Former CN cop fined $1,400 for dangerous driving

A Brandon judge fined a former CN police officer $1,400 and gave him a three-month driving prohibition after he was caught “two-hand texting” while driving on duty.

“You were wearing a uniform on this occasion, and you were in a marked vehicle, and with that vehicle and that uniform came a public trust, which was broken on this occasion,” Judge Shauna Hewitt-Michta told Joram Jardine in Brandon provincial court on Monday.

Jardine, a 44-year-old former Mountie, pleaded guilty to a single count of dangerous driving.

The lawyers jointly recommended a fine in the range of $1,200 to $1,500. However, the man’s lawyer did not agree with the prosecutor’s recommendation of a one-year driving prohibition.

Prosecutor Ryan Amy, who acted as independent counsel for the Department of Justice, read an agreed statement of facts in court.

On Nov. 6, 2024, a man who was driving east on Highway 25 from Rivers called 911 at around 9:43 a.m. and said he saw what he believed was an RCMP cruiser that was “slow going,” swerving and eventually speeding up and partially crossing the centre line, Amy said.

The man followed the SUV as it turned south onto Highway 270, “entered completely into the oncoming lane and sped up,” Amy said. The witness estimated the SUV was travelling at around 110 km/h.

The cruiser approached the intersection of Highway 270 and the Trans-Canada Highway and signalled to turn right. The vehicle began turning, but the signal changed and the SUV turned left instead, proceeding east on the Trans-Canada Highway, Amy said.

The witness lost sight of the vehicle shortly after.

Amy said it was later determined the vehicle was a CN Rail police vehicle, which Jardine had been driving.

The RCMP contacted Jardine for a well-being check, but he said he was OK, court heard. It eventually turned into a criminal investigation, and Mounties arrested Jardine at his residence later that morning.

CN Police Service turned over Jardine’s body-camera footage to the RCMP, which captured a time-frame from earlier that morning.

“While the accused’s face is never visible in the video, it is the body-cam video of Mr. Jardine’s body cam from Nov. 6, 2024,” Amy said.

The footage, which began at 7:38 a.m., showed the man driving with a cellphone in one hand and a coffee cup in the other, Amy said.

“The accused then puts the coffee down and takes the phone into both hands. The accused can be seen texting with both hands on the phone. There are no hands on the wheel,” he said.

Amy said this continued for more than three minutes. The man proceeded to alternate between texting, scrolling, vaping and holding his coffee cup, he said.

“The accused has no hands on the wheel for approximately 11 minutes and 56 seconds total. The vehicle is moving for the entire time that this is occurring,” Amy said.

Amy said Jardine has one prior conviction from 2019 for driving over 0.08 and received a $1,500 fine and one year of probation.

While Amy said this was “at the low end of dangerous driving,” there are aggravating factors, including that Jardine was a CN Police Service officer and driving in a marked police vehicle.

“Put bluntly, he should have known better,” he said. “This could have gone very bad, very quickly, for not just Mr. Jardine, but anyone else who was on the roadway that morning.”

Defence lawyer Josh Weinstein described the offence as a “serious lapse by Mr. Jardine.”

“This is an individual who’s been a longtime serving police officer, and I would say to you, what he informed me of is that he was probably at the time in the grip of acute mental-health issues,” Weinstein said.

He said Jardine was running on very little sleep, and at one point during the texting described, he was reaching out to care providers who had been helping him with his mental health.

In 2006, Jardine trained as an officer with the RCMP before serving at the Thompson detachment for more than four years and the Brandon detachment until 2014, he said.

In 2014, he began working as a police officer for CN Rail based out of Brandon, and in that role he frequently helped out RCMP and the Brandon Police Service with calls.

“This is a man who has spent most of his adult life running toward the very scenes that most people would probably spend their lives running away from,” the lawyer said.

He said Jardine was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in 2019, which was directly related to his policing duties.

Weinstein said the incident that stands out the most was the Carberry collision in 2023 that claimed 17 lives. Jardine was one of the first responders at the scene.

Three weeks prior to the 2024 offence, Weinstein said Jardine and some of his fellow first responders were awarded the Order of the Buffalo Hunt. While it was nice to receive that honour, Weinstein said it brought some of the trauma he experienced “to the forefront.”

He said Jardine described having a stable home life now and has gotten into a regimen of seeing a psychologist.

Weinstein said Manitoba Public Insurance will be issuing a driving suspension for Jardine and asked the court not to impose its own driving prohibition.

Speaking to the court, Jardine said his driving was “abhorrent” and that he didn’t realize the “state” he was in when he left for work that morning.

After reading the witness’s statement, he said his driving was “far worse” than he had thought.

“I certainly have not been taking this lightly by any stretch,” he said. “I’ve been to fatalities for many … people driving exactly like I had … It was just probably blind luck that I didn’t cause a collision.”

Hewitt-Michta acknowledged Jardine’s line of work has had a traumatic impact on him, but said she needed to impose a sentence that sends a clear message to him and the public about the seriousness of the offence and the consequences.

» sanderson@brandonsun.com