OTTAWA — The Ontario Provincial Police say transporting convicted MP Dean Del Mastro to jail in handcuffs and leg irons is standard operating procedure used for everyone from fraudsters to serial killers.
The image of Del Mastro, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's former parliamentary secretary, shuffling out of the courthouse in Peterborough, Ont., appeared to rattle political observers who seldom witness the gritty day-to-day workings of the criminal justice system.
Del Mastro was sentenced Thursday to a month in jail after being convicted of cheating during the 2008 federal election and covering up his crime.
On Friday he was granted bail, but not before he'd spent a night in jail after being marched to a waiting van wearing handcuffs and leg shackles — TV cameras rolling all the while.
Sgt. Peter Leon of the OPP's corporate communications branch in Orillia, Ont., says the same procedure is used for all offenders being transported to jail.
Leon says some courthouses have transport areas that are secluded within the building, but others may have unobstructed public vantage points where cameras can glimpse offenders being loaded into the transport vehicles.
