Lawsuit claims disgraced Hamilton cop planted gun that sent man to prison for 4 years

A former Hamilton street gang member sentenced to more than four years in jail after police found a gun in his house claims in a lawsuit the gun was planted there in a scheme devised by disgraced former Hamilton police officer Craig Ruthowsky.

Mark Dobrowski is suing Ruthowsky, his supervisors and the police service for $500,000 and costs to compensate him for the way he says he suffered as a result. 

Dobrowski has an extensive criminal history dating back to the 1990s and admitted to key details of that history in a recent appearance as a witness in a Windsor court.

He confirmed to the court that he was a founder, along with childhood friends, of the Original Blood Brothers street gang and that he has shot three people, along with being involved in other violent crimes.

He is now a paid police agent and appeared at that Windsor trial as a police witness in an investigation he assisted.

Ruthowsky, the former officer, was convicted in 2018 on charges he took cash payments from drug dealers and sentenced to 12 ½ years in a federal penitentiary. He is facing a new trial next year on other corruption charges stemming from events that took place between 2009 and 2012. Ruthowsky resigned from the service after his conviction.

It's unclear if the new trial will cover the gun-planting allegation Dobrowski makes in his lawsuit. Dobrowski declined to comment until after the case had been heard in court.

The allegations in the lawsuit have not been proven in court.

Hamilton police spokesperson Jackie Penman declined to comment on the lawsuit while it is before the courts. A city attorney has filed a notice of intent to defend the lawsuit on behalf of the Hamilton Police Services Board.

A lawyer representing Ruthowsky in his criminal trial also did not respond to a request for comment. 

Claim: Years in custody under false pretense 

In the civil lawsuit, filed in Hamilton court in November 2018, Dobrowski claims Ruthowsky caused a Ruger brand gun to be placed at Dobrowski's home in 2010. 

Then police came to search the house, the lawsuit claims, and Dobrowski was "ultimately convicted of illegal possession of that firearm" and sentenced to approximately four years in prison. 

The lawsuit claims a search warrant was "improperly obtained" to search Dobrowski's house. Taken together, the episode adds up to "negligence, false arrest, false imprisonment, negligent investigation, breach of fiduciary duty and dereliction of duty," the lawsuit claims. 

In the lawsuit, Dobrowski claims he was embarrassed to be arrested "while going about his daily business" and spent "nights, weeks, months and years" in custody due to the gun-planting. The lawsuit claims his Charter rights were violated and his home and possessions were damaged in the search. 

Court records show Dobrowski was given a sentence of four years and 82 days in November 2010, after being found guilty of having a loaded restricted firearm in his possession earlier that year. The records state that Dobrowski was prohibited from possessing a firearm at the time the gun was found in his house. 

Dobrowski has since become a paid police agent and has testified in Windsor court in an ongoing trial regarding a gun-trafficking investigation. Court heard he has earned $390,000 for his work as a police agent.

In the midst of his testimony, lawyer Laura Joy, defence for the accused Curtis Elliott, told the judge she felt Dobrowski was a "stranger to truth."

Next Ruthowsky trial in 2021

Ruthowsky was a Hamilton police guns and gangs unit officer who was convicted in 2018 of taking cash from drug dealers in exchange for helping them. He was found guilty of bribery, obstruction of justice, breach of trust and cocaine trafficking, charges stemming from a Toronto Police guns and gangs investigation called "Project Pharaoh."

Ruthowsky has been ordered to stand for a new trial on charges stemming from a Hamilton police investigation into events that took place between 2009 and 2012 that are separate from the charges he was convicted on in his first trial. 

Those new charges include bribery, breach of trust, weapons and substance trafficking, obstructing justice and perjury. 

The trial is scheduled to begin in February 2021. 

This is not the first civil claim arising from allegations of gun-planting by disgraced Hamilton police officers. A former colleague of Ruthowsky's, Robert Hansen, was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in 2016 and sentenced to five years in prison after he tried to have a gun planted at a suspected drug trafficker's house in 2012. 

The target of that scheme, Darren Mork, has sued Hamilton police, Hansen and the former police chief for $1.5 million. That suit is ongoing.