After 26 hearing days of tense and often acrimonious legal jousting over evidence and testimony in the disciplinary tribunal of Ottawa detective Helen Grus, closing submissions with both sides agreeing politics played a role in her predicament.
Grus, who remains on active duty in Ottawa Police Service’s robbery unit, was charged with discreditable conduct in the summer of 2022 over her probe of infant deaths and the novel COVID vaccines.
At the beginning of February 2022, Grus was put on leave of absence without pay by OPS for failing to adhere to the force’s vaccine mandate, then suspended with pay on Feb. 4, 2022 pending an internal investigation into her conduct.
The substance of the Police Services Act charge against her includes contacting the father of one deceased child to inquire about the mother’s vaccine status, alleged meddling in other infant death cases without proper approval or taking adequate notes, all of which brought OPS into disrepute.
According to evidence presented and her own testimony, there were six infant deaths between May 2021 and January 2022 coinciding with the vaccine rollout and whose circumstances correlated with Pfizer’s own clinical data on adverse events. The tribunal also heard that by May of 2021, Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization recommended the vaccines for pregnant women.
While Grus testified that criminal negligence could be at play given safety assurances provided by public health officials and lawmakers, Ottawa Police Service lawyer Jessica Barrow bristled at the idea.
“This type of investigation, particularly in the climate we’re talking about, would have had massive political implications,” Barrow argued. “So there’s no way that detective Grus believed (it) was one she could self-assign and not speak to a single member of the chain of command.”
Evidence presented at the tribunal indicates this climate included a townhall meeting Grus attended Jan. 13, 2022 – little more than two weeks before she was put on leave without pay for failing to abide by OPS’ vaccine mandate – where she met with then-chief Peter Sloly and deputy chief Patricia Ferguson and presented her concerns.
In explaining her actions, Grus testified that she was in the probative stage and collecting information within her discretion as a detective with sex assault and child abuse (SACA) unit, whose mandate includes investigating deaths of children five and under.
She also told the tribunal that she did not inform her immediate superiors of her probe because they had forbidden her from speaking about COVID-19 in the SACA office.
During closing submissions for the defence, Grus’ lawyer, Bath-Shéba van den Berg, described this muzzling of her client as police interference, that those involved were the ones guilty of discreditable conduct and suggested the entire prosecution amounted to a coverup.
“There was and continues to be so much political control and prevention of doctors and police officers asking questions regarding safety of the COVID-19 vaccinations and Grus was the only known police officer in Ottawa, perhaps in Canada… to properly carry out her duties,” said van den Berg, who earlier told the tribunal any such political influence exerted on the matter could be coming from as high up as Health Canada or even federal cabinet.
“What is the government hiding? Are they colluding with the police? We are talking about innocent lives here that have been lost.”
Pfizer’s own clinical data for its BioNTech covid vaccine was released in March 2022 by Texas court order (after Grus was suspended) also loomed large in van den Berg’s closing submission. Though tribunal adjudicator Chris Renwick – a former OPS superintendent – rejected testimony from four expert medical witnesses for the defence on potential harms of COVID vaccines, he accepted as documentary evidence a raft of open-source research Grus collected, including the Pfizer data.
But Barrow argued that because Grus admitted in both a compelled statement and her own testimony to elements of the charge – failure to keep adequate notes of her case file queries and not apprising direct superiors of her intentions – this was sufficient to find her guilty and evidence outside of these facts, including Pfizer data about harmful effects of the vaccines was irrelevant.
“It is research that Det. Grus admits she was doing partially in her own time, including while on suspension. So presumably she does not intend to suggest that she was continuing a police investigation while on suspension,” added Barrow.
Seven weeks before Grus was suspended, the tribunal heard she and other OPS members attended a December 2021 townhall, again hosted by police brass, where they expressed concerns about looming mandates, whether members suffering possible vaccine injuries would be compensated and that the novel COVID vaccines may pose a wider public health hazard.
Testifying to the latter, Grus recalled an August 2021 motor vehicle accident in which the driver claimed to suffer from a medical emergency and told attending police he had just left a COVID vaccine clinic. When Grus later queried the accident file on OPS’ records management system (RMS), she said there was no mention of the driver’s statement, adding that “adverse events were being underreported.” Grus told the tribunal that this was also communicated to OPS superiors at the December townhall.
In other RMS queries Grus made, she testified to incomplete Sudden Unexpected Deaths in Infants (SUDI) questionnaires in some infant death case files and that another file was closed without a coroner’s report. Van den Berg cited this testimony during closing submissions, noting that the SUDI was a standard and mandatory investigation tool and contained medical history questions for caregivers and parents, including all drug use which affords the opportunity to ask about vaccines.
The tribunal also heard that Grus’ 20-plus year record as a police officer and detective is exemplary and since being called back to duty for the robbery unit, the mother-of-three continues to do impeccable work.
Van den Berg also reprised evidence that tribunal adjudicator Renwick declined to accept into the record, including third-party communications about Grus between OPS members, related infant autopsy reports and access to a duty book belonging to Grus.
In a rare ruling in favour of the defence, Renwick agreed to include the original duty book as sealed evidence for future reference should there be an appeal of his decision, which he said would be delivered in written form in a matter of weeks.
Grus has also sued the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for $875,000 in damages for a series of articles it published about her which she alleges contain false statements and precipitated the discreditable conduct charge.
