A Montreal police constable has been suspended for six days without pay for causing a collision at an intersection in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce that left two people injured.
A decision released Wednesday by Quebec’s police ethics committee details how Constable Alexandra Hooper admitted she violated the province’s police ethics code on Nov. 18, 2018, when the police vehicle she was driving went through the icy intersection of Montclair and Monkland Aves. and struck another vehicle.
Hooper and her partner that day, Gabriel Pelletier, were part of response by police and firefighters to a 911 call reporting that a man in a high-rise apartment building on Sherbrooke St. W. was in distress on a 19th-floor balcony and was threatening to kill himself.
The first police officers and firefighters to arrive at the building could not locate the man and someone requested that other police assist them in the search. Hooper and Pelletier were responding to that request when the collision occurred.
Hooper was heading south on Montclair Ave. — a residential roadway with a speed limit of 40 km/h — and evidence showed her vehicle was moving at 64 km/h seconds before she approached the intersection. She went through a stop sign while there were no stop signs for the other driver who was moving along Monkland Ave.
The evidence also showed that Hooper reduced her speed to 38 km/h by the time the police vehicle struck the other vehicle.
According to the decision, if there had been a hearing, Hooper would have testified that: “she reduced her speed, with siren and flashing lights activated. When she wanted to brake to come to a stop at the intersection, she felt that there was no more grip and that her patrol car was slipping on the ice.”
Parts of the other vehicle had to be cut away with metal shears to remove the female driver from it. She and the passenger in her car were taken to a hospital to be treated for what the police ethics committee described as light injuries.
“At all times relevant to this proceeding, (Hooper) acted in good faith,” the committee wrote. “She acknowledges that she should have evaluated things more, and more appropriately, the condition of the roadway at the intersection in front of it, as well as the time/distance needed to make a proper stop.
“She acknowledges that when approaching an intersection, it is her responsibility to ensure that she will be able to immobilize appropriately, thus ensuring that her conduct does not represent a danger to road users.”