Surely it’s time for Const. Ian Cameron to hang up his gun.

For the second time in six years, the Durham Regional Police constable has found himself under arrest. In 2009, it was for pointing a loaded gun at a fellow officer. On Sept. 4, he allegedly drove drunk in a squad car while on duty.

And once again in his 11-year career with Durham, he’s been suspended with pay.

Police allege the 43-year old was under the influence of alcohol and showed “signs of intoxication” when responding to a call at an Oshawa home last week.

After getting a complaint from the homeowner, police say, Cameron failed a breath test on his return to the station and was charged with over 80.

The tragedy is that the former British soldier suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. After pleading guilty to the gun incident in 2010, a judge gave Cameron a rather extraordinary absolute discharge because of his illness. Although his bosses wanted him fired over the dangerous incident, a police tribunal ordered him reinstated last year. Again, because of his PTSD.

But just weeks after completing a year of conditions that were to include alcohol testing and accompaniment on all patrols, Cameron is back in trouble.

There have been legitimate complaints over the years that first responders haven’t received the support they need in dealing with PTSD. But this isn’t one of those cases. Everyone seems to have gone out of their way to help this man deal with his demons.

Yet how much accommodation should be made for someone entrusted with a lethal firearm?

His first brush with the law came after a bout of “horsing around” at the Bowmanville police station turned ugly. According to the trial transcripts, he put a colleague in a choke hold and the other cop responded by grabbing his left wrist. To get free, Cameron actually unholstered his weapon and pressed it into the man’s stomach.

Defence lawyer Joseph Markson blamed PTSD: The “exemplary” soldier had witnessed “horrors of war that we can only pray and be grateful that we’ve never experienced personally including experience of mass graves and dead infants in three different countries, he experienced terrorism in Northern Ireland, horrors of genocide in Kosovo in Yugoslavia and other horrors in his service in Africa.”

Markson told the judge that after relocating here, one of Cameron’s first policing duties was an unsuccessful attempt to resuscitate a dead girl pulled from a fire. To deal with his emerging symptoms of PTSD, he self-medicated with a “heavy alcohol consumption.”

After the gun assault, Cameron did four months of treatment at Homewood for alcoholism and was receiving counselling. “It will be a great benefit for all of us to see this good man return to the public service he so dearly loves,” the lawyer said in proposing an absolute discharge.

Justice Katrina Mulligan admitted it was a “startling” sentence for such a serious crime and “some people might think well, it’s because he’s a police officer he gets a break.” But the sympathetic judge was convinced Cameron was at a low risk to reoffend now that he was getting treatment and “because of the incredible commitment that you have shown to addressing the evils, the monsters, that you have to deal with because of your post-traumatic stress diagnosis.”

Cameron was equally fortunate at the police tribunal about the incident that followed four years later.

Prosecutor Ian Johnstone argued dismissal was the only appropriate penalty but hearing officer Terence Kelly, a retired York Regional Police deputy chief, disagreed: “With support and acceptance this journey to complete recovery is very attainable.”

Demoted to a second-class constable, Cameron was returned to the front lines last year under several conditions including completion of use of force training, no solo patrol for 12 months, continued treatment, and periodic alcohol testing by his doctor to ensure he remains sober.

These latest accusations would suggest Cameron’s struggles continue and that is truly unfortunate. But how many more chances should he get?

Read Mandel Wednesday through Saturday.

michele.mandel@sunmedia.ca