The Ben Mulroney Show - Judges are handcuffing our Police from doing their jobs

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Judges are handcuffing our Police from doing their jobs with Guest: Ron Chhinzer, Former Police Officer for Toronto and Peel If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer, so download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus enjoy zero dollar delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions and terms apply. Instacart groceries that over deliver. Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney show. And I'd

like you to buckle in because we are about to have a heck of a conversation that if you're anything like me is going to make your blood boil and your head possibly explode. So here is the background in October of 2023 Constable Anand Gandhi. And by the of 2023, Constable Anand Gandhi, and by the way, his, the name Anand Gandhi is, should just remember that, stop a Jeep in Brampton on a Sunday afternoon after an automated license plate reader, an automated license plate reader on his cruiser

detected that the owner of the Jeep was facing drug charges in Toronto and was under a license suspension for medical and administrative reasons. Gandhi determined that he could impound the vehicle if the driver was a suspended owner was the suspended owner. Now earlier the same day, apparently he was he stopped another motorist and gave them a ticket. But in this later stop, Gandhi arrested and handcuffed the black male owner of the Jeep called for backup and ordered a search of the vehicle and detained the driver for

90 minutes. And according to a judge, according to a judge, the appeal regional police officer Anand Gandhi engaged in the racial racial profiling of a black motorist in an example of a systemic problem within the service. And the case has since unraveled. So we've got a cop of Asian descent who used technology to stop a guy with drug and gun charges on him. And a judge said that that was racial profiling. I'm sure I'm missing some nuance to it,

but to sort of break it down, and somebody who actually broke it down very well on Twitter over the weekend, we're welcoming Ron Chinzer. He's a former police officer for Toronto and Peel. Ron, welcome to the show. Hey, Ben, thanks for having me. And yet you hit it on the head. This is Ludacris. Okay, so, I mean, are we getting toeele, Ron, welcome to the show. Hey, Ben, thanks for having me. And yet you hit it on the head. This is Ludacris.

Okay, so, I mean, are we getting to the point, Ron? Like what did the cop do wrong? The computer alerted him to a license plate that was attached to a car and the owner of the car had charges against him. And the law states that if the driver is the driver of that car, he can be detained and arrested. Absolutely. So what am I missing?

You're not missing anything. And that's the crazy part. You know, the general principle of the law, especially when it comes down to rulings. Yes. There's technicalities in court, but anybody can read the summary. Anybody can read the case file on canley.org, which has all these judge rulings. And a normal average prudent person would look at it and say, this doesn't make sense. And you don't have nothing about this makes sense. The cop did nothing wrong. It was all textbook.

It was all routine. And this becomes a huge divide from an idealism driven judge and the actual application of the law. And you know, this was brought to my attention by a police officer who said, Can you believe this? And they sent it out to me almost immediately. And I'm glad you brought that up because over the weekend, I was hosting an event for a Jewish charity. And in my remarks, I was addressing the fact that, you know, the protests have gotten out of control and the police haven't really done what I think is required for Jewish Torontonians to feel safe. But then I put a caveat on that.

I said, I've talked to enough police officers, the brave men and women who defend this city, who feel like they are handcuffed from doing what they think is the right thing by decisions that are made high above them. And they're given their marching orders on what they can and can't do. I have to assume that there are plenty of cops in Peel region who heard this story. You're like, yet again, another example of us not being able to do our jobs circumscribing our ability to do what we signed up to do, which is protect the

public. No, you're 100% right. And this is not just in the Peel region. Look, Peel is the second largest municipal police service in the country. Number one is Toronto. And Peel is well known. And about this whole thing here, here's the here's the major issues with this. So you have and Peel is well known and about this whole thing here's the major issues with this. So you have this Peel officer who as you mentioned there's an automated system that just scans license plates. You know we've been hit up by car jackings, auto theft, stolen autos. We need to make this as lean and efficient

as possible. So he's driving around this automated system picks up a random plate to suspended driver on drug charges. By the way you know what that means? That means his driver's also on bail. He pulls it over, finds out the guy's on drug charges, pulls him out. And they talk about this 90 minute gap while he's detained. Yeah, because from the moment he gets detained for driving while suspended, in that whole investigation, they find the gun. Now they're turned into a criminal charge. So, yeah, 90 minutes is sounds like, wow. Ron, I'm glad you brought that up because in the article that I read, sort of summarizing this, the judge referenced a baseless search. How is it a baseless search if everything proceeding that gave this this police officer every indication that the person driving that car is probably on bail and probably has charges laid against them. How's it baseless? You have a reasonable suspicion

