Senior Toronto officer admits to helping mentees cheat in promotion interviews

A high-ranking Toronto police officer pleaded guilty before a disciplinary tribunal after admitting she helped her mentees cheat in a promotional interview process she helped oversee.

Supt. Stacy Clarke, the first Black woman to hold the rank in the service’s history, pleaded guilty to seven counts under the Police Services Act, including three counts each of breach of confidence and discreditable conduct.

An agreed statement of facts indicates Clarke, while a member of promotional interview panels in 2021, took pictures of questions and answer rubrics and sent them to six of her mentees who were seeking promotions to sergeant.

It says she also met with one of her mentees, a close family friend, over three days at her home where she held a mock interview and posed questions sometimes stripped word-for-word from those asked during panels the previous week.

She then sat on that officer’s promotional interview panel and did not disclose their friendship or mentor-mentee relationship.

Clarke is set to be sentenced at a later date.

The Toronto Police Association issued a statement saying it would be watching the sentencing portion of this case very closely to see if “the outcome is fair and proportionate to the standard expected of a high-ranking senior officer.”

“It is our clear expectation that investigations, procedural matters, trials, outcomes, and penalties be carried out and applied to senior officers in the same manner as they are to our TPA members,” association president Jon Reid said in the statement.

“Without the fair and equal application of the rules, our members will continue to lose faith and the public will continue to lose confidence in the disciplinary system.”