publisher’s message by Dan Donovan
Stop the Sloly SLAPP
O
n June 11, 2021, Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly filed a defamation lawsuit against Ottawa Life Magazine (OLM), me and Carleton University Criminology Professor Darryl Davies because he was offended by an article OLM published about the Ottawa Police Service in March 2021 titled Rapes and Lies — the Cancerous Misconduct at the Ottawa Police Service. Interestingly Sloly did not file the document in his role as “Chief ” of the Ottawa Police, but instead he did it as ‘private citizen’ Peter Sloly and claimed that the article was “malicious, false and part of a bizarre campaign to ruin his reputation.” We have never written a word about Peter Sloly, ‘private citizen’. It is unfortunate that OPS Chief Peter Sloly is confusing and conflating his roles and responsibilities as chief with his personal self. More astounding and bizarre is that Sloly is now portraying himself as ‘a victim’ because of our reporting in the public interest on the depraved conduct and lack of accountability for rogue officers in the
stories about police oversight and police misconduct at the OPS, RCMP and other police services across Canada. These stories have been about the preponderance of cases of police misconduct in Ottawa and the lack of accountability for offending officers. They have focused on the lax oversight of OPSB members in holding rogue cops to account for egregious and at times very violent misconduct against citizens. We have written about the importance of the role of police in society and the need for better police recruiting training and oversight. We have written that by not holding bad cops to account for misconduct, a cumulative corrosive impact occurs that causes citizens to lose faith in the many good police who act with integrity each day. This concern is now very apparent with the ‘Defund Police’ campaign in Ottawa and many other cities. We have called for serious consequences for OPS police who break the law and abuse their authority, especially when their victims are citizens. We have
I said I was so concerned about the behaviour of the OPS in this case that I was going to seek an opportunity to bring it to Mayor Watson’s attention. Sloly sent me a one-line response saying, ‘good for you’. I emailed him back saying, ‘what does that mean?’ OPS. The ‘real victims’ are traumatized citizens in our community, many of them women—who have had to endure the effects of OPS police misconduct which includes assault, sexual assaults, alleged rapes and battery. The other ‘real victims’ are the many hard working and law-abiding OPS officers who have become collateral damage in the eyes of the public due to the behaviour of bad cops on the force. We stand by the article and all its content. Over the past decade Ottawa Life Magazine has published over 100 4 OTTAWALIFE SUMMER 2021
called out the OPS and other police when they have shown prejudicial behaviour towards minority and racialized communities and to the LGBTQ community. We have pointed out for many years that the biggest problem in policing in Ottawa is the amount of police misconduct and the breathtakingly awful oversight by the OPSB. We have written about the poor and at times oppressive or tyrannical leadership of senior OPS officers towards subordinates. In 2018, OLM started tracking police
misconduct in Ottawa and across Canada as reported by other major media via a link on our website titled ‘Patrolling Police Misconduct’. A short three years later there are well over 300 stories regarding incidents of serious police misconduct and lax oversight of the police in Ottawa and across Canada. Many of the stories are shocking. Between 2016 and 2018 OLM published a two-year series titled ‘Misogyny Matters’ about misogyny and oppressive behaviour in the RCMP. We wrote stories about the need for rank-and-file RCMP members to have a union because of the disturbing number of stories about the oppressive behaviour of RCMP management towards subordinates. OLM has written extensively about police matters in Ottawa and across Canada for well over a decade before Peter Sloly was hired as the OPS Chief. When Peter Sloly was hired by the Ottawa Police Services Board (OPSB) in 2019, I sent him a friendly congratulatory note via Linked-In. I offered to meet with him at his convenience regarding Ottawa Life Magazine’s perspective about police matters in Ottawa. Chief Sloly never took me up on my request to meet with him despite my following up with him a couple of times. I would later learn that Sloly also refused to meet with Carleton University Professor Darryl Davies. Davies is recognized nationally for his knowledge of policing in Canada, was a Crown witness at the 2017 RCMP Canada Labour Code Trial and was recognized as an “expert witness” by the provincial court of New Brunswick. When Mayor Jim Watson inquired about Sloly’s refusal to meet, Sloly responded with a petulant note lecturing Davies about a typo in his letter and never met with him. In his defamation suit, Sloly disparagingly refers to Davies as a ‘part time instructor’ at Carleton.