that there could be something bad going on in this car because the person whose car it is is a bad dude. Yeah, and even in this case, the officer searches the car not with the intent to look for evidence or anything suspicious. They do an inventory search because we're gonna tow the car. And all that means is we have to be able to look in the car

just to like a very basic search to be able to see if there's anything valuable, if there's anything dangerous because it's gonna be towed by a tow truck driver to a civilian yard. We do this thousands of times throughout the country, probably a month. So it's routine, this is normal. It's during that inventory search, they find a firearm,

a loaded firearm, by the way, in the car, which then transitions into a criminal investigation. Now, that's all within the 90 minutes. So the initial search was done out of ill will. It's just to make sure if this guy says, listen, I had $10,000 on the car, or I had a gold chain, and these guys stole it, the cops can say, we searched it,

there was nothing of value there. If we did find something of value, we'd seal it up and give it to the owner as he gets released. So when they say baseless search, that's to my mind, to my experience, that's a judge who doesn't even understand the basic concepts of a search. And this judge is an interesting one because I Googled her right away to find out, well, who is this judge? And there's a video clip on TBO and I put it up right after and it shows her specifically talking about this. now she references in her decision that when the officer took this guy's phone so his personal belongs after dictating him so he gets on

suspended driver under the highway traffic act they can arrest him detains and puts him in the back of his car and he does that probably because this guy's already on drug charges so it's common sense to say look I can arrest this guy I'm gonna make sure he has no weapons because what happens with drugs is probably drug dealing there there's guns, which happen to be in this case. So he does all this stuff, takes his wallet, takes his cell phone, takes his personal belongings. The judge says that was unreasonable and that was a breach of his rights. That's not unreasonable. Then it transitions into something else. So

the judge utilizes the cell phone, right? And the cell phone is important because there's a TVO clip when she was the commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission where she's being interviewed on TVO. And she talks about specifically, and it's in the video, she says, yes, just because we have a cell phone doesn't mean we should be able to search it even though that might stop crime. But that's her brain. So when she utilizes that in her judgment from this case here almost 15 years later and says, you know what, this cell phone is, what triggered me to look at systemic racism. And she applied it. She had a single lens here.

And who loses on this? The community loses, the service loses, and this poor copper who's doing their job. And when a judge says something like systemic racism, how do you come to that conclusion from this? Like, as I like to say, you can't get there from here. And Ron, like, what do you think this does for, you know, people who want to become police officers who are, you know, we just went through the defund the police nonsense. And we see, you know, the reputation of a lot of good cops. And there are bad apples in every industry. I'm not talking about that, but there are good cops out there

who are besmirched every day, who are putting themselves apples in every industry. I'm not talking about that, but there are good cops out there who are besmirched every day, who are putting themselves at risk every day. They're not getting back what they hope they would get back in terms of respect from the community. And then you see, you've got judges like this who, in my opinion, have an agenda and are besmirching their reputation further, making it harder for them to do their jobs,

the hard, difficult, dangerous jobs that they signed up to do. What does that do to our ability to invite the best into the fold to become cops? I mean, if I was on the fence about would I wanna become a cop or not, something like this would make me think long and hard. I mean, like, why would I even wanna go through the hassle?

No, you're 100% right. You know, right after I resigned from policing about two years ago, I was invited by the Solicitor General's office to sit on this committee they call Pathways to Policing. Let's talk about the recruiting crisis that we have in policing, from not the number of applicants,

but the quality of applicants. And this type of behavior, this type of stuff we're seeing from judges from on the Supreme Court, this is a total killer for people, not only from wanting to come into the profession, because they're like, well, what's the point of me doing this service if nothing happens?

