A Toronto jury has convicted Hamilton police officer Craig Ruthowsky of four corruption-related charges after a six-week trial, including the essential counts of bribery, obstruction of justice and breach of trust.

The jurors’ verdicts mean they believed a cocaine trafficker who testified that he paid the 17-year veteran officer money in return for sensitive police information that allowed him to sell drugs in Hamilton with impunity.

Ruthowsky, 44, was also found guilty of trafficking, the jury accepting the prosecution’s position that he took a cocaine-cutting agent to a private lab for testing, and then shared that information with the dealer, whose identity is covered under a publication ban.

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Jurors found Ruthowsky not guilty of conspiracy to commit an indictable offence, which was trafficking marijuana.

The jury retired to deliberate late Monday afternoon and returned to court Wednesday just before 3 p.m. Ruthowsky looked stunned as the foreman read out the verdicts, while several family members, who had been present every day during the trial, bolted from the courtroom. Some remained during a break, either bowing their heads or weeping quietly.

Defence lawyer Greg Lafontaine told Superior Court Justice Robert Clark he plans to bring an abuse of process motion and ask that the charges be stayed. Those arguments will happen May 10. Ruthowsky and his lawyer left the courthouse without speaking to reporters.

Crown attorney John Pollard, who prosecuted the case with Phil Tsui, called the outcome “a bit of a dark verdict,” because “you don’t like to get a finding from a jury that a peace officer has engaged in this kind of conduct.”

But it’s an important case, “both in terms of the rule of law and for the people of Hamilton,” as well as a “vindication” for all the officers who do the right thing everyday, Pollard said outside the Superior Court in downtown Toronto.

“What’s happened here is an outlier. I think if you scour Canadian criminal law you’re not going to find another case quite like this one. So I think you can still have faith in what the police are doing.”

Pollard said he expects he will be seeking a penitentiary sentence.

Robert Hansen, Ruthowsky’s former partner in the guns and gangs unit, is already serving a five-year penitentiary sentence. He was found guilty of encouraging an informant to plant a gun at a suspected drug dealer’s home and lying to secure a search warrant.

Hamilton Police Service Chief Eric Girt released a short statement Wednesday.

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“We respect the decision of the jury. As the matter remains before the courts for sentencing, the Hamilton Police Service will not be making any further comments.”

Ruthowsky still faces 16 more charges laid last August, including bribery, two counts of breach of trust, two counts of obstructing justice, public mischief, two counts of weapons trafficking, fraud under $5,000, trafficking marijuana, perjury, two counts of conspiracy to commit an indictable offence, robbery and two counts of trafficking cocaine.