OPP Commissioner orders review of failed probe into officer's jail assault

OPP Const. Bailey Nicholls leaves the courthouse in Collingwood, Ont., on Thurs., April 4, 2024. (CTV News/Mike Arsalides)

The actions of OPP officers including a deputy commissioner are now under the microscope after a CTV News investigation looked into how a constable who attacked a prisoner in a jail cell never faced misconduct charges even though she was later convicted of a crime.

The OPP dismissed any sanctions against Const. Bailey Nicholls after investigating for about a month and a half in the spring of 2020, and didn’t appear to discover a surveillance video of Nicholls grabbing the intoxicated woman and pushing her into cell bars.

OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique has now called for an independent investigation, said spokesperson A/S/Sgt Rob Simpson.

“To ensure transparency, Commissioner Carrique has requested that the Niagara Regional Police Service conduct a review of the OPP’s organizational response to the matter involving Provincial Constable Bailey Nicholls,” Simpson said.

The review comes after a series of CTV News stories outlined how the police watchdog the SIU wasn’t notified at the time of the assault in September of 2019, even though the woman was bleeding and needed five staples.

Another OPP Constable, Charles Ostrom, stumbled across the video of the assault while on different duties as an accommodated member because of his PTSD. He told CTV News he never would have watched it had the reports on file accurately described what happened.

Ostrom said he tried to raise alarms, but his efforts went nowhere. The incident sparked new psychological trauma, he said.

“It was as far from what I had read as imaginable,” said Ostrom in an interview in April. “I’m witnessing a crime.”

He told retired OPP Sgt Robin Moore, who in April of 2020 took the matter up directly with the OPP Commissioner, who tasked then-Chief Superintendent Marty Kearns with the file, who was then the commander of the force’s professional standards bureau.

“I can advise that in my capacity as the Bureau Commander of the Professional Standards Bureau, a review of this incident has been conducted and I am satisfied that all officers involved did not commit misconduct,” Kearns wrote in a letter to Moore dated May 29, 2020.

The OPP has said that it called in the SIU, but the agency did not invoke its mandate, and has said that the initial decisions regarding misconduct were based on “the information that was available at the time… the information regarding the severity of the injury did not meet the threshold for SIU notification.”

Moore turned to the SIU as well, which ultimately brought a charge against Bailey Nicholls, and she was convicted.

Kearns is now a deputy commissioner. When asked about the case at a news conference on police efforts to combat car thefts, he did not address it, instead saying, “Thank you, we’re here to talk about the success of Project Titanium.”

Documents obtained by CTV News show Nicholls is now facing a misconduct charge of discreditable conduct, “in that you were found guilty of an indictable criminal offense.”

Ostrom is still in treatment at Homewood Health Care. One factor in his condition is something called moral injury, which is a response to actions that go against strongly held beliefs.

Dr. Hygge Schiekle, a psychologist and researcher at Homewood Health Centre, said moral injury is common in law enforcement among front-line officers, but it can also come from behaviour inside a police service.

“Things where they didn’t do something, by values, they believe they should have done. Conversely, in terms of organizations, they can feel betrayed either by their colleagues or the organization as a whole, for the same two reasons: by things they did or didn’t do,” said Schiekle.

The number of mental stress injury claims at the OPP has risen from 50 in 2015 to a high of 180 in 2019, and dropped back to 152 in 2023, resulting in benefit payments for all injuries to about $20 million in 2023, according to the WSIB.

Ostrom intends to return to work and educate other officers about PTSD and the importance of mental health care. He was featured in a recent video from Homewood Health Centre.

"Continued recovery is essential, integral to remaining well and that it is a marathon, it's not a sprint. It has to be as much a part of your life, that mindset, that I'm going to keep up doing what I know I need to do. And I share that with everyone," he said.