Ottawa police secretly wiretapped 5 Black officers, lawsuit alleges

The Ottawa police secretly wiretapped five of its Somali officers and their family members for months, never laid any charges, and refuses to tell them why, alleges a $2.5-million lawsuit filed by the officers.

In the suit against the Ottawa Police Services Board, filed last year and reported now for the first time exclusively by CBC, the officers allege they were subjected to racial discrimination.

The officers, some of whom have loose family connections to alleged criminals, say their relationships led to the illegal search and seizure of their most private communications. The officers allege the investigation left a lingering target on their backs, keeping them under a veil of suspicion by other officers.

The exact focus of any Ottawa police investigation into the five officers isn't known to them, according to the lawsuit. 

The OPS relied on racist and stereotypical beliefs about Black men and Somali families- The lawsuit brought by the five constables

The officers are in court fighting to unseal any information police used to get a judge's permission to wiretap and surveil them, and are seeking $2.5 million in psychological and pecuniary damages.

The five officers, all of whom are Black, say they were hired in part because of their race, but then faced retaliation for their anti-racism advocacy within the force.

The Ottawa Police Service Board denies the allegations made by the officers in its statement of defence. It denies the individual conduct and argues "that such instances, even if true, are irrelevant and do not establish a systemic practice by the OPS of abusing state power to intercept individuals based on race or ethnic origin."

Board chair Salim Fakirani would not comment on the allegations but told CBC News in a statement, "the board does wish to highlight the importance it places on building, improving and in some cases repairing relationships between the board, the Ottawa Police Service and the community."

The officers and their lawyers declined to speak with CBC, which has relied on the content of the lawsuit for this article. 

'Gang-affiliated' cousins

The civil lawsuit was filed by constables Liban Farah, Mohamed Islam, Abdullahi Ahmed, Ahmedkador Ali and Feisal Bila Houssein. Farah's wife and father, and Islam's spouse — all plaintiffs in the case — also allege their personal communications were intercepted by the Ottawa Police Service (OPS).

According to the statement of claim, Farah and Islam each have cousins "involved in criminal activity who were gang-affiliated." The two cousins were the alleged potential subjects of a historical guns and gangs "project," the lawsuit claims.

The ties of Somali kinship is "the only conceivable basis upon which the OPS could have obtained the wiretaps and general warrants," the lawsuit alleges. "By misrepresenting the relationship of Farah and Islam to their cousins … who they had no relationship with and had not seen for years … the OPS relied on racist and stereotypical beliefs about Black men and Somali families."

The officers were "frustrated, shocked and devastated" by the discovery of the surveillance.

"They could not understand why the OPS had done this, and became anxious, confused and paranoid," the lawsuit said. "The officer plaintiffs find it difficult to trust their fellow officers. They feel as if they have a target on their back and do not know who might be plotting against them."

They are now "hypervigilant and fear that their communications and movements are being tracked." 

The police board denies the allegations and says in January, a Superior Court justice found the wiretap authorizations were obtained lawfully. 

The statement of defence said police sought four separate wiretap applications and "there was no basis to find that the decision to name one or more of the plaintiffs in any of the four applications was racially motivated or otherwise the product of discriminatory beliefs." 

All four applications were sealed by the court, an order the officers have been fighting to overturn.  

The court dismissed the application to unseal the first three applications, but granted the application to unseal the fourth application. 

"The fourth application was directed to the Crown to be vetted, prior to disclosure to the plaintiffs."

That process is ongoing, with Ottawa police fighting to keep the application sealed. 

Who are the officers? 

The officers say they now question whether their policing assignments are legitimate, or are orchestrated as "integrity checks" on their character after learning that their colleagues had been surveilling them for months, with no clear indication of why.

The men have "learned that their fellow officers have been advised to keep a distance from them and have labelled [them] as 'shady'."

The plaintiffs are now missing opportunities available to their colleagues, the lawsuit alleges.

"The officer plaintiffs are marked," their careers "stifled" and their reputations "forever damaged," the lawsuit claims.

The officers describe themselves as "model" police officers with deep ties to their communities, which they say are simultaneously underserved and overpoliced by the OPS.

Const. Liban Farah was hired by the police department in 2013.

"Farah grew up in low-income housing in Ottawa after his parents immigrated to Canada when he was a child in 1986. He has a diploma in police foundations from Algonquin College and a bachelor of arts degree from Carleton University," according to the statement of claim. 

While the statement of claim makes no mention of the incident, Farah was charged with assault and obstruction of justice by the provincial watchdog in August 2019. Prosecutors ultimately withdrew the charges.

According to the lawsuit, Farah was one of 13 mainly Black officers who in 2020 were depicted as disgraced cops in a widely circulated meme that questioned the hiring standards of the OPS. 

Const. Mohamed Islam, a former social worker, was hired by former chief Charles Bordeleau in 2016 after a police background investigator first rejected his application as "unsuitable," according to the statement of claim. The investigator resigned in protest alleging Islam had been hired "for political reasons to appease the Somali community."

Once he began working, the lawsuit alleges, "his every move was under a microscope" and "negative rumours and gossip circulated about him."

