Blind River couple accuses OPP of wrongful arrest in $2M civil lawsuit
Statement of claim alleges officers had no grounds to arrest and charge couple in bitter, ongoing dispute with neighbours
By: James Hopkin January 8, 2024
A Blind River, Ont. couple has launched a civil suit against half a dozen members of the East Algoma Ontario Provincial Police for $2 million in damages over allegations they were wrongfully arrested.
In a statement of claim filed Jan. 2, Joshua and Amber Brown allege they were falsely arrested by officers and charged with mischief in three separate incidents over the past three years.
All of the charges faced by the couple were eventually withdrawn. “The plaintiffs claim that their arrests were unlawful and that investigating officers were negligent,” said the three-page statement of claim filed by Davin Charney, a high-profile defence lawyer who specializes in legal matters involving police.
None of the allegations have been proven in court and a statement of defence has yet to be filed.
Speaking with SooToday last week, Brown said he was arrested and charged with mischief in January 2021 over a dispute with neighbours who he claims took issue with his two children riding bicycles near their driveways.
“Essentially the police arrested me, accusing me of using a road — that the road was someone’s property,” he said. “But that is a civil issue.”
The following January, Brown was charged with mischief and intimidation following a face-to-face dispute with a neighbour in December 2021 after Brown allegedly parked his car sideways in order to block the neighbour from plowing driveways for other neighbours.
In a strange turn of events, Brown pressed his own charges against that same neighbour in court last month by way of a process in Ontario known as private prosecution. The neighbour now faces 16 charges in all, including criminal harassment, obstructing justice, mischief, intimidation, perjury and defamatory libel. A preliminary hearing scheduled for next month in Elliot Lake has since been adjourned while evidence is gathered.
Brown’s wife would also be charged with mischief by OPP in September 2022 in yet another neighbour dispute on Birchwood Circle, where she was accused of filing a false harassment complaint.
“She was pulling a trailer into the property, and the neighbour was yelling at her that she was trespassing, even though she was on a municipally-maintained road,” Brown said.
The Browns are now suing half a dozen OPP officers in the Blind River detachment and are seeking damages for “negligence, negligent investigation, false arrest, harassment, assault and battery, and other common law torts,” in addition to a slew of other damages.
But the feud between the Browns and their neighbours on Birchwood Circle — where the Browns own a piece of land they use primarily for recreational purposes — doesn’t end there.
Last January, Brown made headlines after he was charged with four counts of criminal harassment and two counts of mischief in relation to ongoing neighbour disputes on Birchwood Circle.
Investigation determined the complainants were continually being followed, with videos from those interactions posted to social media with “derogatory comments” made by Brown.
One of the complainants had their land surveyed because they were having issues with the accused removing survey markers on several occasions. On another occasion, one of the complainants observed Brown spray paint an inappropriate message on a rock face that was directed at them.
“But something tells me that won’t go to trial, and they will drop the charges again,” Brown said of the latest round of charges against him.
According to a police report filed by East Algoma OPP in December 2021, Brown has been involved in 21 “police occurrences mostly involving neighbour disputes and trespassing complaints with many of the Birchwood Circle residents,” between October 2020 and December 2021.
Brown has in turn lodged 24 bylaw-related complaints against his neighbours with the Town of Blind River between August 2022 and February 2023.
Brown told SooToday that he believes his neighbours have been using the legal system as a weapon against both him and his wife since relocating from Oshawa, Ont. to Blind River in 2018.
“They’ve done a really good job trying to make it look bad on paper,” he said.
Brown, who is a certified financial planner with his own financial services business in Thessalon, Ont., has pledged to donate half of any damages awarded to the Browns in the civil suit to charity.
East Algoma OPP did not respond to a request for comment made by SooToday last week.