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Letter: Newspapers unfairly criticize Sudbury Police Service

Officers are doing their jobs, and don't deserve the negativity
letter_to_editor
Letter writer Jim Curry says that police officers are doing their jobs, and don't deserve the negativity surrounding dismissed sexual assault cases. File photo.

Local newspapers including Northern Life recently ran articles accusing Sudbury police of ignoring sexual assault. No one can deny that sexual assault victims deserve justice but these articles make many false and uniformed insinuations.

The articles started with the media assertion that roughly one third of reported sexual assaults in Sudbury have been summarily dismissed without proper investigation.

Even if these statistics were valid, Sudbury Police found bona fide evidence of sexual assault in most cases filed and laid appropriate charges. Do the authors believe that the only justification for an indictment is the accusation itself? 

These articles insinuate that people who make sexual assault allegations are always credible. If we learned anything from the Ghomeshi case it is that this is not always true.

Not only were the Ghomeshi complainants disingenuous but they colluded to devise a more believable testimony. The Ghomeshi case was dismissed due to the serious lack of credibility of the complainants.

One article recommended that courts should not rely solely on the credibility of the complainants.  Are we to understand from this that judges and police should overlook the credibility of a complainant in sexual assault cases? It is essential that complainants and witnesses tell the truth.

In Canada our legal system is based on the rule of law and people are presumed innocent until proven guilty by an impartial tribunal. The burden of proof is on the police to show that there are reasonable and probable grounds that there has been a violation of the criminal code.

These articles insinuate that there should be no presumption of innocence in sexual assault cases and that Sudbury Police should charge everyone that is accused of sexual assault. 

Thankfully Canada is not a Third World country where people can be charged and convicted without bona fide evidence. Sudbury Police are doing their job and don’t deserve this uninformed criticism.

Jim Curry
Sudbury