Waterloo Regional Police has been called in by Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders to investigate the circumstances surrounding the assault of Black Whitby teen Dafonte Miller after an off-duty Toronto Police officer was charged.

That request by Saunders, announced at a police board meeting on Thursday, comes amid criticism of both Toronto and Durham Police for not reporting Miller’s injuries to the police watchdog responsible for investigating cases of serious injury when police officers are involved.

That criticism caused the meeting to be temporarily halted when journalist activist for Black issuesDesmond Cole demanded to speak to the case publicly before being escorted out of the building, fined and warned not to return.

“As chief of police, it is my responsibility to ensure that transparency and trust are at the foremost of everything we do as a service,” Saunders said at the start of a public meeting, saying Waterloo Chief Bryan Larkin has agreed to take carriage of the report.

Last week, Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) charged Toronto police Const. Michael Theriault and his brother, civilian Christian Theriault, with aggravated assault, assault with a weapon, and public mischief in Miller’s beating last December.

Miller was punched, kicked and hit repeatedly in the face with a metal pipe, says his lawyer, Julian Falconer. One of Miller’s eyes will have to be surgically removed, Falconer added. When Durham Police arrived on scene, it was Miller who was arrested. (All charges have since been dropped.)

The SIU learned of the incident only when Falconer contacted the panel in April.

“This case is complicated and there have been serious allegations made, which everyone is taking extremely seriously, especially members of the Toronto Police Services Board,” board chair Andy Pringle said Thursday. He added that the board supports the chief’s decision to seek an outside force to conduct a followup investigation.

“The chief has advised the board that due to the fact that there are two very different versions of this case in the public domain, it is important to take this opportunity to have another agency that is independent and separate to conduct the Section 11 investigation.”

An internal report by a police service to the police board investigating matters arising from an SIU investigation — referred to as a Section 11 for the provincial law it that requires it — will look at “procedures, policies and conduct in the handling of this case,” Pringle said.

Saunders said members of his professional standards unit determined that the case did not meet the threshold to report to the SIU with the information they had “at that time.”

“Many months later, a very different version of the events of Dec. 28 was presented to the SIU,” Saunders said.

The SIU’s website states that in the case of an off-duty officer, it typically don’t investigate unless the officer identified themselves, or displayed police equipment during an incident.

Saunders’ defence of why the incident was not reported to the SIU is contradicted by the account detailed to the Star by Miller’s lawyer, who said Michael Theriault twice identified himself as an officer — to Miller and his friends as they encountered him outside the Whitby home and on a 911 call.

The Theriaults’ father, John Theriault, is a longtime detective in the Toronto police professional standards unit, Falconer said.

Durham Police and its board have said very little publicly about the case.

Roger Anderson, chair of the Durham Police Services Board, was not available to comment on the case Thursday, his staff told the Star.

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Durham police did not respond to multiple requests for an interview with Durham Police Chief Paul Martin on Thursday. All questions were referred to spokesperson David Selby, who repeated an earlier statement to the Star Thursday night that the responsibility to report to the SIU lay solely with Toronto police.

“We are not at liberty to discuss any details related to the incident as there are active charges before the court,” Selby said in an email.

When reached by the Star last week, Selby said that multiple Durham officers were at the scene of Miller’s alleged beating.

“We conducted an investigation and interviewed multiple people. Our investigation resulted in only one person being charged — the injured male party,” Selby said in an email.

The responsibility to contact the SIU should lie with whichever police force is first notified of an incident, said former SIU director Howard Morton.

“They might decide to contact the police service that the officer is a member of, to have them contact the SIU, but I was always of the view that, because (police) have to contact us right away, then it’s whatever police service is (initially) notified,” Morton added.

Mayor John Tory said the report from Waterloo Police will be made public.

“I think what we have to do is let the Waterloo Police Service do their job. There’s been no suggestion that anybody associated with that police service had any involvement in this or has any prejudice going in,” Tory told reporters. “I trust they will do their job as police officers do, in an honest and thorough manner.”

After briefly moving on to other business, the meeting was disrupted by Cole, who demanded a forum to speak to the Miller case, noting it was not made part of the public agenda.

Pringle earlier warned no disruptions would be tolerated, alluding to previous meetings where Cole and members of Black Lives Matter question the board on their oversight of police shootings and racial profiling.

As Cole continued to speak, board members, including Tory, walked out of the room.

Cole was eventually escorted outside by a group of officers, with one on each arm, and charged under the Trespass to Property Act for failing to leave when directed. The provincial offence comes with a $65 fine.

Speaking to reporters outside, Cole said the way Miller was treated “is emblematic to us as Black people about how the system always turns us into the perpetrator even when we are the victim.”

“As a Black person who knows that this can happen to us and then knows that after it’s revealed that it happened that they will continue to cover it up, I’m terrified,” Cole said. “And I have to act the way that I’m acting now because sitting here calmly and quietly is not going to save my life and it’s not going to save the lives of Black people.”

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