The Crown is seeking jail time for three former TTC enforcement officers convicted for their role in a scheme to skip out on work by writing fraudulent tickets to homeless people.

At an Ontario Court of Justice hearing at the College Park courthouse Tuesday, Crown Attorney Derek Ishak asked the judge to sentence the three men to time behind bars for their “repeated, flagrant, and knowing breach of trust.”

He argued jail time was necessary to send a message of “deterrence and denunciation” to the public and other similar officers. He said TTC officers were akin to police and therefore their violation of the public trust was particularly serious.

The defendants’ lawyers countered by pointing out none of the men had previous criminal records, and prior to the fake ticket scheme had performed exemplary service for the TTC.

They also argued that TTC officers, who had been temporarily stripped of their special constable status and associated powers at the time of the trio’s offences, shouldn’t be considered the same as police. The lawyers asked the judge to hand down conditional sentences with no jail time, or to allow the men to serve intermittent sentences behind bars during set periods such as weekends.

The three officers were found guilty last June of obstructing justice and fabricating evidence.

Those convicted were Michael Schmidt, 49, Tony Catic, 50, and John Posthumus, 48. Two other officers who were charged were acquitted.

Justice S. Ford Clements is expected to sentence the three men at a hearing scheduled for Feb. 21.

The court case stems from a scandal that erupted in early 2013, when the TTC fired eight of its then 40 enforcement officers following a joint investigation with the Toronto police.

The transit agency became suspicious after discovering irregular ticketing patterns, and came to believe that the officers were writing fake provincial offences tickets to make it appear they were working when they were not. Many of the tickets were falsely issued in the names of homeless people for loitering and solicitation.

The investigation, which involved using GPS trackers hidden in TTC vehicles and security camera footage, determined the former officers were shopping or visiting friends on some of the days they supposedly issued the tickets on TTC property.

Because the victims had no knowledge the tickets had been written in their names, some were convicted in absentia for not paying fines when they failed to appear in court. Loitering and solicitation carry a fine of $195.

In his sentencing submissions Stacey Taraniuk, the lawyer for Posthumus, alleged the behaviour for which the men were convicted was endemic at the TTC at the time, and that the officers were under pressure to meet a monthly quota of 25 tickets or risk losing their jobs.

The issue was “a cultural problem at the TTC, not just rogue officers running around,” Taraniuk said.

TTC spokesperson Brad Ross flatly denied the allegation.

“The TTC rejects any notion of a workplace culture as characterized by the defence, hence the action taken by the TTC when this entire matter came to its attention,” he said in an email.

Ross wouldn’t say whether the transit agency wants its former employees jailed, saying that decision is “rightly in the court’s hands.”

Ishak recommended the judge sentence Schmidt, who was a sergeant at the TTC and described as the ringleader of the scheme, to 12 months in jail. He was convicted for writing or being a party to issuing 28 falsified tickets.

Ishak asked for six to nine months for Catic, who often served as acting sergeant, and three months for Posthumus. The Crown said it would not oppose an intermittent sentence for Posthumus.

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Catic and Posthumus were involved in issuing 13 and four falsified tickets respectively.

In total, 13 tickets resulted in convictions and fines being imposed against the victims.

The three men had been working for the TTC for between six and 13 years at the time of their arrest. Schmidt’s salary in 2012 was $142,677, while Catic made $108,163, and Posthumus $89,057.