It’s a horror story about law enforcement in the age of social media.
Lizz Aston was arrested, charged with assault, and forced to pay $3,000 in legal bills, all because someone picked out her photo on Facebook and told the police she was a criminal.
In January, Aston, a 28-year-old artist and bartender, received an email from the Toronto Police asking about an incident at the Piston bar on Bloor St. West on November 19. Skeptical at first that the email was authentic, Aston called 14 Division and was told that a woman had been assaulted at the bar, and subsequently identified Aston as her assailant after seeing her photo on Facebook.
Aston agreed to go into the police station, and showed the officer she spoke to text messages indicating that on the night in question she wasn’t even at the Piston, but at an art opening on Queen St. West. She says she spent the rest of the evening at home with her boyfriend.
“[The officer] said, ‘It doesn’t matter, I’m going to have to arrest you anyways,'” Aston recalls. “I got handcuffed and searched. They put me in a holding cell.”
An hour later she was released on the condition that she sign an agreement saying that she would not go near the Piston, drink alcohol, or come in contact with her accuser until the case was resolved. Aston had no idea how to abide by the latter part of the agreement, because she had never met the woman police said she assaulted and didn’t know what she looked like.
Aston doesn’t believe her arresting officer was ever convinced of her guilt. As she processed her, Aston says the policewoman joked that “This will be a great story to tell your friends.”
The police never questioned Aston’s boyfriend or witnesses at the art gallery as to her whereabouts that night. “I don’t think they looked up anybody else or did any sort of investigation,” she says. “It’s just a lot of laziness on their part.”
Because of privacy settings on her Facebook profile, Aston says the image used to identify her couldn’t have been bigger than a thumbnail photo.
Despite never verifying that she was even at the scene, police spokesperson Constable Tony Vella says the police had reason to arrest Aston.
“The victim came forward saying that she was punched, and she indicated this was the person that punched her,” Vella says. “For the officers involved, they felt they had reasonable grounds to lay the charge.”
“There’s a difference between reasonable grounds and reasonable prospect of conviction.”
Vella stresses that police officers weren’t the ones who trawled Facebook to find Aston’s photo, and the accuser did so of her own accord. The woman gave Aston’s photo to police two weeks after the incident at the Piston took place.
Three court dates and thousands of dollars in legal fees later, Aston’s lawyer presented evidence that she wasn’t on the scene and the charges were withdrawn on February 27. She says the crown prosecutor chided the police for forcing her lawyers to do the work the cops should have done.
“I’m angry. I’m upset. It was really traumatic to go through that,” Aston says now that the charges have been dropped. She was in the midst of working on two exhibitions for Design Week when she was taken to court, and the ordeal interfered heavily with her work.
She says she can’t afford to sue the police, and just wants to move on with her life. But her faith in the justice system has been decimated. Since she was falsely accused, other people have come to her and told her their own stories about nightmare interactions with the police.
“I want to tell my story to people because I think they should know. It’s totally irresponsible and disgusting that this can happen to people,” she says.
She’s holding a fundraising party at the Piston on June 7 to recoup the cost of her legal bills.
She has no plans to take down her Facebook page.
