I can relate to Cst. H!!!
Kevin has allowed me to post on his blog so here is my first post. Unfortunately this time I am using it to vent which I hope will not become a pattern. So here goes....
Oddly enough I have had some eerily similar experiences as Cst. H with the Ottawa Police (weird I know!) So here is the story of how I had to go to court 7 weeks into my maternity leave amidst the threat of being charged under the Police Services Act for neglect of duty. The court appearance was set for Nov 15th at 9:30 am. I contacted the Crown Attourney a week prior to arrange for me to be "on call". I had already spoken to the Investigating Officer who agreed to call me once they knew for sure that I would be needed to testify.
At this point I'm going to digress and explain how the court system really works. I would estimate that I testify once out of every 10 court appearances. The courts are so clogged that they often schedule several trials in the same court room, knowing that most of them won't go ahead. They don't go ahead for many reasons (ie pleas, defence adjornments, accused doesn't show, etc, etc). Also, most of my trials are for impaireds where I'm the Breath Technician. The Crown and Defence often agree to allow the test results to be admitted as evidence without me testifying. So for me to ask to be on call does not seem unreasonable because most of the time I'm not needed!
So back to the issue at hand. I contacted the Crown, who I know from many of my previous trials. He is a great Crown and specializes in Impaired Driving charges. I explained my situation of being on Maternity Leave and nursing a 7 week old baby. He was very understanding and agreed that they would call me only if they needed me. However, the day before the trial, I received a call from the Crown saying that he and the defence agreed to have me testify at 11:00 am and I would be done by lunch. I was very happy with this arrangment since I could plan Liam's feedings around that time and since the defence lawyer agreed...what could go wrong??
I showed up at court at 10:45 am ready to go. Once there, I sat outside the court room and waited (most trials have an exclusion of witnesses, so I couldn't sit in). I waited until 12:45 pm when the court broke for lunch. I was then advised that the defence had brought forward a Charter of Rights motion. The judge insisted the defence present their evidence first so he could make a ruling on this motion prior to starting the trial proper. This completely re-arranged the order of witnesses and basically I moved from being second on the list to testify to last! I was told I'd be needed in the afternoon. At that point I raced home from downtown to Stittsville, fed Liam, and then raced back since I was told I would testify right after lunch. When I returned I was told that the other witnesses were taking longer then expected and to wait. So I waited...and waited...until after 4:00 pm when I was told that they wouldn't be getting to me that day. I'd have to come back on Feb 2nd, 2007 to testify! So once again, I raced home (except for now it was rush hour traffic) and entered my house to hear a wailing baby who was not too happy to be getting a bottle from his father!
Needless to say, the whole day was stressful for all involved. I still have several trials scheduled (I think somewhere around 10 or so) that I have to go to. I will try to be on call for these as well and hope that it works out better then this one did but only time will tell.
So that is my rant. I can certainly empathize with Cst. H and hope that she has better luck than I do!
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