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No more paycheques for corrupt Hamilton officer Craig Ruthowsky as police start firing process

The Hamilton Police Service has suspended corrupt Const. Craig Ruthowsky without pay and has begun the process to have him fired.

The police service moved quickly to cut off Ruthowsky's pay, taking action just a day after he was sentenced on charges of bribery, obstruction of justice, breach of trust and cocaine trafficking.

The service has been obliged to keep paying Ruthowsky for six years while he has been under suspension.

That obligation ended Tuesday when he received a prison term for his role in a pay-for-protection scheme with a crew of Hamilton drug dealers.

The service issued a statement Wednesday morning saying it will also be pursuing Police Service Act charges against Ruthowsky and seek to have him fired through that process.

Pay during suspension called 'unacceptable'

The 44-year-old was convicted on the charges in Superior Court in Toronto late last month.

He was actually suspended in June 2012.

During three of those years, Ruthowsky even showed up on the Sunshine List, which tracks the province's highest paid public sector earners. He made over $104,000 last year, over $107,000 in 2015, and over $109,000 in 2012.

Ruthowsky's pay while under suspension drew criticism from Hamilton Coun. Lloyd Ferguson, who heads up the city's police board. He called the officer a "poster child of suspension without pay" in a previous interview.

Ferguson said Ruthowsky's payouts were "unacceptable to taxpayers."

Even though Ruthowsky was facing corruption charges, Hamilton police were still mandated to pay him because of the Police Services Act.

The act says that it's only when an officer is "convicted of an offence and sentenced to a term of imprisonment," that the chief of police or a city's police board can cut off pay.

However, the act also dictates that the decision to suspend an officer without pay can be upheld even if a conviction or sentence is under appeal, which is an important distinction, as Ruthowsky has decided to appeal his sentence.

A bail hearing will be heard at the court of appeal Thursday.

On Tuesday, Ruthowsky was also ordered to pay a $250,000 fine — the amount the judge said Ruthowsky took in bribes. If Ruthowsky doesn't pay that fine within a year, three more years will be tacked onto his sentence.

Ruthowsky was arrested after being caught on police wiretaps as part of a massive Toronto police guns and gangs investigation called Project Pharaoh.

Suspensions with pay could end

Cases like Ruthowsky's, where an officer is paid for over half a decade while on suspension, could soon be a thing of the past. Ontario is making sweeping changes to its policing laws, including strengthening oversight of the system and making it possible to suspend officers without pay.

The changes, contained in legislation introduced last November, would include the first update to the Police Services Act in more than 25 years.

The new legislation proposes to allow police services to suspend officers without pay in certain circumstances — a power chiefs have been requesting for a decade.

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