An Orillia OPP officer has been slapped with a 15-month suspended sentence and must take anger management classes and do 150 hours of community service, a judge ordered Thursday.
Const. Bailey Nicholls was handed the sentence Thursday morning in a Collingwood courtroom after being found guilty of assault causing bodily harm for an incident involving a civilian that followed an arrest in downtown Orillia in 2019.
The sentence will also include probation and a no-contact order with the victim.
“Police officers must be held to a higher standard than civilians. A sign of a good police officer is not what they do every day but how they act when they make a mistake,” Justice Jon Olver stated.
He noted that while the incident of violence was concerning, so was the fact Nicholls failed to report it correctly and later provided conflicting testimony in court.
“While the character references I have received are impressive, they are in stark contrast to how Nicholls conducted herself on Sept. 7 and the several months following,” he said in court.
After the judge gave his ruling, Nicholls, wiping away tears, hugged her supporters in a courtroom that was near capacity with family members, friends and other OPP members. The victim was not in the courtroom.
Nicholls was found guilty of assault causing bodily harm in an Orillia courtroom in October 2023 and a sentencing hearing was held Feb. 29, following the guilty verdict.
Shortly after the verdict was announced, the OPP Association (OPPA) issued a media release saying they will be filing an appeal on behalf of Nicholls.
According to the release, the appeal will be based on the court’s errors including but not limited to the following issues:
- Incorrect application of Section.25 of the Criminal Code by:
(a) determining that S. 25 requires a police officer to perceive a threat, as opposed to permitting use of force to affect the officer’s purpose regardless of the existence of a threat;
(b) improperly assessing the incident through the lens of the reasonableness of the complainant’s actions;
(c) failing to apply the requisite modified objective test to the assessment of the reasonableness of the officer’s actions;
- An unreasonable finding as to the degree of force actually applied;
- Incorrect assessment of whether there was a reasonable foreseeability of bodily harm;
- Improper finding that the complainant’s injury was the product of an intentional application of force; and
- A general misapprehension of the evidence.
"The OPP Association will continue to support Provincial Constable Nicholls through the appeal and is optimistic that the outcome will be favourable," said John Cerasuolo, president of the OPPA.
At the sentencing hearing, Crown attorney Catherine Weiler requested a 12- to 15-month conditional sentence, with one-third house arrest and one-third curfew.
The conditional sentence was offered in lieu of a “short, sharp” jail sentence of 60 to 90 days as Nicholls is currently on maternity leave and caring for an infant.
At the sentencing hearing, Olver noted conditional sentences are normally no longer than double a jail sentence, and questioned the Crown’s rationale for the leap to 12 to 15 months.
Weiler described the assault as a “breach of trust” in Nicholls’s capacity as a police officer, and argued it was Nicholls’s conduct — not the suspect’s — that “precipitated the use of force” and that Nicholls acted contrary to her police training by “getting impatient and hands-on” during the altercation.
Defence attorney Mike Wilder said a conditional sentence would likely result in Nicholls’s termination from the OPP and pushed for a suspended sentence or a conditional discharge in which conditions would be imposed on Nicholls but no conviction would be registered.
The 15-month suspended sentence will allow Nicholls to avoid jail time and may allow her to salvage her OPP career.
The charge of assault causing bodily harm stemmed from an incident that occurred in the early-morning hours of Sept. 7, 2019, when 43-year-old Shannon Hoffman was arrested for public intoxication outside Studabakers Beachside on Mississaga Street East.
Following the arrest, Hoffman was taken to the former Orillia OPP detachment on Peter Street. While in custody, she was asked to remove her jewelry. After struggling with removing a chain, Nicholls allegedly snapped the chain from her neck.
According to court records, Nicholls then attempted to remove a ring from Hoffman’s finger, and when Hoffman reached out and grabbed Nicholls’s wrist, the officer pushed her back against the cell bars and put her hand around Hoffman’s throat for about three-and-a-half seconds. Hoffman was taken to Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital with a wound on her head that required staples to close.
The matter was brought to the attention of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) by a civilian on April 15, 2020. A subsequent SIU probe led to the charge against Nicholls in January 2021.
Following the incident, Nicholls was moved to administrative duty and later began maternity leave in the fall of 2023.
— With files from Greg McGrath-Goudie
