Ottawa mayor asks police services board chair to step down over hiring of new chief

Postmedia News - Yesterday 

© Provided by National PostOttawa Police Services Board Chair Diane Deans.

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson asked the city’s police services board chair to step down Wednesday.

According to a source, the city learned Diane Deans was trying hire a new police chief without competition and was eyeing a former chief of a police force in southwestern Ontario for the job.

The Ottawa Police Services Board accepted the resignation of Chief Peter Sloly on Tuesday following weeks of chaos in downtown Ottawa for almost three weeks.

Sloly resigned on Day 19 of the occupation as Ottawa’s police service continued to struggle to crack down on the settlement of big rigs in the city’s core. He asked for 1,800 more police and civilians from other agencies to help local police handle the occupation and to maintain effective policing for the entire city.

Deans announced a “mutually agreed upon separation” between the board and Sloly on Tuesday, but the board released no other information and Deans said there would be no other comment, citing it as a “labour relations matter.”

Sources said Matt Torigian, a former police chief in Waterloo Region, was being eyed to be the next police chief in Ottawa. Torigian was chief of Waterloo Regional Police Service for about six years before becoming deputy minister of the Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services in 2014 and he held the job until 2018.

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Meanwhile, interim OPS Chief Steve Bell said in a statement to city council: “We are going to take back the entirety of the downtown core and every occupied space. We are going to remove this unlawful protest. We will return our city to a state of normalcy.

“Some of the techniques we are lawfully able and prepared to use are not what we are used to seeing in Ottawa. But we are prepared to use them where necessary to bring about the safest outcome and restore order.

“We know that this has left our residents feeling unsafe and abandoned and has tarnished our own reputation and that of our City. We deeply regret this,” Bell said.

“There are many questions being asked about how we got here. We all know that there will be full review and we all welcome it so we can learn from the events of the last three weeks.”

The former chair of the Ottawa Police Services board said Tuesday Sloly didn’t receive the support he needed from political overseers and councillors before he quit as police chief on Tuesday.

“Instead of us standing with the police service and supporting the service, the board was absent, councillors were trashing him publicly every opportunity,” Coun. Eli El-Chantiry said in an interview.

“They want police to be in every building, every corner, and all that he had is limited resources.”