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Sarnia resident Cordell Chambers has a reputation for causing commotions inside the city’s courthouse, jail, and police headquarters.
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“This is an individual who has shown nothing but disrespect for the last (11) years or so for the administration of justice,” assistant Crown attorney Meaghan Jones recently told a judge.
Chambers, who raised security concerns at the Christina Street North courthouse earlier this year following a confrontational arrest by the police emergency response team, spent four months in jail in 2014 for spitting on a police officer, threatening to burn their house down, and damaging a cruiser. He got another 75 days in 2015 for giving police a false name and refusing to obey court orders.
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Then there was the feces-fuelled outburst at police headquarters in 2021, an incident a judge called extremely troubling, unusual and egregious.
Chambers’ latest altercation again took place at headquarters, where he smashed a window, which cost nearly $4,300 to repair. The court heard Chambers appeared in bail court July 16 by video from the police station as court staff didn’t want him at their facility due to previous issues.
Five officers, including a member of the emergency response team, escorted him from his cell to the video room. Chambers, who was argumentative and aggressive with the officers, briefly broke loose from them and kicked in a plexiglass window in the video suite, causing it to shatter.
Chambers was sent soon after to the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre in London, from where he recently pleaded guilty by video to one count of mischief and got a 141-day sentence along with a bill for the repairs. Chambers declined a chance to speak to the virtual Sarnia court, but his lawyer, Safiya Dossa, said he’s been sober for a while and is looking to further his education.
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Justice Mark Hornblower, who said 141 days was on the low end, noted his prior record is prolonged and lengthy.
It includes a recent five-month sentence for threatening to kill a man while refusing to surrender.
Sarnia police said their officers went to a Sycamore Drive home around 8:30 p.m. on March 6 after receiving information about a man wanted on an outstanding arrest warrant for assault with a weapon, uttering threats and breaching probation.
But Chambers refused to come out, prompting a call to the emergency response team, which eventually forced its way inside and arrested him shortly before 11 p.m. after several more requests to come out peacefully were rejected.
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