Three Toronto police officers accused of colluding to lie during the first-degree murder trial of a man charged with killing their colleague have been cleared of misconduct following a probe by the Ontario Provincial Police.
But a lawyer for Umar Zameer is criticizing the investigation, telling CP24 that the OPP relied on analysis from a collision reconstructionist whose conclusions were not scrutinized in court.
In the 55-page report released to the public on Tuesday, the OPP laid out its investigation into the testimony provided by Det. Const. Lisa Forbes, Det. Const. Scharnil Pais, and Det. Const. Antonio Correa, about the night Det. Const. Jeffrey Northrup was struck and killed in the parking garage below Toronto City Hall in 2021.
“The OPP investigative review has concluded that the opinions expressed by the trial judge regarding alleged dishonesty and collusion among Detective Constables Forbes, Pais and Correa are not supported by the evidence,” the OPP said.
The report was ordered by Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw after Ontario Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy told the jury in the high-profile 2024 trial that the officers may have colluded in delivering their testimony. She stated that all three of their statements did not match the physical evidence presented, specifically where Northrup was when he was struck and killed by the vehicle Zameer was driving.
“When three versions of the event are wrong, and wrong in the same way, you must also consider whether there has been collusion between those witnesses,” Molloy said at the time.
Molloy doubled down on that charge in a written decision following the trial, saying that the officers’ testimony that Northrup was standing directly in front of Zameer’s vehicle, a 2011 BMW 5 Series, and holding his hands up when he was struck was inaccurate.
“Further, the fact that their versions dovetail so closely with each other and with Officer Forbes leads me to the inexorable conclusion that they not only lied, but they colluded to lie,” she wrote.
Zameer was acquitted and Molloy apologized to him.
Demkiw, who held a news conference Tuesday as the report was released, previously said he had hoped the jury would have reached a “different outcome,” but later walked that comment back.
After Demkiw requested an “independent review” of the actions of the officers involved from the OPP, it determined that a criminal investigation was warranted due to the “seriousness of the trial judge’s assertions.”
“The independent investigation has now determined that they did not lie. But the personal toll this process has taken on these officers has been enormous,” he said.
“This report is about allegations that our members faced, and it speaks to that investigation, which, quite frankly, again, I’d encourage everybody to read. It is very thorough and comprehensive as it relates to those allegations and the vindication of our members facing those allegations.”
OPP raises ‘significant concerns’ about collision theories
The OPP said the focus of its report was on the motive and opportunity for the involved officers to have lied or colluded to lie regarding the sequence of events leading up to Northrup’s death in the early morning hours of July 2, 2021.
Northrup, a 31-year veteran of the force, and his partner Forbes were in plainclothes and investigating a stabbing near Nathan Phillips Square when they began searching the underground parking lot on foot for a suspect. The pair crossed paths with Correa and Pais, who were in an unmarked minivan monitoring the search.
Forbes testified that she and Northrup approached Zameer’s vehicle in the parking lot as the driver “somewhat” matched the description of a male suspect they were looking for. She stated in body-worn camera recordings that she knocked on the car and said “police” as she held out her badge.
Zameer, who was in the car with his pregnant wife and young child, was not involved in the stabbing and testified that he didn’t know the pair were police officers. He also told the court that he thought his family was being attacked.
Northrup was struck and killed as Zameer drove away. Correa and Pais rammed Zameer’s BMW and he was arrested.
At the trial, Molloy told jurors there were three pivotal issues to consider: whether Zameer knew Northrup was a police officer acting in the course of his duties, whether Northrup was standing in front of Zameer’s car when he was hit and whether Zameer knew he had run someone over.
Two crash reconstruction experts, a Toronto police officer called by the Crown and an engineer called by the defence, told the court that Northrup fell after Zameer’s vehicle made “glancing contact” with him while he was reversing, causing him to fall to the ground before he was run over.
The expert called by the defence said that Northrup would have been in Zameer’s blind spot and not visible to him as he was run over.
But the OPP said that after reviewing the reports and testimonies from those experts, they identified “significant concerns that their collision theories were not supported by the available evidence.”
“Their analyses relied heavily on a low-resolution, low-frame-rate video...while overlooking critical evidence such as Detective Constable Northrup’s fingerprints on the vehicle’s hood,” the report said.
Northrup was standing when he was struck: OPP
The provincial police conducted its own investigation and hired an “independent” OPP reconstructionist to address some of the questions left from the trial.
In the report, the OPP claims that the reconstructionist uncovered “additional evidence” about the collision, while casting doubt on some of the findings of the crash experts through a re-analysis of the incident.
