The grieving mother of a Toronto police officer who took his own life in March is still desperate to read the suicide note investigators are keeping secret from her five months later.

Clinton Cibulis, a Toronto police constable at 14 Division, hanged himself at home on March 16, four days after his 34th birthday.

It was a Sunday. He had been temporarily suspended from work on Friday, allegedly for harassing a female officer, according to his mother, Lynda Cibulis.

In an interview with the Star, Cibulis said police at the scene of her son’s death seized his personal computer, his cellphone and the suicide note, none of which she has been allowed to see.

Cibulis said the Toronto Police have withheld her son’s belongings from her — and with them, the answers she has been searching for.

“Maybe the guilt will be gone,” Cibulis said. “You feel guilty because you didn’t realize what was going on and he didn’t come to you for help.”

Police were still in possession of the items until as recently as July 23, when, four months after her son’s death, the investigating coroner issued a warrant to police to hand them over to his office, as well as a video Const. Cibulis made on the night of his dismissal.

Coroner Dr. James Edwards is investigating what happened at the police station that night, with particular attention to the decision to suspend Cibulis.

It’s a decision the officer’s mother has been obsessing over for months.

With the coroner’s seizure of her son’s belongings, Cibulis can now file a written request for their return — along with a copy of the coroner’s report, when it becomes available sometime in the next four months.

Until then, Cibulis remains in the dark about her unmarried son’s death.

“It’s not fair,” she said. “He wrote a suicide letter and I haven’t seen it. We haven’t even got his computer back.”

While the coroner’s investigation so far has not indicated anything other than suicide by hanging, Edwards said, Cibulis alleges that police protocols failed her son that night and continue to fail him today.

“They shouldn’t have taken away all his dreams and hopes for the future away on a Friday evening and left him completely alone,” Cibulis said. “He should have got some kind of treatment.”

The Toronto Police Service’s professional standards division, tasked with ensuring ethics and public confidence in the force, declined to comment on the protocols in place around officer suspensions and referred all questions to Toronto police spokesperson Mark Pugash.

Pugash declined to say whether Const. Cibulis was offered any counselling or support at the time of his suspension. Other officers later told Cibulis’ mother that her son repeatedly threatened suicide when he was told of the looming reprimand, she said.

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Pugash would not comment on why police would withhold an officer’s personal belongings for months after his death.

“We have been in touch with his mother; we have answered all her questions,” Pugash responded to all subsequent Star questions.

Toronto Police Association spokesperson Mike McCormack said the union has an employee family assistance program, (which is provided by the Police Services Board), to help employees overcome addiction and mental health issues via outside referrals, but has no program to respond to immediate employee emergencies.

“He had just bought a Jeep and a townhome and had plans to go down to Cancun,” Cibulis said, still reeling from the loss.

“Everything’s been so hush-hush, I don’t know what’s going on. Something isn’t right that after five months there’s no closure.”

Edwards told the Star that coroner’s investigations can take between four and nine months to complete, adding that he cannot comment directly on the Cibulis case.

“But we are investigating,” he said.

Clarification: Aug. 18, 2014: This article was edited from a previous version to make clear the fact that the police Employee Family Assistance Program is provided to police by the Toronto Police Services Board.

