A Toronto charity director who was hit with hundreds of dollars in fines and labelled “female belligerent” in police files for disputing an allegation she ran a stop sign has fought her tickets and won.
Vashti Anderson started her own search for evidence and unearthed police car and body camera video that showed her car definitely stopped at that stop sign, in a challenging ordeal that raised questions about the motivations of an officer who wrote the ticket.
“This was something I honestly didn’t do. I wasn’t guilty of it. I was so surprised. I knew I didn’t do anything wrong,” said the 62-year-old in an interview with CTV News, more than a year after she started her quest to prove that there was not a problem with her driving after all.
She says perhaps most revealing was the police officer’s notebook that was provided to her through a Freedom of Information request that described her as a “female belligerent” for standing up for the truth.
“When I saw the words “belligerent female,” that blew my mind. That tells me the kind of police officer I was dealing with,” Anderson said. “I was quite shocked he would use such a term. It shows his bias right up front.”
Anderson was pulled over on April 6, 2025 at around 10 a.m. by an officer on Avon Drive near Eglinton Avenue West and Black Creek Drive.
The body camera video shows the officer say, “I saw you look once and you came right through the stop sign.”
“No, I didn’t,” Anderson says in response.
She had left her driver’s licence at home, which is a violation. The officer says on the video he’s going to give her a break on that and returns to the car to write up the ticket.
“I’m going to be very nice here,” he says to his partner in the car.
But that mercy disappeared when Anderson kept standing her ground.
“You’re already getting a ticket, no matter what,” the officer says, and as she again asserts her innocence, he says, “Listen to me, I’m going to get you all the tickets. No problem, you’re getting all the tickets.”
Ultimately, records show the officer, Upinder Singh, issued a $110 ticket for running the stop sign, a $110 ticket for failing to provide a driver’s license, and a $65 ticket for failing to surrender the insurance card, even though Anderson can be seen in the video trying to provide him an insurance slip.
The officer appears to have rescinded the insurance ticket himself. Anderson didn’t want to pay the remainder and have all that on her record, so she started an investigation of her own.
She discovered a surveillance video from a nearby church that shows her blue Sedan stopping at the intersection.
Then she went further, requesting videos and records from the Toronto police through freedom of information. Their in-car video shows her car stopping at the intersection as well.
The body camera video also shows the officer declaring that she has done something else that she was never given a ticket for: “You cut me off,” he says in the video.
In his paper notes, the officer wrote, “Female belligerent. Said she’s going to the police station to complain about me.”
Fighting the ticket meant struggling through a bureaucracy, Anderson said.
She faced a “system error” at court, where the tickets were initially mistakenly upheld, and correspondence to her was sent to the wrong address.
She said she was also rejected in her initial complaint at the Law Enforcement Complaints Agency, which told her in a letter she faced “criminal proceedings” and an investigator was weighing the “seriousness of the charges”—all of which was false as the tickets were laid under the Highway Traffic Act.
LECA is entitled to reject complaints if the complainant still faces hearings at other courts or tribunals.
Finally, Anderson had her hearing at traffic court, presented the prosecutor the videos and other evidence, and the tickets were withdrawn.
‘This is all dead wrong’
But the whole thing should never have happened in the first place, said former Toronto Mayor John Sewell, who is now with the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition.
“This is all dead wrong,” Sewell said in an interview. “The body camera video shows she is clearly not belligerent. It’s the officer who is belligerent.”
He said the case is so clear Toronto Police should proactively review the case and the service’s police chief should get involved directly in a discipline proceeding.
“The chief has to come in and say, I’m responsible for my officers, and I’m going to make sure they’re disciplined when they do something that clearly is wrong,” he said.
Toronto Police spokesperson Stephanie Sayer said in a statement that now that the charges are dealt with, an officer has followed up with her to let her know her complaint to LECA can proceed.
“We expect our officers to enforce the law fairly, act professionally, and treat all members of the public with dignity and respect. Where concerns are raised about an officer’s conduct, there are established processes in place to ensure those concerns are reviewed and assessed appropriately,” she said.
As for LECA, a spokesperson said the dismissal of Anderson’s complaint was consistent with its policies but didn’t address why their investigator described her charges as criminal when they were laid under the Highway Traffic Act.
Anderson, who is the executive director of an agency called Women of Excellence Support and Relief Organization, said she’s still looking for accountability.
She said she wears the “female belligerent” label with pride, saying if she hadn’t stood up for herself, she never would have gotten the video that showed she was in the right.
“I truly, truly, truly want accountability. And I’m not only speaking for myself because I truly believe there are other cases out there. I just happen to be the one person who decided I’m not going to sit and keep quiet,” she said.
