New charges have been laid against three of four Toronto police officers who last month were charged with obstruction of justice and perjury after they allegedly gave false testimony in court.

Toronto police announced Monday that Const. Jeffrey Tout, Const. Benjamin Elliot and Det.-Const. Fraser Douglas face a total of five new charges of perjury and obstruct justice in connection to a case where an Ontario judge called police conduct “egregiously wrongful.”

Last month, Toronto police chief Mark Saunders announced the three officers, as well as Const. Michael Taylor, were charged with a total of 17 charges of perjury and obstruction of justice stemming from a 2014 drug bust, after a judge ruled police had “fabricated” a story that involved placing heroin on the console of a car to justify a search.

The new charges bring the total number of charges to 22 against the officers, two of them experienced major-crimes investigators.

The four officers, all from downtown police divisions, together have more than 50 years on the force.

Saunders told a news conference last month that there would be a review of the officers’ previous cases “to see if there is any other cause of concern.” The probe is being conducted by the force’s professional standards unit and the Crown Attorney’s office.

“We will do our best to get the public trust back that we have lost in certain ways,” Saunders said at the time. “Anything that questions the integrity of the Toronto Police Service concerns me.”

The new charges announced Monday are connected to the same 2014 incident.

An investigation into the officers’ conduct came after Superior Court Justice Edward Morgan ruled in September that the officers planted heroin in Nguyen Son Tran’s car to justify a search.

Morgan then said the officers “colluded” in their testimony in court. The judge said Tout, Douglas, Elliott and Taylor presented different versions of the events during a traffic stop in January 2014, when Tran was pulled over for allegedly running a red light near Broadview Ave. and Gerrard St.

The officers said Tran, now 56, had loose heroin powder on the dashboard of his Toyota, which led to a search of the car and the discovery of 11 grams of heroin.

But none of them could explain why Tran had loose heroin in the car, or why he didn’t wipe it away when he was pulled over.

Morgan ruled that the heroin on the console was put there by police, and not actually left there by Tran.

The search that uncovered the 11 grams of heroin tucked away behind Tran’s steering column was therefore not authorized. Morgan threw out the drugs as evidence and stayed the drug charges against Tran.

“Here, the false creation of a pretext to search the (Tran’s) vehicle, combined with the collusive fabrication of a story by the two lead officers as to why they came to assist in the traffic stop … certainly amounts to egregiously wrongful conduct,” Morgan wrote.

Kim Schofield, Tran’s lawyer, said she believed the new charges may stem from the officers’ testimony at Tran’s preliminary hearing, since Taylor — the only officer not facing new charges Monday — was also the sole officer of the group not to testify at the pre-trial hearing.

Schofield said she is pleased that the investigation into the officers’ conduct is in-depth and ongoing.

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“I think that they really want to get to the bottom of it,” she said Monday.

The four officers are all suspended with pay. They are scheduled to appear in court on March 11.

Wendy Gillis can be reached at wgillis@thestar.ca

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