Almost eight years after Jim Jansen was jumped from behind by Ottawa police officers in a "reckless and dangerous" attack, the City of Ottawa has quietly settled out of court with the painting contractor.
The Citizen has learned that the city has paid Jansen, 55, more than $100,000 to settle his police-brutality lawsuit in a confidential agreement.
"I'm relieved, but that's all I can say because I signed a confidentiality agreement," Jansen told the Citizen Saturday night.
His lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, also declined to comment on the amount of the money settlement, saying only that the civil case had been resolved.
In a 2005 ruling, the late Justice Richard Lajoie condemned the tactics of three officers who "jumped the gun," only to ask questions later, after responding to a simple noise complaint.
Jansen was having a kidfriendly campfire when the police came calling. The judge said police treated the routine noise complaint as if they were executing a raid on outlaw bikers.
"Tactics adopted by the police officers on July 4th, 2004, were akin to approaching a fortress or a hideout of bikers or dangerous people. What they came upon was a group of neighbours around a campfire," Lajoie wrote.
Lajoie, who also wrote the Stacy Bonds ruling, died last year at 62. It was his decision that changed the way police do business in the cellblocks.
In the Jansen case, the judge also ruled that Const. Mark Lystiuk, Const. Kevin Myers, and Const. Candace Lohe concealed themselves under the cover of darkness, never announced themselves and kept their flashlights off after parking their cruisers some distance away from the campfire in Constance Bay.
They didn't yell "police" and, when they got to the campfire, where children roasted marshmallows, they mistakenly thought Jansen was assaulting his girlfriend because her lawn chair had collapsed. Jansen was in fact trying to help her up and out of the lawn chair.
Lajoie ruled that they jumped the gun by tackling Jansen first and asking questions later.
Jansen didn't know who had attacked him, but ended up allegedly beaten so badly that he required elbow surgery.
The police charged him with assault and resisting arrest, and Lajoie acquitted him on both counts. In fact, Lajoie used his court decision to mostly blast the police.
In all his years, Lajoie said he had never heard about a case where police responded to a simple noise complaint quite like this.
"Not only did they jump the gun, they were acting in a reckless and dangerous fashion in approaching the situation as they did. It is the first time that I hear that officers responding to, be it a noise call or a domestic assault, that they have to act in such a fashion, where they have to conceal themselves before approaching the scene," wrote Lajoie, who also said the officers "clearly showed bad judgment."
The surgery kept Jansen out of work for a while. When he returned, he found that his trip through the criminal justice system had fouled up his security clearance for federal building contracts, including Parliament Hill.
The out-of-court settlement was signed earlier this month.
Cop's daughter burned boy, 4, with lighter, cigarette, as he slept, investigators say
The daughter of a South Daytona police officer was arrested on a charge of burning her boyfriend's 4-year-old son with a lighter and cigarettes while he slept, a Volusia County Sheriff's Office report shows.
Brandy Quartier, 23, daughter of Lt. Doug Quartier, was arrested this week on a charge of aggravated child abuse by willful torture or malicious punishment.
The child told investigators he was sleeping near Quartier when he felt "someone sawing at me," the report states. His mother noticed the burns when she went to pick him up Feb. 26 after a weekend visit to his father's home in South Daytona.
A doctor found oval and crescent-shaped second-degree burns on the boy's lower lip, top of his left hand, back, chest and left buttock and thought the boy had been abused, according to the report.
The child told investigators that his father was sleeping with the boy's brother when Quartier burned him, deputies said.
The boy's father told investigators that he thought most of the burn marks were mosquito bites and the burn to the child's lip happened when he fell on a trampoline, the report shows.
The boy's mother took him to Halifax Health Medical Center in Daytona Beach immediately after she noticed the burns.
Quartier was arrested Wednesday after an investigation by the State Attorney's Office. The Sheriff's Office handled the initial investigation because of Quartier's ties to the South Daytona Police Department.