Ex-Toronto cop loses appeal of firing over ‘libellous’ tweets about workplace sexual harassment, racism

“We are satisfied, in the circumstances of this case, the findings of misconduct were necessary to protect public confidence in policing,” a panel of three OCPC adjudicators wrote in their April 4 decision. 

Zarabi-Majd’s case attracted controversy after she began speaking out about sexual harassment and racism she said she experienced in a decade on the job. She was eventually fired, in part for her dispatches from “Dirty Shades of Blue,” her account on X, formerly Twitter. There, she posted racist group text messages from her colleagues and name-called politicians and police leaders she alleged were complicit in workplace sexual harassment — messages the tribunal called “libellous,” “harmful” and “vulgar.” 

The ex-officer has maintained her tweets were the last resort of a whistle-blowing cop on leave from a toxic workplace. 

“This isn’t over,” Zarabi-Majd told the Star in an interview Monday. “It’s not over until the truth is fully exposed and the system is changed.”

The case has played out against the backdrop of rising concerns over sexual harassment within Toronto police and the profession more broadly. In 2022, a workplace culture review by consulting firm Deloitte found “a clear perception” that harassment and discrimination, including unwanted sexual advances, regularly occur within Toronto police. In 2020, Ontario’s Human Rights Tribunal found a female constable was sexually harassed for years by her supervisors.

A Toronto police spokesperson declined to comment on the case Monday. A spokesperson for the Toronto police board said it could not comment due to ongoing legal proceedings.

Zarabi-Majd says she intends to file a judicial review of the OCPC decision while her other cases are progressing, including a complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal and a separate claim alleging she has not been fairly represented by her union, the Toronto Police Association. 

Jon Reid, president of the police union, said in a statement Monday that the union was reviewing the OCPC decision and noted the TPA “has provided support to Cst. Zarabi-Majd during the employer’s discipline process, including in her appeal.”

Zarabi-Majd was fired in May 2023, five years after she filed a complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal alleging she endured demeaning, sexist, racist and Islamophobic comments and sexual harassment on the force. In 2019, while on leave from work, she started her “Dirty Shades of Blue” account, through which she posted screen-grabs of racist and sexist comments in private cop group text chats, including one in which a colleague inquired about Zarabi-Majd’s pubic hair. 

In another group text, two platoon members were discussing a station tour being given to kids from a racialized neighbourhood, saying: “Just stop at the cells …. And let them know most won’t make it past there?”

Zarabi-Majd also launched a “protracted Twitter attack,” levelling “slanderous accusations of patriarchy, discrimination, racism and homophobia” at senior officers she accused of being complicit to sexual harassment, according to the hearing officer who fired Zarabi-Majd after finding her guilty of eight counts of professional misconduct. 

The tweets were on course to “destroy the reputation of the TPS,” the tribunal officer wrote, adding her conduct was “reflective of someone who did not care what she said, how she said it, or who she hurt.”

The tribunal decision admonished Zarabi-Majd for failing to go through the proper channels, including refusing to participate when the force launched an investigation into the alleged misconduct in the officer group chat (Zarabi-Majd said she previously complained through the proper channels although she had been told reporting misconduct was career suicide).

In their decision, the OCPC panel found the conduct in the group chat was “disturbing” but was not the issue at hand. Regardless of the environment within Toronto police, the panel concluded it was reasonable for the hearing officer who fired Zarabi-Majd to find that her “protracted, offensive, often abusive social media campaign was an inappropriate recourse.”

The appeal body also pushed back on the idea dismissal was too harsh, since Zarabi-Majd did not commit a criminal act or endanger anyone; the OCPC said that was not required for termination. 

It was reasonable for the hearing officer to conclude that “the behaviour was so egregious (Zarabi-Majd’s) usefulness as a police officer was spent.”

In her appeal, Zarabi-Majd argued the decision sends “a powerful message that there is no room for criticism of the functioning of the police service and those in positions of power.”

The panel disagreed, finding that Ontario’s policing legislation and Toronto police code of conduct already “set out limits to how officers can express themselves.”

Zarabi-Majd told the Star that she has since heard from other female officers who are now second-guessing their next moves. She maintains that speaking out online was the right thing to do. “These are times that we need to start standing up to change the system through whatever it takes,” she said Monday. 

“I don’t want this decision to affect other women, other victims behind me,” she said.