Peel police are reviewing a video from a dashboard camera that has gone viral, showing a driver who appears to have the right of way colliding with a car that turns into a Brampton intersection. Someone claiming to be the driver posted the video online, alleging they were wrongly charged, while the other driver was not ticketed.

A Peel police spokesperson said the force is currently reviewing the video and the investigation carried out by the officer who issued the ticket Sunday.

“My understanding of the situation…is the officer spoke to both drivers as well as two independent witnesses at the scene,” said Constable Mark Fischer. “He then issued the ticket to the driver with the dash camera. At this point the driver told the officer about the video.”

Fischer said the officer then asked to see the video, but the driver said he did not have the cord needed to view it. “But the officer was not told about the video until after the ticket was written.”

When he was told that there might be video evidence, the officer told the ticketed driver to plead not guilty, take the video to court and present the evidence, Fischer said. He added that a ticket for a provincial offence, once issued, cannot be ripped up. “That could be obstruct justice.”

The Star spoke with a Brampton man Wednesday who said he is the driver who received a ticket in the incident. He did not want to release his name, but confirmed the police’s version of what happened. He said the dashcam video was first mentioned to the officer just as the ticket was issued. But he said the officer did not give him a proper opportunity to give details of what happened, after briefly taking a statement, or for him to bring up the dashcam video.

The man said he posted the video from the dashcam online Monday. It had been viewed just over a million times as of 7 pm Wednesday.

Under the YouTube profile “Brampton Citizen”, the poster writes that the officer told him the female driver of the other car had two “independent witnesses” who said she was not at fault. According to the posted account the driver says a ticket was then issued to “Brampton Citizen” the owner of the dashcam.

The video footage shows the car with the dashcam had a green light as it approached the intersection, going straight, when the car driven by the woman approaching from the opposite direction turns left into the intersection and strikes the other vehicle.

The person who posted the statement, Brampton Citizen, writes that during the subsequent investigation the officer spoke with Brampton Citizen. “I told him that she turned and ran into me when I had the green,” the post reads.

In the video, voices can be heard shortly after the crash saying it was not the woman’s fault, even though the footage contradicts the witnesses’ claims.

Brampton Citizen states in the post that when the officer was getting information, “At the time my brother was on his way with his laptop so I could try and retrieve the video from the camera to show the cop.”

Brampton Citizen later states in the YouTube post: “The officer refused to look at the video footage saying I should have told him before I had a dashcam, but I explained that I was trying to retrieve the footage at the time…He just went into his car after taking initial statements and wrote his report. I told him I have the objective evidence but he did not want to look at it at all and told me to use it as evidence in the court.”

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Constable Fischer said that if the force’s internal review of the video and the investigation warrants it, a letter could be sent to the Crown recommending the charge be dropped. He said other charges, including one or more against the driver who made the left turn, could possibly be laid, based on new information that has come forward.

He said “The investigation is still ongoing.”

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