A man arrested for drug offences was racially profiled by Ontario Provincial Police in Leamington, a Superior Court judge has ruled, deeming the evidence against him inadmissible as a result.

Justice Martha A. Cook acquitted the man on one of the charges after Crown prosecutors withdrew the second.

“This is not a close case,” Cook wrote in the decision released in December.

“The case law is consistent and clear … Anti-Black bias, whether implicit or otherwise, must be denounced as anathema to the rule of law and the integrity of our justice system.”

The case dates back to December 2020, when OPP officers Melodie Gratton and Mitchell Smithson tailed a black BMW for several minutes and followed it into the parking lot of a 7-Eleven, according to court documents.

CBC is not naming the driver because there are no outstanding charges against him.

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