“The OPP reconstructionist located and identified evidence that the TPS reconstructionist and defence engineer did not identify or note...This additional evidence was the key to tracking the BMW’s path of travel and determining where and how the collision occurred,” the report read.
Surveillance video of the incident was played during the trial and appeared to show an unidentified object believed to be Northrup’s body on the ground in front of the car as it was moving forward down the laneway. The police officer couldn’t be seen at any other point in the footage.
But the OPP reconstructionist said that, upon closer analysis, the car’s side headlamp should have been visible in the security video but wasn’t as it was likely blocked by a pedestrian, believed to be Northrup.
They also noted that Zameer’s BMW was covered in a light coat of dust and dried water marks at the time of the collision and that any contact would have removed that coating upon impact, if he was indeed struck as the car was reversing.
“If Detective Constable Northrup had been struck by the fender, there would have been marks on the fender’s surface. Based on the lack of marks on the fender, there was insufficient evidence to support the belief that Detective Constable Northrup was struck by the fender.”
The report highlighted that one of Northrup’s fingerprints was found on the hood of Zameer’s car. A 2014 BMW was also acquired by the OPP to conduct a re-enactment of the incident. They note that the 2014 model was equipped with fewer sensors and cameras than the one Zameer was driving, but still displayed visual and audible warnings when it approached an object.
“The OPP reconstructionist concluded that the collision was not a chance encounter by Detective Constable Northrup suddenly entering the BMW’s path of travel, as they were in each other’s presence for at least 76 seconds before the collision. There was insufficient evidence to support the TPS reconstructionist’s conclusion that the BMW’s front left fender knocked Detective Constable Northrup to the ground with a reversing motion. The primary cause of this collision was from the BMW accelerating forward and striking a standing Detective Constable Northrup at its front left corner,” the report reads.
The report points out that Molloy’s conclusions were limited to the evidence presented during the trial.
“Judicial findings are based on the scope of testimony, exhibits and arguments introduced in court, and do not account for investigative materials or forensic analyses that were not before the court. As such, these conclusions reflect the constraints of the trial record rather than the full breadth of available evidence,” the report noted.
‘Not a serious report’: Zameer’s lawyer
A lawyer for Zameer didn’t mince words when asked about the report and the chief’s remarks, saying they were “profoundly disappointing,” “reckless,” and “irresponsible.”
“The chief seems to have embraced this false narrative, a false narrative that has been proven false already by the best mechanism for getting at the truth and finding truth that we have an open and public court process that’s presided over by an impartial judge and an impartial jury, and where evidence is tested through the process of cross-examination,” Nader Hasan told CP24.
He called out Demkiw for seeking out a different outcome by asking another police service to conduct an investigation.
Hasan, who expressed concerns earlier this week about the report, reiterated that the outcome of one police service reviewing the work of another police service in secret does not inspire confidence.
“He’s had his retrial in front of this other police agency, without the benefit of an impartial judge, without the benefit of a jury, without the benefit of another side to challenge the evidence that he’s relying on. So, this is a profoundly disappointing take for the chief of police,” Hasan said.
“He said he made it very clear the purpose of what they’re doing now is to vindicate these officers and to cast doubt on the verdict and to cast doubt on what Justice Malloy said.”
He called out OPP’s use of their collision reconstructionist, saying his conclusions have not been scrutinized in court.
He also pointed out that neither he nor his client knew the OPP investigation was underway until last week, by which time the report had already been submitted to Toronto police.
“The Toronto Police Service, despite our request, they refused to share their report with us. I now see why. It’s not a serious report, and I’m sure that they appreciated that if anyone out there had access to report this report in advance, it would have made it very easy to debunk the assertions that are made in there,” Hasan said.
He believes the report was a “missed opportunity” for the Toronto police to learn from the incident and the trial, and to do better.
“I don’t think that the people of Toronto, the people of Canada, will have much trouble seeing what’s going on. I think they’ll see through this,” Hasan said.
He shared that Zameer was disappointed, but not surprised, by the OPP investigation.
“He’s a perpetual optimist who believes in the good of people, so he can’t help but be disappointed,” Hasan said.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford commented on the report following its release at an unrelated news conference and said: “I think there’s no police service in the country that’s more credible than the OPP. They’re going to be transparent.”
In an email to CP24, OPP said their investigative team employed a “trauma-informed approach to conducting the interviews.”
“As part of the mandate, interviews were only conducted with those individuals who had specific relevance to the allegations being investigated, specifically, obstruction of justice and perjury,” Agata Czajkowski, OPP’s strategic communications advisor, said in the email.
