferies said. “I can’t underscore enough the intense emotional and personal toll that took.”
Broomes sued police for $700,000 over the arrest and settled the lawsuit for an undisclosed amount.
Jeff Outhit is a Waterloo Region-based general assignment reporter for The Record. Reach him via email: [email protected]