*****FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE****** Ontario's corrupt or credulous Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC) has accepted Toronto Police's

third version of what happened to a police urination video. Joseph Bhikram has stated that the video would show a 52 Division officer shaking urine from his penis onto Mr. Bhikram as he lay handcuffed and nearly naked on a cell floor in January 2009. After nine months of waiting, Mr. Bhikram reacted to receipt of the decision yesterday with anguish: I'm devastated. I am devastated that a government agency that is supposed to protect my privacy and access to information takes the side of police against me when I am disabled, and was nearly naked, in great pain, and handcuffed on the floor of a police cell. In the first version of the story offered by Toronto Police, Mr. Bhikram and all prisoners are protected from police abuse by cameras that capture all activity in a police station except the room dedicated to level three or level four strip searches. In a partial video of his time in 52 Division, some of which is available for viewing at the Toronto Star website: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/crime/article/1257267--man-fights-for-video-proof-that-officerallegedly-flicked-urine-on-him an officer can be heard telling Mr. Bhikram that there are cameras everywhere in here. (This portion of the video is not shown by The Star.; the entire portion of released video, including this statement, are available to media upon request.) Mr. Bhikram has no criminal record and beat the spurious charge for which he was booked (uttering a death threat to a police officer) on his own without a lawyer. At one point in 2009, Mr. Bhikram did have a lawyer (Mr. Bhikram fired Daniel Lokun when he encouraged Mr. Bhikram to accept a plea to a lesser charge), and the second version of Toronto Police's story about what happened to the missing video is included in correspondence between Mr. Lokun and Crown Attorneys. Here, video recording which was said in the first version to capture the whole station continuously, somehow managed, upon review more than five months later, not to record Mr. Bhikram for nearly three hours of his time at 52 Division. A letter of July 2, 2009 (one of four on this matter from Mr. Lokun) specifically requests disclosure of time reference from 18:50:02e on January 28, 2009 to 21:42:18e on January 28, 2009, which is omitted from the video. In response, Crown Attorney's stated that Video Services ... inform that there is no video of your client between the hours of 18:50 and 21:42. There is only a video capture of another accused party for about five minutes in this time frame. (This exchange is included in attachments to material available here, www.scribd.com/doc/120810256/) Police notes available here www.scribd.com/doc/105855536 indicate that police interacted with Mr. Bhikram during the missing time frame, and that he was at one point discovered lying on floor in his underwear wearing a face mask & cuffs, says he trying to transfer to seat. In the third version of the story, as taken at face value by IPC, no one could have reviewed the video in July of 2009 because, according to two affidavits from Toronto police (available here www.scribd.com/doc/120809629/), no video record exists for this time period because it was purged approximately four months after recording as it was not flagged and if it had been flagged it would still be on their listing. Jeff Carolin, Mr. Bhikram's lawyer for the most recent IPC proceedings, describes the absurd situation this way: Toronto Police Services (TPS) has stated that no video record exists of Mr. Bhikram. This is in

spite of the fact that Mr. Bhikram filed a police complaint less than one month after getting out of custody, and a TPS employee has since sworn in an affidavit that if Mr. Bhikram had filed a police complaint about his treatment this would have caused the video to be flagged and kept. Nevertheless, under current privacy law, if you want the Information and Privacy Commissioner to review a no record exists decision like this one, you must first prove, somehow, that the record actually exists. If you dont, then the IPC can dismiss your appeal outright. This creates a situation where a government agency can block access to your records simply by losing or destroying them. This is clearly an absurd situation. Instead, in no record exists cases, my client and I believe that the IPC should be concerned when a record should exist but no longer does and that this when happens the IPC should investigate. Doug Johnson Hatlem, a street pastor who has been working with Mr. Bhikram on this case since January 2012, is angry with the corrupt or credulous system including the Crown Attorney's, the IPC, and other government officials that Mr. Bhikram has appealed to for help over the years. That system allows police to get away with lying, abuse, destruction, and outright arrogance at every turn. It is evident that Toronto Police either lied in a sworn affidavit or negligently destroyed video tape. Asked what he would do in response to the IPC's decision, Mr. Bhikram said, I'm gonna sue 'em, (referring to Toronto Police). -- 30 -CONTACT: Doug Johnson Hatlem (416) 420-2113; Jeff Carolin (647) 213-6164