A former RCMP officer accused of contravening the Mounties’ code of conduct will avoid sanctions from the force as he resigned before punishment could be meted out.
Cpl. Bartholomew Doerr, a supervisor for the North Island Integrated Road Safety Unit, voluntarily resigned before a decision could be rendered after a hearing into his conduct.
Doerr was accused of abusing his authority and failing to treat every person with respect and courtesy. He was found to have had excessive and inappropriate communications with a subordinate and to have threatened that subordinate’s spouse, also a member of the RCMP, with a code of conduct investigation after she told Doerr not to contact her wife.
In his recently released decision, conduct adjudicator Gerald Annetts, now a provincial court judge in Alberta, said he was satisfied the allegations against Doerr had been shown to be true, but was unable to impose sanctions after Doerr resigned his position prior to the conduct measures phase of the hearing.
The conduct hearing, held Feb. 28 until March 4 of this year in Nanaimo, heard Doerr was accused of a pattern of repeated improper and offensive conduct, including failure to accept his subordinate’s repeated requests that he stop seeking more than a strictly professional working relationship with her.
The documents indicate that Doerr’s subordinate — identified in the documents as Constable T.N. — told Doerr the incessant communications were harassing, causing her offence and severe mental anguish to both her and her family.
The communications included inappropriate comments about T.N.’s appearance, using his supervisory position to further a relationship with T.N., repeated unreasonable text and telephone communications with T.N., requests to meet outside of the work setting, personalized and expensive gifts, and persistent offers for T.N. to sleep at his home.
“Were these incidents indicative of a lack of respect and courtesy, amounting to harassment, sexual or otherwise? I believe that a reasonable person in the position of Corporal Doerr, with knowledge of all of the facts of the case, and knowledge of not only policing in general, but policing in the RCMP in particular, ought to have known that their words or acts were belittling, degrading or humiliating, or would give offence or cause harm,” Annetts wrote.
“I believe each of these acts individually and in combination amount to harassment on the part of Corporal Doerr towards his subordinate, Constable T.N.”
Annetts also concluded that Doerr abused his position by threatening T.N.’s wife, referred to as Cst. S.F. in the documents, with a code of conduct investigation after she had confronted him about his communication with T.N.
“You compromised your fairness and impartiality by threatening Constable S.F. with a code of conduct as a consequence of her expressing legitimate concerns to you regarding your unwanted interactions with her spouse,” Annetts wrote. “Your threat of a code of conduct was an abuse of your position, power and authority over Constable T.N.”