“The interviews were focused on obtaining information that had not already been provided under oath at trial, which Mr. Zameer has done.”
‘Justice Molloy, you were wrong’: TPA president
Toronto Police Association President Clayton Campbell spoke at a news conference Tuesday as the report was released and pointed the finger at Molloy.
“Today, I clearly say to Justice Molloy: you were wrong,” he said, as he asked for her to publicly apologize to the officers involved.
“Our members were accused of tarnishing the memory of a deceased colleague, they were publicly shamed, the reputation of an entire profession thrown into question. Most insulting, while Jeff’s grieving widow, Margaret and colleagues sat just feet away, she apologized to a man who killed a police officer. Today. Justice Molloy, I would strongly recommend that Scharnil, Tony, Lisa and especially Margaret receive a public apology from you.”
Campbell added that Molloy accused Pais and Correa of pointing their guns at the heads of Zameer and his wife at the time of the arrest, but he said the OPP determined that there was no evidence of that.
Demkiw was asked if he agreed with Campbell’s request, but refused to comment.
“I’m here to speak about what’s in this report, and in particularly as it relates to our officers being cleared of any wrongdoing. And that’s what I’m here to speak about, is the fact that our three officers have been cleared of something that has been investigated thoroughly by the OPP and presented in this report.”
Campbell was asked if the TPA will pursue legal action in the wake of the report’s findings and said that the union will sit down with the officers to discuss next steps.
‘Insufficient evidence’ of collusion
The report analyzed all the “opportunities” that the officers would have had to collude and corroborate their stories and found that only “limited” windows existed to do so.
Forbes attended St. Michael’s hospital following Northrup’s death, where she had no contact with Pais or Correa who were at Mount Sinai Hospital. The report noted that Pais and Correa sat in the public emergency waiting room and four witness officers told the OPP that there were no discussions among members at that time.
During a preliminary hearing, defence counsel suggested that the officers involved in the incident communicated with each other by text message on July 1 to 2 about what had transpired.
“It was also during the preliminary hearing that Detective Constables Pais and Correa communicated about a plumber, though they had been instructed not to communicate over that weekend.”
It was determined that the texts “did not offer any evidence that anyone attempted to collude or obstruct justice” and that most of the messages were anecdotes about Northrup and messages to his wife, who had access to his phone at the time.
The OPP report also found that although Pais and Correa both completed their notes on the incident in the same 52 Division room on August 4, 2021 after the visiting the scene together. None of the other officers in the room reported hearing, seeing or being aware of conversations, collaboration or collusion between the two.
Northrup’s partner ‘stunned’ by judge’s charge of collusion
In a voluntary statement to the OPP, Forbes said she experienced post-traumatic stress in the hours, days and months following Northrup’s death and said she was unable to stop replaying the incident in her head.
“She stated she may have forgotten some things through the trauma of the incident and the passage of time, but she has never and can never forget exactly how the collision happened because it was and remained etched in her brain.”
She told the OPP that she was “utterly certain” that she does not have a mistaken recollection of the Zameer’s car running into Northrup as he was standing in front of it. She said she was “stunned and confused” that Molloy would have determined she was misremembering or lying about the collision.
“Between the moment her colleague died next to her and the instant the body-worn camera captured her initial statement, she was operating on pure instinct and desperation. She stated that the idea that she could have somehow invented a lie during that chaos was inconceivable.”
‘Elated at the complete vindication’
Forbes is “relieved and elated at the complete vindication,” her lawyer, David Butt, told CP24.
“This has been a hellscape for the last five years, consisting of the death of her colleague, a trial in which she got ripped to shreds unjustly, and then the stress and stigma of a criminal investigation,” Butt said.
“So frankly, mostly what it is today, it is exhaustion, and we need to focus now on healing and recovery.”
When asked if his client is thinking of any recourse, Butt said Forbes is not thinking about that at this time—but she has not ruled out anything yet.
“I think, like somebody completing a marathon, it’s intensely painful. There’s a collapse at the end. There’s relief. You couldn’t really call it happiness, but there’s more healing to come,” Butt said.
“In due course, she’ll give thoughts to any remedy she might have, but that’s not now.”
In a statement from the officers released by Toronto police, they thanked the OPP for their efforts.
“We fully cooperated with the investigation, and we appreciate the results. Our only wish was for the truth to come out, no matter how long it took,” the statement read.
“We miss Jeff every day and remain dedicated to honouring his memory through our service.”
The officers asked for privacy and said they want to grieve and move forward together.
With files from Beatrice Vaisman and The Canadian Press
