After 15 years, tens of millions of dollars and a five-month trial, Toronto has reached a milestone in its biggest police corruption saga.

Five former drug squad officers, including their hard-driving leader, John Schertzer, 54, have been convicted of attempting to obstruct justice.

Const. Steven Correia, 45, the only defendant still a police officer, was also convicted of perjury, as were Ned Maodus, 49, and Raymond Pollard, 48.

But the officers were acquitted of other counts, including conspiracy to attempt to obstruct justice, extortion, theft over $5,000 and assault causing bodily harm.

All the convictions relate to a warrantless search of heroin dealer Ho Bing Pang’s Scarborough apartment in February 1998, which involved a controversial 22-minute race across the city.

An Ontario Superior Court jury of seven women and five men returned its verdict Wednesday, its ninth day of deliberations.

The University Ave. courtroom, with some 50 spectators, including family members and police officers, was hushed and tense as the nine counts were read aloud, to which the jury foreman firmly replied “guilty” or “not guilty.”

The defendants showed little emotion and huddled with their lawyers after the verdict.

None of the former members of the disbanded Team 3 of Central Field Command had any comment as they left.

“It continues,” was all Schertzer said.

Joseph Miched, 53, marched through a group of reporters outside the courthouse, refusing to comment.

“You guys are coming for me? I’ve got nothing to say to you,” the massive former officer said.

Appeals may follow, and civil suits. Next up is the officers’ sentencing, which starts Nov. 5.

The maximum penalty for perjury is 14 years. For attempting to obstruct justice, it’s 10. But a police source said he doubted they would serve any jail time.

Schertzer’s lawyer, John Rosen, said he was disappointed, and that the officers will be considering an appeal.

“But we’re very pleased that the jury saw that the main complainants were incredible and the Crown never had a case and they were properly acquitted.”

He said the officers did impeccable work on the drug squad and they have largely been vindicated.

Toronto Police Association president Mike McCormack said the officers are devastated by the result.

“We feel, unfortunately, the jury got most things right but on a couple of counts we believe they made the wrong decision.”

Milan Rupic, one of the four prosecutors, praised the jury, which sat more than five months.

“This was a very long case. It was a complex case,” he said. “The community owes those jurors a debt of gratitude.”

Toronto police Insp. Art Little, who heads the Special Task Force that investigated the case, said nobody has won.

“We don’t take any pleasure in convicting our own fellow officers. It was necessary and we did it,” Little said.

The force has addressed the issues that led to the charges, Little said.

“It was embarrassing for the Toronto Police Service and we’re glad to put this chapter behind us.”

But some critics believe only a public inquiry will get to the bottom of troubling allegations that have plagued the service, leading to the tossing of more than 200 drug cases in the early 1990s.

The verdict represents, however, the culmination of an arduous process. The investigation began in earnest in 2001 and charges were laid in 2004.

“The verdict tempers my abject cynicism about the justice system,” said defence lawyer Edward Sapiano, who led a group of lawyers in complaining about Schertzer’s team in 1999. “In my experiences police officers enjoy a privileged status in our justice system, often placing them above the law.”

It was a trial presenting two starkly different pictures of elite Team 3. The Crown called it a rogue crew, robbing and beating drug dealers, then falsifying records and lying in court to cover up.

The defence praised its members as hard-working “foot soldiers in the war on drugs” whose errors were minor and made in good faith.

The trial, which started Jan. 16, sat for 86 days, heard from 30 witnesses and examined 684 exhibits numbering 2,742 pages.

Court heard dramatic, even florid evidence from five drug dealers, past and present, including a former Montreal stripper, interspersed with mind-numbing details about police procedures.

Justice Gladys Pardu warned the jury it would be dangerous to accept the testimony of these “unsavoury witnesses” without objective corroboration.

“Some of them, because of their character, may lie reflexively, like other people blink their eyes,” she said.

But the eight convictions registered Wednesday did not rely on the word of criminals. It related to a high-speed drive along Eglinton Ave.

Miched testified he raced 12 kilometres from 53 Division police station near Yonge St. to the heroin dealer’s apartment near Midland Ave. to deliver a search warrant, then sped back, all within 22 minutes.

The Crown suggested he was lying to cover up a warrantless search by his fellow officers. Prosecutors suggested it was highly unlikely he could drive his unmarked car an average of almost 100 km/h along busy Eglinton Ave. past 30 traffic lights each way.

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The jurors seemed to agree.

But they apparently rejected the word of convicted criminals.

Andy Ioakim, 55, a bushy bearded cocaine trafficker, claimed the officers stole cocaine, marijuana and $100,000 from his home in 1997 then forced him to set up a drug deal with stripper Aida Fagundo in exchange for freedom.

Fagundo, 48, who testified via video link from Spain, where she lives, alleged officers beat, groped and robbed her upon arrest on a Scarborough street with five kilograms of cocaine.

Heroin dealer Kai Sum Yeung, 37, alleged Schertzer seized $2,000 from his wallet in 1998, though the officer only reported $350.

The jury seemed to reject their allegations.

One-time pot dealer Christopher Quigley, 46, gave a graphic description of being “pulverized” by Schertzer, Maodus and another officer during three beatings in a police interview room in 1998.

He claimed they and Correia tried to pressure him, through threats and violence, into revealing where he kept his drugs and money. Schertzer and Correia seized $54,000 of his cash from a safety deposit box, Quigley alleged. Schertzer logged $22,850.

The jury seemed to doubt Quigley’s word.

One of the most compelling pieces of documentary evidence presented by the Crown was a missing section of central surveillance notes.

Special Task Force investigators searching Maodus’s home in 2002 found his scribbled notes describing two “friendlies” embroiled in the Fagundo bust. But all such references were dropped in the final typed version.

Prosecutors alleged the officers edited the notes to conceal the fact they had used Ioakim as a “state agent” to set up the drug deal.

But Schertzer said Ioakim was a confidential informant, not an agent. He said he ordered Maodus to redact the notes to protect Ioakim’s identity and that of another informant.

The difference between agents and informants is crucial to the court system. The former can be called to testify while the latter must be kept anonymous.

The jury seemed to believe the officers on this issue.

The first formal investigation into the drug squad was conducted by internal affairs in 1998 after a man complained about a warrantless search.

The following year, defence lawyers led by Sapiano reported their clients had been robbed of cash and jewelry.

In 2000, eight drug squad members, including Schertzer, were charged with theft, fraud, forgery and breach of trust in their use of the police “Fink Fund,” a cash reserve to pay informants.

Those charges were never tested in court, however. They were stayed in 2002 to protect the larger 2½-year Special Task Force investigation that culminated in the present trial.

Launched in 2001 by then police chief Julian Fantino and led by RCMP Chief. Supt. John Neily, the task force once consisted of 35 officers.

After a preliminary hearing and protracted battles between Crown and defence, the case finally came to trial in 2007. But the following year a judge stayed the charges over delays.

After the Ontario Court of Appeal reinstated the case in 2009, the officers finally started their trial this past January.

With files from Peter Edwards