Cop convicted of fraud, used police credit card to fuel up personal vehicles
Last Updated: 9th September 2009, 6:57am
A veteran police officer pleaded guilty Tuesday to fraud for using a police credit card to fuel personal vehicles on 25 separate occasions – ending his 30-year career.
Const. Dean C. McLaren, 51, was sentenced by Ontario Court Justice Robert Fournier to a conditional discharge, which means that he’ll have no record if he stays clean for the next year and performs 200 hours of community service.
But McLaren, who worked the rural east end, will lose his job. He will resign from the Ottawa Police in two weeks, his lawyer Bill Carroll said.
Fournier said that he had to send a message this kind of breach of trust won’t be tolerated but that denunciation is already “wreaking its own havoc on this person’s life.”
McLaren has lost the respect of his colleagues and won’t be trusted, Fournier said. His wife, a police officer, will suffer, too.
“This aspect of denunciation has a tremendous impact – I’m sure it’s going to mark his life,” Fournier said. “He’s a man who has suffered the consequences of his actions since he was arrested. Now he’s having to resign.
“He’s losing his employment as a result of his significant error in judgement.”
The manager of a Hunt Club Rd. gas station called police in April 2008 after McLaren used a police credit card to fuel his father’s Ford Explorer and his own Toyota Camry.
In all, McLaren bought $1,132.87 of gas for personal vehicles.
His lawyer said that he felt in some way entitled because the police drug squad had raided and damaged a rental property he owned.
“He did indicate some frustration with the system as the system owed him,” Carroll said, adding his client doesn’t offer that as an excuse.
McLaren admitted to what he’d done when he was questioned and suspended – with pay – in May 2008.