An Ottawa police officer has been accused of sexually assaulting a woman while on duty early this year, CBC News has learned.<\/p>\n
The force notified Ontario’s police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), about the allegation on Friday, the SIU and Ottawa police said.<\/p>\n
The alleged sexual assault took place in January and involved a woman who is a member of the public, the SIU said. Two SIU investigators have been assigned to the case.<\/p>\n
The Ottawa Police Service declined to answer questions Tuesday about when it first heard of the allegation against its officer, and how the force found out.<\/p>\n
Police also declined to provide the officer’s rank, whether the officer is currently suspended or on special duty or regular duty, and where in the force the officer was working when the alleged sexual assault occurred, deferring all questions to the SIU.<\/p>\n
The SIU wrote in an email that it doesn’t have that employment information, and that it “typically refer[s] those types of questions to the employer (police service) involved.”<\/p>\n
In response to a follow-up email from CBC, Ottawa police said they have no further information to provide at this time.<\/p>\n
It’s unclear if the force knows the name of the officer under investigation.<\/p>\n
The SIU has to designate a subject officer and any witness officers who might know something about the incident, then formally notify the police chief and the inspector overseeing the force’s Professional Standards Section.<\/p>\n
The chief and inspector then notify the subject and witness officers, their unions.<\/p>\n
Separate sex assault investigation nears end<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the director of the SIU is now reviewing information obtained in a separate sexual assault investigation against the president and CEO of the Ottawa Police Association \u2014 the union that represents rank-and-file and civilian members of the force \u2014 according to the SIU’s website.<\/p>\n
The SIU was notified in late March of a historical sex assault allegation against Matthew Cox, which dates back to 2008.<\/p>\n
More than three weeks later, in mid-April, the board of directors of the Ottawa Police Association sent an email saying that Cox was being investigated by the SIU, that the allegation is unrelated to his work with the union and that he was continuing to serve as president.<\/p>\n
The principle of the presumption of innocence applies, and no conclusions should be drawn until the investigative process has been completed.<\/p>\n
“This is an active investigation, and it is essential that the process be allowed to proceed independently without interference…. The Board confirms that President Cox remains in his role at this time. The allegation relates to a matter reported to have occurred in 2008, prior to his election as president,” read the union’s email, obtained and previously reported on by CBC.<\/p>\n
“At this stage, as with every criminal investigation, the allegation remains unproven. The principle of the presumption of innocence applies, and no conclusions should be drawn until the investigative process has been completed.”<\/p>\n
The SIU defines sexual assault as “any form of unwanted contact that is sexual in nature and violates the sexual integrity of the victim. It includes, but is not limited to, inappropriate contact during a search, rubbing, grabbing, kissing and [sex acts].”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Ottawa police officer has been accused of sexually assaulting a woman while on duty early this year,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[47976,35070,61,8077,4717,4199,47977],"class_list":["post-147864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-assault-investigation","tag-matthew-cox","tag-ottawa","tag-ottawa-police","tag-sexually-assaulting","tag-siu","tag-subject-officer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}