A Quebec provincial police officer has been suspended for 15 days without pay after throwing part of a young motorcycle accident victim’s skull into a ravine in 2021.
An administrative judge with the police ethics tribunal found that Sgt. Sébastien Plouffe’s misconduct was “inexplicable and unjustifiable,” but nevertheless upheld the sentence that had been jointly recommended by the officer and the ethics board investigator.
An agreed statement of facts included in the decision states that the victim’s mother found a piece of her son’s skull while searching for his cellphone at the site where he had died four days earlier in the province’s Outaouais region.
Plouffe responded to her 911 call and collected the remains, but after being criticized by the mother over police handling of the scene, he drove a few kilometres away and threw the skull part into a ravine. He also later lied on a report of his activities.
The ethics investigator and the officer had recommended suspensions of 10 and 15 days for two infractions, to be served concurrently, but the mother challenged the penalty on the grounds that it wasn’t severe enough.
Administrative Judge Benoit Mc Mahon agreed in his Nov. 4 written decision that the sentence was too lenient, but he said the tribunal could only overturn a joint recommendation in cases when a penalty is so unreasonable that it’s contrary to public interest and could bring the administration of justice into disrepute.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.