Former Toronto Police Service officer Firouzeh Zarabi-Majd said she found out about the unofficial 51 Division group chat “accidentally” after being told about it by a colleague.
What she saw included a message “talking about my vagina,” she said, among other disturbing conversations.
Zarabi-Majd would go on to be fired for insubordination after posting the material on social media along with profanity-laced criticisms of the force.
But fellow officers involved in the conversations have not been publicly disciplined, even after two of them had their remarks dissected to undermine courtroom testimony in unrelated cases, one of which collapsed.
“It was so heartbreaking,” Zarabi-Majd said. “Having seen that stuff and reporting it, I thought that the police service was gonna actually do something and deal with these, but of course they didn’t and I became the target.”
Zarabi-Majd posted Division 51 group chats on social media under an account called Dirty Shades of Blue in October 2019, and was dismissed in May 2023. She is appealing and has outstanding proceedings before Ontario’s Human Rights Tribunal.
There has been other fallout.
In the case of accused sex trafficker Kevin Barreau, his lawyer cited remarks about Zarabi-Majd’s body to support a claim of racism against Det. Const. Chris Hoeller. Barreau claimed Hoeller used a racial epithet during his 2017 arrest.
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