It’s a surprising change of tune, but still out of key: BC’s police chiefs and RCMP management admit that criminal conduct investigations of police officers, such as in-custody deaths, should not be done by the police.  However, the solution they offer is the creation of an investigative team of active police officers led by a civilian.  This is essentially the system that currently exists for the investigation of police complaints by members of the public.  This system has been found to be flawed in both the Frank Paul Inquiry and the audit of that system by a retired judge three years ago.

BC Police are not offering to give up much control.  The idea that adding one civilian to the current model will bring fundamental change is misguided.  The Special Investigations Unit in Ontario, which is a model much closer to what BC needs, was found in an audit by the Ombudsman of Ontario to be a “muzzled watchdog” starved of resources and loyal to “police culture”.  A shift in thinking, moving away from the reliance on active or former police officers as investigators, is paramount in breaking a police culture within bodies that investigate the police.

It is rather unfortunate that the BC police have framed the problem as one of public perception, still refusing to accept the findings of BC’s most in-depth investigation of the matter, the Frank Paul Inquiry, that there is real and systemic bias in police conducting criminal investigations involving their own members.  Using active police officers on loan from BC’s police forces does little to resolve this conflict of interest, and the lack of substantive change should do little to reassure the public that police officers are truly accountable for their actions.

As the BCCLA has stated before, frontline police officers, despite the position of police management, might welcome the creation of a civilian-led and civilian-staffed agency that performs criminal and death-in-custody investigations.  Should an officer be placed in an unfortunate position of having to kill another person in the line of duty, what is better: to be cleared of wrongdoing by a faulty investigation process trusted by no one, forever dogged by the perception of a cover-up, or to be cleared by an independent body, with no vested interest in anything but the truth?

Tags: Transparency

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