An Ottawa police officer accused by the force of using her position to probe the potential linkage between infant death cases and COVID-19 vaccinations has been found guilty of discreditable conduct under Ontario’s Police Services Act.
Constable Helen Grus was ruled guilty of discreditable conduct in a March 25 decision following a disciplinary hearing overseen by retired superintendent Chris Renwick. Renwick said Grus’s actions had the “real potential of bringing discredit to the reputation of the OPS [Ottawa Police Service].”
Grus is alleged to have engaged in a “self-initiated” and “unauthorized” investigation between June 2020 and January 2022, accessing nine child and/or infant death cases and contacting the father of a deceased baby to ask about the mother’s COVID-19 vaccination status, according to the decision document.
Grus, who pleaded not guilty, is a detective with the OPS’s Sexual Assault and Child Abuse (SACA) Unit, which is mandated to investigate child abuse and neglect.
Grus’s lawyer Bath-Shéba van den Berg argued during the hearings that Grus was not guilty of discreditable conduct because she “took reasonable steps” after noticing a “doubling or tripling of infant deaths” since the implementation of COVID-19 vaccinations. Van den Berg said Grus “saw it as her duty to investigate criminal negligence on the part of the government.”
Prosecutors argued Grus acted improperly by accessing infant death cases in which “she had no investigative role or responsibility, and failed to then record her involvement or finding in the files.” They also said she “interfered” with the investigation of an infant’s death by calling the parent without the lead detective’s authorization.
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“I accept that an underlying motivation was a perceived increase of infant deaths since COVID-19 and the implementation of vaccinations, but I find that the evidence supports that she applied her own personal views on the risks and dangers of vaccination policy, formed by her self-initiated research and her strong opposition to her employer’s decision to implement a mandatory vaccination policy,” hearing officer Renwick wrote in his decision.
“Det. Grus allowed her personal beliefs and opinions to seep into her professional responsibilities and cloud her judgment and, ultimately, her professional conduct.”
Grus was suspended with pay in February 2022 when the internal investigation began, and subsequently ordered to return to work in October.
The Epoch Times sought comment from Grus, but her lawyer said she would not discuss details, adding that Grus plans to appeal the ruling.
“This Decision runs contrary to the role of the Ottawa Police Service to preserve life and sends a strong message to Canadians that public officials are above the law,” van den Berg told The Epoch Times in a March 25 emailed statement.
She said a penalty hearing will be held next to determine the punishment for Grus.
The disciplinary process began in August 2022 and concluded earlier this year after closing submissions were received.
The OPS did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
Hearing Officer’s Ruling
Hearing officer Renwick said Grus’s actions, particularly her call to the parent, had the “real potential” of bringing discredit to the reputation of the OPS by questioning, in her capacity as a criminal investigator, the ability of the health and medical community to protect children and determine a cause of death.
Renwick said the public would expect their police service to ensure their employees use a “bias free approach” when conducting criminal investigations.
He said Grus’s actions, in their totality, “would be concerning to the community as it introduced an element of a personally held bias into serious investigations involving the death of infants.”
Renwick added that other elements factoring into his decision included sensitivity and privacy issues as well as “the potential of the introduction of guilt by parents for their vaccination decisions.”
He also said Grus misused her authority and work-related access to personal information “to advance a position on a topic that was known to be divisive and controversial, despite a strongly held personal conviction that it was in the public’s interests as public COVID policy was putting infants at risk.”
Renwick said the evidence established that Grus was not assigned by her sergeant or case manager to any of the nine infant death cases she accessed, nor did she formally assign herself to those cases, as would sometimes occur after hours or on weekends.
He said Grus was not formally assigned to the task of “conducting a criminal negligence investigation into the actions of public health officials in their managing and application of vaccine policy,” according to the document.
Renwick also said that while Grus did raise the issue of possible linkage between infant deaths and vaccines with the chief and deputy chief in January 2022, her immediate supervisors and the colleagues leading the nine infant death investigations were “uninformed and unaware of her investigative inquiries.”
Renwick noted that, besides some handwritten and preparatory notes for town hall meetings on mandatory vaccine policies and adverse effects, Grus did not record her involvement or findings. He said the detective did not create a case number for her inquiries into criminal negligence, and did not produce documents such as investigative action reports or investigative chronologies.
“The conclusion drawn by this evidence is that Det. Grus made a deliberate effort to conceal her activities as she was aware that approval would be required, and it would be denied,” Renwick wrote.
Grus’s lawyer van den Berg had said previously that her client has had a “spotless record” and that it was her duty to investigate the “unexplained death” of the children.
“There’s a duty to carry out an investigation diligently, especially when there’s an unexplained death. So when detective Grus is making a phone call as to her [the infant’s mother’s] vaccination status, one would think that’s within her duty,” she said.
“This is a case where we have an officer who was actually doing her job and is now faced with a discreditable conduct charge.”
Police On Guard for Thee, an advocacy group representing active duty and retired police officers, had expressed support for Grus back in August 2022 when she was first charged with discreditable conduct. The group said she was doing her job by investigating children’s unexplained deaths with potential links to the COVID-19 vaccines.
“As police officers it is incumbent on us to investigate all avenues of potential cause of death,” the group said in an Aug. 9, 2022, press release.
Andrew Chen contributed to this report.
