Crown wants 7 years for Toronto cop guilty of theft, falsifying police reports

A Toronto police officer arrested for allegedly trying to flee the country after being found guilty of stealing from dead people and falsifying police reports, among other offences, appeared in a Newmarket court Tuesday.

Const. Boris Borissov, 50, has grown a salt-and-pepper beard since he appeared in court for the verdict in May. The 18-year veteran of the Toronto Police Service sat emotionless as the Crown and defence laid out their sentencing submissions.

Crown attorney Samuel Walker pushed the court to consider a seven-year prison sentence, a $8,800 restitution for one of the victim's families and a $2,800 victim fine surcharge. Borissov's defence lawyer Joanne Mulcahy asked for an 18-month conditional sentence and for more than half of his charges to be stayed.

"My concern, in respect of these thefts by Mr. Borissov … is the way it demolishes public trust in the police," said Justice Mary Ellen Misener, who is expected to deliver her decision Oct. 1. 

"The officer who walks through the door is supposed to be the person that you trust," Misener said. "I'm concerned about what happens to our society if you have to lock up the valuables before you call the police for help."

In May, Borissov was found guilty of all 15 charges for which he was tried, including theft, obstruction of justice, fraud or breach of trust by an official, fraudulently obtaining a computer service and possession of property obtained by crime exceeding $5,000. 

During the trial, the court learned that between 2020 and his April 2022 arrest, Borissov stole credit cards from two people whose deaths he was assigned to investigate and gave them to a friend to use, stole a luxury watch, falsified a police report in an attempt to cover up his crimes, possessed a stolen car and misused police databases to make personal searches.

In her decision, Misener called Borissov's testimony in his own defence "unreasonable" and "completely unworthy of belief," as reported in the Toronto Star.

On Tuesday, the Crown outlined what he described as Borissov's pattern of abusing police resources and authority. 

In one case, when responding to a missing person file, Walker said that while another officer and the victim's brother discovered a suicide note in the man's home, Borissov was in the bedroom stealing a luxury watch. In another case, when called to the home of a woman who had died, Walker noted that Borissov stole her credit card while other officers were working to determine her cause of death.

"He's exploiting a personal tragedy of these family members in their hour of greatest need," said Walker. "It is a shocking abuse of trust."

A section from the Crown's submission, read into the record by the defence, said Borissov "revealed himself to be a fraudster in uniform," and that "nothing in the record reveals any real hope that he is capable of change."

Mulcahy, meanwhile, argued that the prison sentence proposed by the Crown does not show restraint.

"The sentence is meant to be fair and fit," she said. "It's not meant to be harsh or crushing."