Guelph, Ont.The man who called 911 did not want the police to come. Not by the time they arrived, anyway. He had placed the call about a vehicle near Stone Road East on a February night this year. Eleven minutes later, the computer-aided dispatch system records a second entry on the same file. The call was cancelled. The reason, in the dispatcher's own shorthand: came to agreement.

The cruisers were already on the road. They did not turn around.

What they found

The vehicle had come to rest in a ditch. The driver was still there. He had not fled, had not run, had pulled the car a short distance and stopped when he understood what had happened. He was cooperative at the roadside. He told the officer he does not drink. There were no alcohol containers in the car. When an officer spoke to the man who had placed the 911 call, that man said something that should have ended the matter on the spot: the vehicle, he said, had been in self-driving mode.

The arresting officer's own notebook, produced later as disclosure, contains a line about the accused's state at the roadside. It does not describe a man who was impaired or confused. It records, in the officer's handwriting, that the accused understood the questions completely.

He was arrested anyway.

The charge with no complainant

Among the counts the accused now faces is careless driving under the Highway Traffic Act. Careless driving is not a Criminal Code offence. It is a provincial charge, and in a case like this one it stands or falls on a single thing: a complaint that there was careless operation to begin with. Here, the complaint came from one person, the man who called 911. And that man called back, eleven minutes later, to cancel.

So the charge sits on a foundation that was withdrawn before the first officer reached the scene. The person whose call set the whole night in motion had, by his own second call, come to an agreement and asked for it to stop. The Crown is left prosecuting a careless-driving count whose only originating complaint no longer exists, against a driver the complainant himself described as operating a vehicle that was driving itself.

The man who called 911 called back to cancel. The reason logged was three words: came to agreement. The charge built on his call is still on the docket.

Why it matters that a call can be taken back

A 911 call is not a charge. It is a report. It is supposed to be the beginning of an assessment, not the end of one. When the person who made the report withdraws it within minutes, before any officer has formed an independent basis for anything, the question is not complicated. It is whether the state has a reason to proceed that does not depend on the call. On the careless-driving count, the answer on this record is difficult to locate. No alcohol. A driver described as understanding completely. A vehicle the complainant said was in self-driving mode. A complaint that was cancelled.

What remains is momentum. The cruisers were moving, and a charge was laid, and the machinery of a prosecution started, and none of it reversed when the thing that justified it disappeared from the dispatch log eleven minutes in.

The verdict

A man called 911 and then called back to cancel. The officers did not turn around. The driver they found was cooperative, sober by every indication in the file, and described by the complainant as a passenger to his own car. The officer wrote that he understood completely. The careless-driving charge that resulted rests on a complaint that was withdrawn before anyone arrived.

The Judicial Pre-Trial in the matter is set for July 6. Before then, someone should have to explain what is left of a charge whose only complaint was taken back in three words, eleven minutes after it was made.