From terrible bail system to terrible judgments, but existing good cops that have their heart in the right place are saying, why am I doing this? What's the point? And this is where you have people that will just overlook things because they're so frustrated with the system. They're like, why am I going to do this when my name is going to get blasted in a newspaper? My family is going to have to deal with this. I'm going to be called racist for just doing my job. We've seen this so many, so many times over again. And the biggest detriment is our communities are going to lose

because we need good, great and amazing people to apply to one republic. And my, my, my, the richest part of it is detective Anand Gandhi is now the face of systemic racism. Can you believe this? I can, buddy. I can run. This is, of course I can. This is the, this is, this is what we've built up in this country over the past 10 years. But anyway, I want to thank you for highlighting this. Thank you for opening up the conversation for us. Because on the other side of the break, we're going to open up the phone lines, we're going to ask the question, are judges putting handcuffs on police officers, making it harder for them to do their jobs? Don't go anywhere. This is the Ben Mulroney show. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And I want to open up the phone lines at 416-870-6400

or 1-888-225. Talk, I want to hear from you the story that we were laying out in the previous segment with former Peel police officer Ron Chinzer was a cop of South Asian descent through technology and the use of basic police protocols identified somebody who was in possession of a loaded firearm in his car. And a judge ruled that this was an example of systemic racism, which is nonsense on its face, right? You don't have to have a background in look, do we have a do we or do we not have a problem with illegal firearms? wreaking havoc on the safety of our streets in the GTA. The answer is we absolutely do. And this cop identified one of those guns and was in a position to take it off the street.

And take the person the owner off the street for what looks like absolutely standard reasons. And a judge came in and said, no, no, no, not only is that not happening, but you, sir, are an example of systemic racism. His name is Anand Gandhi. So what are we doing to make our streets safer if standard operating procedure is deemed systemically racist?

Let's welcome Scott into the conversation. Scott, what say you? I say we've got two major problems with our judicial. So the first one is, is that we obviously have judges who cannot and are not impartial, which is a big part of the job. The other thing is that we have a lot of judges that are basically trying to change our society through the bench.

They're using judicial judgments to inflict and cause changes in our society by pushing their own political agendas. They can't win it. They can't win it at the ballot box because of society won't take it. So they're trying to push these changes on us through judicial, uh, because it creates a president, right? Yeah. That's how the law works. So they're interpreting a law. You're not supposed to interpret a law. You're supposed to uphold the law. Right? And these,

and what they're doing is they're using their impartial view of the world to push their agendas. Yeah. It's happening in all the Western countries. Well, they can't win the ballot box. Yeah. So they use your judicial bench to push for their agenda. Yeah. Scott, Scott, I got a lot of calls to get to, but I want to thank you for, for starting out the conversation with that because that's the opening salvo. I mean, that's, we have to talk about these things at some point. If judges are me. Look, we've got a federal government that's banning every single gun, right? And then when a cop finds a gun, we're told, no, no, no, that's you got to throw that out because of the charter and because of

systemic racism. Pick a lane. These guns are either corrosive and toxic and dangerous. And then you gotta let the cops go find them. Or anybody who looks a certain way gets a pass because we can on the cover of systemic racism, we're going to find a way to throw out the case. Who do we have next? Remi. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show, Remi. case. Who do we have next? Remy, welcome to Ben Mulroney show Remy. Good morning, Ben. Good morning, the concert king Remy. Welcome. Just I'm just curious here. After the search, they've documented and and created a list of all the goods that were in the car. They're going to give the gentleman back his cell phone. I'm making the assumption here that they're going to give him back his gun as well.

Well, yeah, my guess is probably not, but that doesn't change the fact that this individual is somebody who found a way to get himself. There's no other way. It has to be an illegal firearm. So I, for example, have no idea how to purchase and find my way to an illegal firearm. This gentleman, this person, I don't know illegal firearm. This gentleman, this person, I don't know if it's a gentleman, this person knows, knows who to contact to get one. And now that they're off scot-free because of systemic racism, do you think he's likely to just, oh, I had that gun, but I don't need it anymore. Like this doesn't make the streets safer. And I think he gets it back. Well, either he gets that one back or he goes to find another one in either case,

there's an illegal firearm on the streets. I don't like it. Thank you, Remy for the call. I appreciate it. Rico, thank you for calling in. Happy Monday to you. Hey, Ben, I would like to buy this officer dinner. Yeah. He did his job. He did it well. He did everything the right way. This is a malignancy in our court system that's awful. I'm a lawful gun owner and a lot of people don't understand lawful gun owners are run through the system two to three times a day just to make sure you haven't raised your hand to your wife. So this guy taking a walk

who demonstrated very little regard for public safety is sickening. And the judge, if anything happens at this man's hands, that blood is on his hands. Yeah, I, listen, I couldn't have said it better myself. This is, I feel, to use the words of Mugatu from Zoolander, I feel like I've taken crazy pills. Like we're living in a world where lawful gun owners

are treated like they are criminals and we have a problem with illegal guns. It does seem like we're probably taking the border a little more seriously now, thanks to Donald Trump, but now we actually find somebody who is the type of person who goes to find himself an illegal gun. And again, I'm speculating, but there's no reality where that's not an illegal gun.