While Islam was on parental leave in July 2021, homicide detectives called him to the station, the lawsuit says. There, detectives showed him pictures of his cousins who were reportedly involved in criminality, and told him police had spotted Islam's vehicle at the home of their mother, who was under surveillance.

"Islam explained that his aunt was elderly and ill and he had attended there to support her," according to the lawsuit. He told police his cousins did not live there and were not present when he visited.

As he was leaving the interview, a homicide boss asked him "if Somali youth killing each other in Ottawa stems from issues in Somali tribal culture," the lawsuit alleges.

"Islam found the belief that murder of Somali youth in Ottawa was 'tribal' to be racist and offensive," the lawsuit said. "The question was designed to insinuate that Somali youths are savages."

Const. Abdullahi Ahmed was hired by Ottawa police in 2013.

Ahmed was born in Somalia and immigrated to Canada as a child in 1990 with his family, according to the statement of claim, which says he has lived in Ottawa since that time and was raised by a single parent in low-income housing. 

"Ahmed's arrest statistics and other performance metrics have always been excellent, as have his performance reviews," the lawsuit says. "He has never been the subject of an internal or external complaint."

However, the lawsuit alleges a supervising officer once called Ahmed a "gorilla."

Const. Ahmedkador Ali was hired in 2018.

Ali was born in Somalia in 1983 and immigrated to Canada with his family when he was eight years old, according to the statement of claim.

He "joined the OPS to bridge the gap between racialized and low-income communities [like the one he grew up in] and the OPS."

Const. Feisal Bila Houssein was hired in 2019, according to the lawsuit.

"On many occasions, OPS officers have asked Bila Houssein "how he got in" and was told that white applicants have to wait longer to be hired.

Why they were hired 

The court filings say the OPS "has earned a reputation, both internally and externally, as an institution rife with racism and discrimination that over-polices the racialized communities it has pledged to protect."

The lawsuit alleges tensions between Ottawa police and the local Somali community came to a head after the 2016 death of 36-year-old Abdirahman Abdi during a confrontation with police. 

"To that end, in part, [OPS] hired the officer plaintiffs."

The officers, who are all Black and of Somali descent,"were hired during an OPS recruitment effort to improve the police force's diversity and representation of Ottawa's racialized and marginalized communities," the lawsuit alleges.

The highhanded conduct of the OPS warrants significant denunciation- The lawsuit alleges

The filings allege that "each of the [officers] have been the target of discriminatory conduct by other OPS members who appear to have resented the officer plaintiffs' efforts, subjected them to direct racial slurs, and marginalized them. 

"The officer plaintiffs did what the OPS had hired them to do — disrupt the status quo at the OPS."

They did so, the lawsuit alleges, by coming up with a model of uniformed policing for racialized communities, and speaking out against "casual blatant racism within the OPS."

Instead of being commended by the organization or their peers for their actions, "they were the victims of discrimination, hostility and racist retaliation through state conduct."

Notice of wiretaps 

The lawsuit alleges the "extent of the racism reached its height when the OPS used the privilege of their status as a law enforcement agency to obtain and execute wiretap authorizations and general warrants against their own officers … without reasonable and probable grounds."

In 2021, the group began receiving written letters from the Ministry of the Attorney General that their private communications had been intercepted.

In total, the various plaintiffs received notice of three separate wiretap authorizations and one general warrant granted by a judge. Each of the wiretap authorizations was valid for 60 days, spanning from April to August 2021. 

The civilian plaintiffs — Farah and Islam's family members — say they have never been involved in criminality, now distrust the police and have had their worst fears about the OPS confirmed. They "are shocked by the misuse and abuse of authority of members of the OPS and fear for the safety of the Officer Plaintiffs working in an environment where their colleagues view them with suspicion."

'Sixing the boys'

While the officers continue seeking the identities of the officers or units involved in the investigations, the existence of the wiretaps is "common knowledge" in the force, according to the lawsuit.

The officers allege that in the summer of 2021, they started having strange interactions with colleagues. A sergeant told one that the "higher-ups" were "sixing the boys."

"The boys" was a reference to the Somali officers involved in creating the report on a uniformed model of policing racialized communities. "Sixing" was a reference to wiretaps and general warrants, which are authorized under Part 6 of the Criminal Code.

What happened to you guys is f--ked up.- An alleged comment by an Ottawa police inspector

A staff sergeant allegedly told another one of the officers that a homicide detective "had wasted over $1 million on a wiretap investigation."

This, Farah believed, "was an implicit reference to the wiretap against the officer plaintiffs and an indication that knowledge of the wiretap against the officer plaintiffs had spread throughout the OPS."

An inspector allegedly said to one of the plaintiffs: "What happened to you guys is f--ked up dropping a notice like that and not talking about it. I hope you're doing something about it."

"The highhanded conduct of the OPS warrants significant denunciation," the lawsuit says. "For a police service, who has a history of systemic racism, to weaponize the power of the state against its own Black Somali Officers — officers it specifically recruited to help ameliorate its image — and their families requires censure and full compensation."

The officers continue to fight their case in court.