By Reclaim the Net March 13, 2022
Interim chief of police of the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) Steve Bell said that the OPS was investigating if some officers supported the Freedom Convoy, threatening “all possible range of discipline” to those found guilty.
Data breaches targeting the Freedom Convoy and Adopt a Trucker campaigns on the crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo exposed the names of tens of thousands of donors. According to reports by the Toronto Star and CBC, the names of Ottawa police officers were exposed in the data breaches.
“These are serious allegations,” Bell said. “If they are proven to be substantiated we’ll look at appropriate discipline in those circumstances.”
According to the Ottawa Citizen, the “appropriate discipline” could go as far as dismissal.
“We’re bound by the Police Services Act and we’re bound by case law that exists around it,” Bell said. “(But) if somebody was helping to support the unlawful demonstrators in our streets that had such traumatic and terrible consequences on our population and was deemed to be illegal, I’ll seriously question their ability to deliver community safety and wellbeing in this city moving ahead.”