Toronto police chats undermined testimony. But it was whistleblower who got fired

The Toronto Police Services emblem is photographed during a press conference at TPS headquarters, in Toronto, Tuesday, May 17, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov

Former Toronto Police Service officer Firouzeh Zarabi-Majd said she found out about the unofficial 51 Division group chat “accidentally” after being told about it by a colleague.

What she saw included a message “talking about my vagina,” she said, among other disturbing conversations.

Zarabi-Majd would go on to be fired for insubordination after posting the material on social media along with profanity-laced criticisms of the force.

But fellow officers involved in the conversations have not been publicly disciplined, even after two of them had their remarks dissected to undermine courtroom testimony in unrelated cases, one of which collapsed.

“It was so heartbreaking,” Zarabi-Majd said. “Having seen that stuff and reporting it, I thought that the police service was gonna actually do something and deal with these, but of course they didn’t and I became the target.”

Zarabi-Majd posted Division 51 group chats on social media under an account called Dirty Shades of Blue in October 2019, and was dismissed in May 2023. She is appealing and has outstanding proceedings before Ontario’s Human Rights Tribunal.

There has been other fallout.

In the case of accused sex trafficker Kevin Barreau, his lawyer cited remarks about Zarabi-Majd’s body to support a claim of racism against Det. Const. Chris Hoeller. Barreau claimed Hoeller used a racial epithet during his 2017 arrest.

Hoeller admitted writing about Zarabi-Majd’s body during Barreau’s trial that began in 2021, telling the Ontario court of justice it was “completely inappropriate,” and “highly disrespectful,” but a “one-time thing.”

“I find his reluctance to acknowledge the racist overtones of that text to be disturbing,” Justice Russell Stuart Silverstein wrote in a May 2023 ruling, saying it increased the likelihood Hoeller used the epithet.

However, Silverstein rejected Barreau’s efforts to stay the case.

Barreau was convicted but his lawyer, Chris Rudnicki, said the group chat evidence showed a “striking” culture among police.

He said the material was “deeply relevant” to Barreau’s case because he had been “trying to establish that this guy (Hoeller) is a racist.”

Rudnicki said Zarabi-Majd’s exposure of the group chat was done at “extreme” risk. But such chats are mostly kept secret, he said.

“Every defence lawyer knows that the police will routinely use their personal cellphones to talk to each other in order to avoid having their communications produced to the defence.”

Two years before the Barreau case, a different Toronto case involving two 20-year-olds accused of possessing drugs and a gun at the downtown Moss Park homeless encampment fell apart when key evidence was tossed out by the judge.

It had been compromised, in part, by cross-examination of Toronto Police Service Const. Ryan Kotzer, who was grilled over his 51 Division chat activity.

Screenshots shared with The Canadian Press show a profile under Kotzer’s name criticizing judges as “leftist” and “morons.”

“This is when the politicians need to step up and take our muzzles off and allow us to (mess) these animals up,” he says, using a profanity.

In a discussion about shootings, he says: “I’d put my mortgage on the fact that a black man is involved in 90 (per cent.)”

The ruling on the Moss Park evidence by Judge Feroza Bhabha said Kotzer told the court he had “learned from the past, educated himself, and his comments on the group chat no longer reflect the person he is today.”

Neither Hoeller nor Kotzer faced public disciplinary action over their remarks, but Hoeller was taken off the service’s human trafficking unit, the judge in Barreau’s case wrote.

Toronto Police Service spokeswoman Nadine Ramadan said the force “cannot comment on specific disciplinary matters involving our officers unless those matters result in an appearance at the disciplinary tribunal or criminal charges.”

Neither Hoeller nor Kotzer could be reached for comment. The Toronto Police Service and the Toronto Police Association both declined to help The Canadian Press contact them, and Kotzer’s former lawyer, Gary Clewley, also declined to do so.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 14, 2025.

Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press