Quebec officer suspended 15 days for throwing away piece of victim’s skull

MONTREAL — A Quebec provincial police officer has been suspended for 15 days without pay after throwing part of a young motorcycle accident victim’s skull into a ravine in 2021.

An administrative judge with the police ethics tribunal found that Sgt. Sébastien Plouffe’s misconduct was “inexplicable and unjustifiable,” but nevertheless upheld the sentence that had been jointly recommended by the officer and the ethics board investigator.

“The facts of this case demonstrate that Sgt. Sébastien Plouffe failed at his task, at all levels,” administrative Judge Benoit Mc Mahon wrote in a Nov. 4 decision.

“His acts of misconduct are disturbing and must be denounced, because they discredit his function and the reputation of his police force.”

An agreed statement of facts included in the decision states that the victim’s mother found a piece of her 14-year-old son’s skull while searching for his cellphone at the site where he had died four days earlier near St-Émile-de-Suffolk, in the province’s Outaouais region.

Plouffe responded to her 911 call and collected the remains, but after being criticized by the mother over police handling of the scene, he drove a few kilometres away, walked down a wooded trail and threw the skull part into a ravine. He later lied on a report of his daily activities.

“Such an act denotes insensitivity and a lack of empathy,” wrote the judge, who said the officer’s actions appeared to have been motivated in part by “revenge.”

The police officer’s actions were discovered a few days later, when the family tried to get the skull piece back for cremation. Plouffe then admitted his actions, and returned to the woods to search unsuccessfully for the missing piece of bone. More officers were then sent to search, and the fragment was located and sent to the funeral home.

The ethics investigator and the officer had recommended suspensions of 10 and 15 days for two infractions, to be served concurrently. The report noted that Plouffe had admitted wrongdoing, expressed remorse and did not have any other ethical infractions in his 19 years as an officer.

The victim’s mother, described in the decision as N.R., challenged the penalty on the grounds that it was too lenient.

Mc Mahon agreed that the sentence was lenient, but he said the tribunal could only overturn a joint recommendation in cases when a penalty is so unreasonable that it’s contrary to public interest and could bring the administration of justice into disrepute. Mc Mahon wrote that he did not believe that this bar was met, or that the penalty would lead people to conclude the justice system had ceased to properly function.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.

Morgan Lowrie, The Canadian Press