A long-time Peel Regional Police officer who admitted to watching hundreds of child pornography videos seized as evidence from police investigations has been sentenced to a year in jail.

Craig Wattier, 52, pleaded guilty in February to breach of trust for abusing his special access to the electronic child pornography evidence vault and fraud for falsely claiming $28,000 over 11 years in overtime, paid duty and cameras bought for personal use.

He accessed 750 files related to child sexual abuse material, according to the agreed statement of facts. Of those, 241 videos and two images met the criminal standard for child pornography according to the police.

“To add insult to injury, Mr. Wattier accessed some of these files when he was off-duty, but charged overtime for his activities,” said Ontario Court Justice Katherine McLeod in her sentencing decision.

“It is, I believe, important to emphasize that the images gratuitously accessed by Mr. Wattier were shocking in their perversity,” she said, noting that she was required to view five of the videos. “The fact that someone who is not obligated to do so would voluntarily watch these images and in fact seek out more as Mr. Wattier did is deeply disturbing and frankly horrifying.”

Wattier was charged with fraud, possession of child pornography and accessing child pornography in May 2015 and resigned from the police force in December 2016. The child pornography charges were withdrawn.

Over his 30 year career he spent time in the special victims unit before being transferred in May 2013 to become the supervisor of the technological crimes unit (TCU) which permitted him access to the child pornography evidence vault.

In his first week as supervisor of the TCU he accessed six child pornography videos with no work-related reason for doing so.

McLeod noted that there was no explanation provided for why Wattier committed fraud or breach of trust offences. His watching of child pornography was only discovered through an internal investigation into the overtime fraud.

McLeod said that Wattier has repaid the money he stole from the police service and that he has expressed that he has let himself and his family down, destroying his reputation.

But he did not mention the damage to the reputation of his employer, Peel police, or show insight into the “motivations or rationales” for his offences, including the impact of watching child pornography which meant that “the privacy rights of the children who were depicted in such a heinous fashion were once again infringed by yet another viewing.”

McLeod noted that 36 personal reference letters were submitted on Wattier’s behalf.

One from a now-retired officer who was a supervisor and colleague of Wattier stated that Wattier’s “sense of right and wrong” never wavered and that Wattier has realized he “did not always follow policy and procedures to the letter.”

The circumstances of the breach of trust offence are “light years beyond the mere breach of ‘policy and procedures,’” McLeod said, noting that she took into account the hardships police officers encounter in jail. “These actions are criminal breach of the public trust.”

Crown Allison Dellandrea had asked for sentence of 18 months to 2 years. Wattier’s defence lawyer Kevin McCallum had asked for a conditional sentence.

Wattier was in tears as he was escorted out of the courtroom by court officers after being permitted to say a brief goodbye to distraught family members who accompanied him to court.

When a court onlooker said Wattier should have gone to jail longer, one supporter responded that she “did not know the truth.”

“It’s not right,” his wife Debbie Wattier said, briefly adding outside the courtroom that Wattier entered a guilty plea to avoid a trial they could not afford and on the understanding that by doing so he would avoid jail time.