And now he gets off scot-free. Do you think he's not likely to go find himself another illegal gun? It's insane. We've created this circular logic that all it does is keep our streets as unsafe today as they were yesterday, and we should be going in the opposite direction. Dan, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you for

calling in. Hey, good morning. I want to say the activists here just want full immunity and impunity from any crime. But my my real point is, we need to go back to carding since they got rid of it. I think it was in 2013, our gun crime is up something like 2 to 300%. You can do a quick Google search and you'll find all the results. And the logic there is, I don't care what people say, the logic is why do you even have car insurance? A big part of it is the random chance you'll get pulled over. And if you don't have it, you'll get charged and your insurance, you'll get your your penalty is the insurance. Yeah. So it you won't carry a gun if there's a random chance you could get stopped at any time, especially with technology now.

Yeah. Well, listen, you said it. But you know, if you say something like that in public on in certain circles, you will be hard and feathered in the public square that to suggest to suggest that carding was that was a good policy, I remember those conversations. I was on TV at the time. And that was not a conversation that could even be had. And look, maybe we're in a different time now, but yeah, if the data says it, I haven't followed it,

but it's tricky. And I thank you for the call there, Dan. I just wonder, and again, the number is 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. What are we doing? What are we doing if when a cop of South Asian descent follows every step of the protocol and he is alerted to a potential criminal

by a computer system that says, oh, the person who owns that car is a bad dude. And the policy says, if I find out that the person driving is the owner, I, it is within my power and the policy and the protocol requires me to do X, Y, and Z, then you do X, Y, and Z, then you do X, Y, and Z. If the end result is a judge accusing you

of systemic racism and letting the guy go free after you found an illegal firearm in his possession that was loaded, what the hell are we doing? Again, we are, this is a serious issue that we are not taking seriously. It is, I can, not a day goes by on this show that I don't give you an example of something very serious going on in this country

that we are so lackadaisical about that we don't look at the data for, that we don't look at the implications of the decision on the society, on the culture, on the community. And instead we just give it a pass because we want to show the world how progressive and open we are and how and how we are better than everybody else. Glenn, welcome to the show. Hey, Ben, first call.

Welcome. Hey, I just wanted to say, I'm amazed that like, I do believe it's a small minority of people that actually stand for this stuff that actually believe it. Yeah, listen, it is a conversation that I would have to have more data before I waded into that. And look, the majority may want something but if it unfairly, if it unfairly and detrimentally affects a minority, that's a problem. Like, the majority is not always right if the implications are to marginalize a minority. But the minority is the ones that are suffering the most in this environment, right? They're the ones that are most often the victims of gun crime. I also find it amazing that these types of policies actually make it through and make

it onto the agenda. I'm just convinced that progressive groups have decided or decided years ago that why run for office on these types of platforms when we can simply take over the Liberal Party of Canada and drive our agenda from within. Well, I will say this. If there's one thing I have noticed and is just anecdotal on my part, is that the left is far more active politically

on a day-to-day basis at every level of government than the right. And the results speak for themselves. I mean, look at what's going on at the TDSP, look at what's going on at City Hall, look at the city staff that come up with these cockamamie ideas that then have to get voted on by City Council. But I want to thank everybody for participating in this conversation.

The My Choice sales event is back at Nissan and the choice is yours. Choose our best-selling Rogue, always ready for adventure, or the Dynamic Sentra, packed with safety features, or the all-new boldly always ready for adventure. Or the dynamic Sentra, packed with safety features. Or the all-new, boldly redesigned Kicks. And now during my choice, you can choose up to $1,500 in Nissan bonus or accessory credit. Or choose three-year prepaid maintenance. Hurry into your local Nissan dealer today. $1,500 applies to Sentra and select Rogue models when leasing or financing through NCF.

Conditions apply. See Nissan.ca for details.