A Crown attorney told a provincial court that the actions of a city police constable facing charges of breach of trust caused inaccuracies in the Sex Offender Registry.
The trial of Toni Grann continued Wednesday at the Provincial Court of Justice in Thunder Bay. The 45-year-old mother of four faces charges of falsifying a number of records between 2005 and 2010 in connection with her role as local registrar of the Ontario Sex Offender Registry.
Grann was suspended with pay on March 11, 2010. On Wednesday she took the stand and told her side of the story.
Crown attorney Mark Huneault accused Grann of imputing unverified descriptions of convicted sex offenders into the registry.
Huneault gave an example how one sex offender, who can’t be named because of a publication ban, didn’t come down to the Thunder Bay police station because of medical reasons. Instead, Grann verified the information over the phone, which was against the proper procedure.
Huneault said the man could have lied about his medical conditions and about what he looked like and she didn’t provide an updated picture.
“You made no request to have an officer go knock on his door and see how he was,” Huneault said. “I caught you. The same way the police service caught you.”
The court heard that Grann would make changes to the registry by adjusting a person’s weight by one or two kilograms.
Each time she did this, it would create a new file on the registry under that person’s name.
Grann said she never set out to create false documents or deceive anyone and only made the changes as a reminder to herself.
“It’s an excellent tool,” Grann said. “It needs work. It can't do as much as some people believe it can do but I’m glad (the Sex Offender Registry) is there.”
Grann said it was her preference to have sex offenders come down to the station to register but she never knew until the trial started that she was supposed to.
She told the court that she used to take her own vehicle to do address verifications but was told to stop by a superior officer.
Grann, who worked about 20 hours a week because of medical reasons, said she had about 250 DNA samples and reports backlogged and required additional help but never wrote down the request in her notebook or emailed it to her supervisor.
The court also learned about some of Grann’s history, and how she became a member of the local police force.
The court heard that Grann came from an abusive home, which she escaped only to find herself in another similar predicament.
She finally found loving parents, and eventually she and her sister moved with the family from Hamilton to Thunder Bay.
Grann joined the Thunder Bay Police Service in 1999. During her rookie year, she became pregnant, which forced the police service to make accommodations for her.
Over time, she took over responsibilities for the Sex Offender Registry and administrator duties for DNA sampling.
The trial resumes Thursday.
