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An internal video that was never meant for the public has thrown a hard light on a problem inside the Ottawa Police Service — and Chief Eric Stubbs isn’t softening it.
In a roughly seven-minute message sent to all members of the force in May, Stubbs laid out a pattern of behaviour he says has been happening far too often: officers using restricted law-enforcement databases not for police work, but to track down women they’re attracted to. The video was obtained and published by CTV News Ottawa and went viral in late June.
What the Chief Described
The conduct Stubbs detailed is specific and unsettling. Officers, he said, have been spotting women at coffee shops, at the gym, or in traffic, noting their licence plates, and then running those plates through police systems to pull personal information. In his words, members were treating the databases as “their own way to meet women.”
He also pointed to something arguably worse: officers messaging vulnerable people they’d met while responding to calls, in attempts to start intimate relationships. Stubbs framed it bluntly — change the behaviour now, or quit and leave.
Not Just “a Few Bad Apples”
What makes this more than an isolated-incident story is the chief’s own framing. Quoting a letter from women within the service, Stubbs acknowledged a long-standing culture in which this kind of misconduct was too often ignored or tolerated. He even admitted he’d been somewhat blind to the issue for much of his own career.
The pattern is backed by real cases. Earlier this year, one constable was demoted after dozens of unauthorized searches, and another officer faces charges over allegedly searching police and Ministry of Transportation databases for information on women — including, in one documented case, more than 40 of them.
Where Things Go From Here
The fallout has been swift. Nine directors of Ottawa-area sexual assault and support organizations sent a joint letter demanding a transparent, measurable response, and questioning whether past investigations handled by implicated officers should be reviewed. The Ottawa Police Services Board has pressed the chief on how database misuse is detected and audited — a system Stubbs himself described as not robust. The force is rolling out stiffer penalties and stronger oversight.
Stubbs also tied the moment to a broader goal: building a service where 30 per cent of sworn members are women, and where recruits — “your daughters, your neighbours, your friends,” as he put it — can actually feel safe inside the building.
It’s an uncomfortable story for a city to sit with. But the underlying reminder is simple: the databases police rely on hold our most private information, and that access is only ever as trustworthy as the people using it.
