Beat cop Harris was a huge 6'7 man, described by the journalist
Jerry Langton as "the biggest, most intimidating cop I've ever seen" and "the most knowledgeable person I have ever met in law enforcement when it comes to biker gangs, especially in Ontario". Harris stated in the late 1970s that the biggest source of crime in Hamilton were the
Musitano family. In the 1970s, Hamilton was known as "Bomb City" owing to the frequency which Hamilton businesses that were late in paying or had refused to pay extortion money were blown up by the Wild Ones outlaw biker club, which was working for the Musitano family. Harris recalled about the Musitano family: "You couldn't help but bump into them on
James Street North. They were never rude because they didn't want any more attention than they were already getting". In 1984, when Parente shot and killed Jimmy Lewis, Harris received a call that a man had been killed outside of the Outlaws' clubhouse. Harris stated that he thought at the time: "That could only be one person". When Harris arrived at the crime scene, a police officer told me: "They call this guy 'The Wop'? Do you know him?" Harris laughed and said he knew him very well, so much so that he guessed that Parente had almost certainly gone to the house of a friend in
St. Catharines. His assumption proved to be correct, and Parente was arrested by the
Niagara Regional Police later that night at the house where Harris said he would be. Harris was also involved in investigating the Papalia family. In an attempt to gather evidence to charge Johnny Papalia, secret microphones were planted in Papalia's office for the Galaxy Vending company on Railroad street. To avoid the bugs, Papalia took to having his meetings with other gangsters while walking up and down Railroad Street, which led Harris to have bugs planted in the parking meters on Railroad Street. Harris also tried unsuccessfully to have the Canadian Army plant bugs in the trees in Central Park, which was at the bottom of Railroad Street, which also a favorite meeting place for Papalia. Harris had video cameras installed on the top floor of the
Bell Canada building on Railroad Street and on the roof of the Sir John A. MacDonald high school which overlooked Papalia's offices in an attempt to gather intelligence and evidence about Papalia. Harris pressured several criminals into wearing a wire while meeting with Papalia, but he was always very careful with his words and there was never enough recorded to lay charges. However, Harris did foil several of Papalia's schemes by "unofficially threatening" gangsters by telling them he knew precisely what Papalia had planned to do to a specific person and that if anything happened to that person, he would "come down hard" on the gangsters, a tactic that is believed to saved several lives. In 1985, Harris was involved in the effort to stop Papalia from his netting what he called his "retirement fund" by defrauding mortgage companies of some $10 million by having dummy corporations apply for mortgages to develop property in Hamilton, which Papalia planned to keep for himself after the loans were issued. Though there was not enough evidence to lay charges against Papalia, the mortgage companies were warned about Papalia's scheme.
Illness and recovery In 1991, Harris was promoted from constable to sergeant. The same year, during a vacation in Australia, due to diabetes, both of Harris's feet became infected with
gangrene and two toes on his left foot had to be amputated. In 1996, the only partially healed ligaments in his right foot became infected again, forcing the doctors to sever parts of his foot. In April 2004, another infection had turned his right foot into a "big ham", as he called it, forcing the doctors to amputate all of his right leg below his knee. Despite his injuries, Harris returned to duty in October 2004, becoming the first Canadian police officer to work with an artificial leg. In 2009, Harris stated in an interview that the Mafia was still a major force in the Hamilton underworld, saying: "Look at the Royal Connaught situation, lots of people got paid, but not a thing been done". Harris was referring to the 19th century
Royal Connaught Hotel, which had once been the grandest hotel in Hamilton, which the city of Hamilton had decided to restore at great expense as the costs of the restoration kept ballooning. In 2010, Harris won the Blue Line Police Leadership Award, given to the most outstanding Canadian police officer who embodies the principle that "leadership is an activity, not a position." The Hamilton police chief Glenn De Caire wrote: "Sgt. John Harris is without equal as a supervisor. He is equally a mentor, sympathetic listener, task-master and supporter... his squad members consider him a co-worker... and he is the quintessential 'cops' cop." Although Harris never rose above the rank of sergeant, it was by choice as he preferred to work in the field instead of a desk position. In 2012, the journalist Susan Clairmont wrote: "Harris is, surely, the most respected member of the Hamilton Police Service, an organization with some 800 sworn officers and nearly 300 civilians." Despite his tough reputation, Harris was known for providing emotional support to the officers under his command as he stated that police work is emotionally draining as officers came face-to-face with death and suffering, saying it was not "wimpy" for police officers to admit that their line of work could at times be emotionally exhausting. ==Death==