A migrant workers’ advocacy group says an Ontario policing watchdog failed by clearing the OPP of racial profiling during an investigation of a 2013 attack on an Elgin County woman who was tied up and raped in her home.

As part of the investigation, police gathered up voluntary DNA profiles from about 100 migrant workers, regardless of their physical characteristics and age, who lived and worked in the area.

“This report and the institution of the (Office of the Independent Police Review Director) have failed the migrant workers who live near Tillsonburg,” said Chris Ramsaroop of Justicia for Migrant Workers, the group that launched the complaint about the OPP investigation.

“They also have also failed racialized communities and vulnerable communities across Ontario.”

Gerry McNeilly, the province’s Independent Police Review director, wrote the police investigation “was not motivated by racial prejudice, as alleged in the complaint.”

McNeilly said in a report, titled Casting the Net and released Tuesday, that the police had “ample grounds to believe that the perpetrator was one of the local migrant workers of colour.”

but added that there needs to be some policy improvements surrounding DNA canvassing cases.

McNeilly said in an interview he understood the migrant workers’ group was disappointed in his findings “but I can’t go against the facts.”

While trying to solve the vicious sexual assault in Bayham Township on Oct. 19, 2013, the Elgin OPP had a general description of a suspect who was black, five feet 10 inches to six feet tall. They also had the suspect’s DNA generated from a sexual assault kit and items left at the scene.

The woman, who lived alone in a house on a rural road in the heart of farm country, was grabbed off her front porch, tied up and raped repeatedly. She told police she knew the suspect was a migrant worker in the area. She said her attacker had an accent but she wouldn’t be able to identify him because he was wearing a hoodie and she was blindfolded.

Investigators gathered up voluntary DNA profiles from about 100 migrant workers. Police worked quickly because some of the workers were due to return home.

They ranged in age from 22 to 68, their heights were from five feet two inches to six feet six inches and weighed from 110 to 328 pounds.

Only a handful of workers didn’t comply with the request. One of them was Henry Cooper, 38, of Trinidad who was arrested after officers scooped up a discarded cigarette butt, pop can and pizza box in Tillsonburg and had them tested at the Centre for Forensic Sciences.

At his guilty plea in June 2014 when he was sentenced to seven years in prison, the court heard the chances of the attacker being anyone other than Cooper was one in 5.6 quadrillion.

McNeilly wrote that he took “no issue with the decision” to use a DNA canvass as an investigative tool, but said the net may have been cast too wide because some of the workers “could not have met even the most generous interpretation of Ms. Doe’s description.”

Though he said he was satisfied that the police weren’t acting on a racist stereotype, it was “perfectly understandable why it would have been perceived as such by members of the community and public interest organizations.”

The scope of the canvass “could reasonably be expected to affect the workers’ “sense of vulnerability, lack of security and fairness,” and could have sent the wrong message to the community about how they should be treated. More focus should have been on recognizing the workers’ vulnerabilities and privacy rights, he said.

McNeilly said he also had concerns about how voluntary the consents were, even though the OPP took steps to ensure they were informed and voluntary. The OPP should have put more effort into explaining that the DNA samples would be destroyed and wouldn’t be used in other investigations, he said.

“I cannot say because they made some mistakes, because they could have done things differently, that it was racial profiling.”

The report lays out a new policy for DNA canvasses that takes into account the “sensitivities” of vulnerable people, including migrant workers “whose lives and work depend on others,” McNeilly said.

The OPP said it stood by the investigation but would consider McNeilly’s recommendations.

“We have a duty to protect the public which we did do,” said OPP acting Det,-Supt. Colleen McCormick.

The OPP is working through McNeilly’s report, McCormick said.

“He’s made some recommendations that will improve the commitment to public safety and we’ll be looking at those and developing policy as appropriate.”

But Ramsaroop of the migrant workers’ group said the report focused too much on the OPP’s intentions and not enough on “the impact” on the migrant workers.

“The workers feel that they’re criminalized when they go into town,” he said. “They feel they are treated differently. They feel that they’re not welcome.”

Ramsaroop said it was the DNA canvass, not the arrest and conviction of a migrant worker, that has caused the stress.

“I think that the DNA sweep reinforced this idea of all migrant workers in that area as criminals."

Though there's “no dispute this was a heinous crime," police should have followed the judicial process and obtained warrants before asking for the DNA, Ramsaroop said.

He accused investigators of casting the net too widely in requesting samples. Not only were the men of different physical shapes, they were people of Indo-Caribbean and Afro-Caribbean origin, Ramsaroop said.

“It didn’t matter what the migrant worker looked like, they were forced and compelled to participate in this process.”

Workers participated out of fear that if they refused, they would be considered a suspect, lose their jobs or not be able to stay in Canada, Ramsaroop said.

A similar kind of sweep would never happen in a white community, he said.

“There is a differential form of policing that occurs here with racialized migrants as opposed to a white community."

Justicia for Migrant Workers is “regrouping” before taking the next step in their complaint, Ramsaroop said.

Migrant workers in the Tillsonburg area are still feeling anxious and stressed about the investigation, he said.

“They’re confused and angry about this.”

jsims@postmedia.com

twitter.com/JaneatLFPress