“Cop photographed half-naked prisoner” & related articles

After the OPP started secretly monitoring the phone calls and text messages of one of their own officers, they found out Const. Luanne MacDonald had sent a photo to her boyfriend of a half-naked, intoxicated woman detained in a police cell block.

Her boyfriend also happened to be an OPP constable.

And that’s not all the OPP discovered about MacDonald, who worked at the Alexandria satellite office of the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry detachment.

In March 2014, MacDonald got a call from a mother who reported her drunken boyfriend had sexually assaulted her 14-year-old daughter. MacDonald not only discouraged the concerned parent from filing a complaint, but she also tried to cover her tracks and lied about what she knew of the assault to an investigator.

The details of MacDonald’s on- and off-duty behaviour are revealed in an agreed statement of facts filed with the Ottawa courthouse after she pleaded guilty last week to obstruction of justice relating to her handling of the reported sexual assault.

Her trial was transferred from Alexandria to Ottawa at the request of her defence lawyer.

Unbeknownst to MacDonald, 46, the OPP were secretly monitoring her phone calls and text messages in 2014 under a court order.

In an email to the Citizen on Thursday, an OPP spokeswoman declined to provide a reason for what had prompted the police force to monitor one of its own in the first place.

“This question pertains to a matter of evidence and I won’t be speaking to that,” said Acting Sgt. Angie Atkinson.

She also said she could not comment about whether MacDonald was the subject of an investigation prior to March 2014.

The document filed with the court contains excerpts of the incriminating calls and messages, but it does not explain why her private communications were being intercepted or for how long.

Her Ottawa-based lawyer, Michael Edelson, declined to comment on the case.

Her trial had been scheduled for Jan. 16 to Feb. 17 and Feb. 27 to March 3. But on the first day of the trial, MacDonald entered a plea of guilty to one count of obstruction.

The probe into the officer also resulted in seven other charges being laid on July 23, 2014, including breach of trust by a public officer, theft of telecommunication, fraud, voyeurism, and distribution of voyeurism material stemming from unrelated incidents. Although she has not entered a plea on any of these other charges, she has admitted certain facts of the case in the agreed statement of facts filed in court.

The document reveals the constable suggested the mother not file a police report and that she made sure the reported sexual assault stayed a secret.

MacDonald agreed with the mother that reporting the sexual assault would tear the family apart and “destroy a business.”

“CAS (Children’s Aid Society) is going to be in our face,” MacDonald told the mother during one of their phone calls, adding that if charges are laid, “(the boyfriend) won’t be able to be around your kids, like any of them.”

MacDonald told her not to tell anyone about their discussion despite acknowledging in a text message that she had a duty as a police officer to investigate when she said, “I’m sort of obligated to bring that kind of s—t forward.”

In a phone call that was secretly recorded by the police, MacDonald told one of her friends that the boyfriend fondled the teen’s breasts and removed her pyjamas.

She told that same friend that she was “taking this to the f——-g grave” and “I’m not saying a f——-g word,” before telling the friend to delete their text messages about the incident. She recommended the teenaged girl and her accused abuser see a counsellor.

MacDonald also shared details of the mother’s allegations with her boyfriend, Const. John Bernard, who works in the same OPP detachment, according to the agreed statement of facts.

In one wiretapped conversation, the pair agreed they would have filed a police report if it had been their own child who had been sexually assaulted.

Bernard, 43, said in an interview with the OPP after his arrest that MacDonald told him that the boyfriend had put his hands in the 14-year-old’s underwear.

“In her conversations with Bernard about the incident and her failure to report they discussed how they would make efforts to protect her from her failure to report,” according to the court document.

Bernard was later charged in July 2014 with two counts of breach of trust by a public officer. He did not enter a plea on either of the charges last week and is scheduled to return to court on March 3.

Both officers remain suspended with pay, according to the OPP.

When confronted later by another OPP officer tasked with investigating the sexual assault, MacDonald lied about what she knew of the complaint.

Through the investigation, the 14-year-old girl gave investigators a different story about what had happened than what she told MacDonald. In the end, no charges were laid in the teen’s case.

Another admitted fact in the court records reveals that while MacDonald was on duty on April 9, 2014, she photographed a surveillance screen in the police station showing a partially clothed woman detained in the cell block.

Police intercepted messages she sent from her BlackBerry to Bernard that included the photo of the woman who was not wearing pants. In the photo, the woman had been sitting on a bench with her knees up to her chest and arms around her legs with her head down, exposing her upper left thigh and left buttock.

MacDonald also sent “inappropriate comments” in another text message to her sister about the female inmate, according to the agreed statement of facts. She was subsequently charged with the two voyeurism charges.

MacDonald also breached an order from her supervisor, an inspector, by contacting an unidentified individual believed to be “deceitful and treacherous in dealing with the police” by exchanging more than 600 phone calls and text messages with the person between 2011 and 2014, according to the agreed statement of facts.

In her email to the Citizen, Atkinson said the OPP will open an internal professional standards section investigation into MacDonald and Bernard after their criminal matters are resolved.

She is scheduled to return to the Ottawa courthouse on March 3 for a sentencing hearing.