‘Black drug dealer who had it coming’: Family concerned alleged comments by Ontario SIU manager prejudiced case

A legal dispute about the workplace at Ontario's Police watchdog is airing allegations of harassment.

A legal dispute is providing a window into allegations of workplace harassment at the office of Ontario’s police watchdog, and showcasing controversial comments about a police shooting death alleged to have been made by someone who’s now a top manager there.

The alleged comments, including labelling one victim shot by police as a “Black drug dealer who had it coming,” are signs of prejudice that need to be dealt with at the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), say family members of the man who died.

“It just shows that if you’re a certain race, you’re not going to get full justice as somebody else’s race,” said Edith Erhirhie, whose brother Moses was killed in a Markham parking lot in early 2022. The SIU declined to charge the officer in that case.

A spokesperson for the SIU said in a statement that human resources matters are private and confidential, and charging decisions are made in a multi-step review that’s bigger than one person.

“We take any allegation of racism or discrimination very seriously,” said Monica Hudon, adding that the manager “did not make the statements as alleged… he had no involvement in the case at any point. Any suggestion otherwise is simply inaccurate.”

CTV News obtained surveillance video of the interaction between a York Regional Police officer and 35-year-old Moses Erhirhie on Jan. 21, 2022.

It shows a police car driving towards Erhirhie, who appears to be urinating in a snowbank, the engine of his white Hyundai still running.

The officer gets out, and after a short conversation, appears to grab him. Erhirhie breaks away, first running across the parking lot and then back to the car as the officer gives chase.

Once Erhirhie is back in the car, the officer still hanging on, the car reverses up the snowbank with its driver door open.

It stops at the top as the officer steps out to shoot. The SIU report says Erhirhie died from three bullets fired in his torso by that officer.

Officers found a gun in a satchel on Erhirhie’s chest, the SIU report says. The SIU cleared the officer, saying the shooting was justified because he felt his life was in danger from the car. A Newmarket judge upheld the decision.

But his family insists none of it makes sense.

“You don’t just shoot a person for urinating in a snowbank. That’s just not right,” said Dolores Rosita Langer, Erhirhie’s stepmother.

“The SIU should reopen this case and charge the subject officer. There’s no ifs, ands or buts,” she said.

Multiple sources tell CTV News that the SIU investigative team did push to charge the officer. They say that comments about Erhirhie are included in the workplace harassment dispute now at the Ontario Labour Relations Board.

In an application, one staffer accuses a manager of saying a victim was “a Black drug dealer who had it coming, and officers can’t be responsible for a guy who was a known criminal.”

It wasn’t the only remark about Black people alleged to have been said by the manager, who is a former GTA police inspector.

In the documents, he’s alleged to have described “a Black female investigator as having tattoos and long nails and big breasts,” when he stated, “This isn’t the street[s] of [the] Bronx, it’s the SIU… her tattoos show her as gang affiliated.”

In another section, he’s accused of saying, of an Indigenous colleague, “Monkey knows better.”

In its response, the agency says the staffer’s application is “without merit and should be dismissed in its entirety.”

CTV News is not identifying the complainant or the manager pending further progress in the Ontario Labour Relations Board proceeding. The next hearing in the case is Thursday morning.

The Erhirhie family is appealing the decision not to charge the officer to Ontario’s Court of Appeal, alleging that the standard the SIU must meet to charge an officer was met, and any consideration of self-defence should be brought up in court.

Their lawyer, Paul Slansky, argued the Hyundai was stuck in the snowbank and not likely to be set in motion again, and challenged the claim that the officer acted in self-defence, calling his actions “unjustifiable.”

He said the officer never provided an interview or his notes, as is his right, but that left gaps in understanding the event that were treated too charitably by the SIU in its decision not to charge, he said.

“There’s strong indications of anti-Black racism in this particular case,” he said.

It’s not clear whether the comments alleged to have been made within the SIU by the manager will have an impact on the appeal unless there can be proven to be a direct connection between those comments and the agency’s decision making, Slansky said.

But if the manager is in a position to affect any future charging decisions, it’s likely those comments could be brought up as part of a legal challenge, Slansky said.

“If people get wind of these comments, they could seek to reopen or open cases where there was a decision not to charge, where this individual had some input in this decision not to charge,” Slansky said.

Edith Erhirhie, Moses’s sister, said she is still in shock over what happened to her brother and is still fighting for justice for him.

“I don’t think my brother’s case had a fair chance,” she said.