Former London police chief reacts to Monday’s news conference on 2018 World Junior investigation

The London Police Service (LPS) held a news conference Monday to provide the public with updates in its 2018 investigation into an alleged sexual assault that involved five members of the 2018 World Junior hockey championship team.

In June of 2018, the five accused, Dillon Dube, Cal Foote, Alex Formenton, Carter Hart and Michael McLeod, were in London for a Hockey Canada golf tournament and gala months after their gold medal win.

Despite a police investigation following a complaint from the woman who was allegedly assaulted, no charges were laid at the time.

Speaking with CTV News London's Carlyle Fiset for a second time, former LPS Chief Murray Faulkner provided his reaction to LPS Chief Thai Truong’s updates to the case and apology to the alleged victim.

‘I was surprised that he [apologized], but I think he believed it was the right move to do. To make a public apology for the length of this investigation, and there was lots of twists to the investigation that wasn’t normal. Therefore, I believe he did the right thing by making an apology to the victim,” said Faulkner.

Faulkner said while Truong wasn’t involved from the start, noting that there have been three police chiefs since the investigation began in 2018, “the buck stops at the chief’s desk. And that’s what he’s doing right now, and he’s doing a good job.”

Faulkner added that he was uncomfortable with all the questions asked of Truong and Det. Sgt. Katherine Dann in relation to the case itself, “Many of the questions that were asked will be answered during the trial.”

Faulkner explained that the trial has layers to it, “It’s actually two trials. One is a trial that the prosecution hopes to prove the guilt of the accused. The other trial is the defence and the police, and the police investigation is on trial. Was everything done properly, was everything seized properly and handled properly?”

He added that the officers involved in the preliminary investigation in 2018 will be called as witnesses during the trial, “The information they will have to give is ‘What was the thought process in not laying charges to begin with and finalizing it?’”

“The chief and detective sergeant were very clear that new evidence did come out that wasn’t available in the 2018 [investigation]. I’m only surmising this, that there were a number of organizations that did conduct their own investigations. The NHL, Hockey Canada, a third-party law company did an investigation,” he said. “Possibly, as a result of those separate investigations, the police received enough information then to go to court, to obtain a search warrant and product orders, to do searches on phones and obtain other information that they didn’t know even existed back in 2018/2019.”