(CBC News) – The RCMP should not investigate its own members in cases involving death to avoid a possible conflict of interest, the head of a watchdog agency said Tuesday in Ottawa.
“In the public interest we sought to answer the following question: Can the current process of the RCMP investigating itself legitimately engender confidence in the transparency and integrity of the criminal investigation and its outcome?” Paul Kennedy, told reporters at a press conference.
“Based on the results of our research and analysis, the informed commission answer is that it cannot.”
The Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, of which Kennedy is chair, spent 19 months studying the controversial issue of the RCMP investigating itself.
Kennedy’s report called for several policy and legislative changes to avoid actual or perceived conflicts. Currently, the national police force has discretion to decide how such investigations will unfold.
28 cases studied
The commission examined 28 cases from across the country between April 2002 and March 2007, including six deaths.
The high-profile case of Robert Dziekanski, a Polish immigrant who was stunned with a Taser by RCMP officers at Vancouver International Airport on Oct. 13, 2007, falls outside that time frame. An inquiry into his death wrapped up in June and a report is expected later this year.
However, several other controversial cases sparked debate over RCMP self-investigations, including the death of Ian Bush, 22, of Houston, B.C.
Bush was arrested in October 2005 for having an open beer outside a hockey game and for giving a false name to the officer. He was taken to the RCMP detachment and, 20 minutes later, he was shot in the back of the head by a rookie officer.
In November 2007, Kennedy’s commission found that the officer who shot Bush acted in self-defence, and the police investigation into the shooting was conducted fairly and without conflict of interest.
Scope of problem not understood
The RCMP currently has no national tracking system for investigations against its members and lacks an understanding of the scope of the problem, said Kennedy.
“There is currently no national, centralized co-ordination of member investigations,” he said. “That means that no member of the RCMP, including the RCMP commissioner, can tell you how many criminal investigations have been undertaken into its own members.
“More serious is that no one can tell you how many members have been investigated for serious injury, sexual assault or death nor can they identify how many charges have been laid against their members nor what the outcome was.”
The commission also found that there are no national standards or policies governing how investigations are conducted, Kennedy said.
“Of real concern is the fact that the RCMP investigative guidelines specifically tell members when undertaking a criminal investigation into another member to ‘take the same action as you would for any other person,’” he said.
“We disagree strongly with this principle and believe that criminal investigations into RCMP members should not be treated the same as any other investigation. Police are held to a higher standard.”
Kennedy’s research also found the RCMP investigators were “free of bias” and approached their assignments in a professional and conscientious manner.
‘Inappropriate’ patterns
However, he identified several “inappropriate” patterns in the case files:
* 25 per cent of primary investigators personally knew the member under scrutiny.
* In 60 per cent of cases, a sole investigator was assigned, putting the investigation at risk for potential conflict of interest or perception of bias.
* In almost one-third of cases, the primary investigator was of the same or lower rank as the subject member, creating potential for intimidation.
Kennedy’s report called for national standards on RCMP criminal investigations involving its own members so they are conducted the same way across Canada.
He also urged legislative changes that would allow investigations to be referred to another criminal investigative body. This would be mandatory in cases involving death.
In cases involving serious injury and sexual assault, the complaints commission and a new national registrar would decide whether to refer the case to another body.
Mounties should not investigate fellow officers in serious cases: Watchdog
Norma Greenaway, Canwest News Service
August 11, 2009
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police must stop the practice of officers investigating fellow Mounties in cases involving death if the federal police force hopes to quell public doubts about the credibility of the findings, the RCMP watchdog says.
Paul Kennedy, head of the Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP, released a sweeping report Tuesday that concludes the current policy of allowing RCMP members to investigate each other in such serious cases must be ditched in favour of referring the case to outside police services to ensure independence.
He also called for enhanced civilian involvement in investigations involving death, as well as those involving serious injury and sexual assault.
“We are not saying that the RCMP should never investigate itself. But we are saying that in certain circumstances, they should not,” Kennedy told a new conference.
RCMP Commissioner William Elliott offered a cautious response to the report, which he described as overly negative in tone in some areas.
He told reporters the RCMP would keep the recommendations in mind while developing a new policy for investigating its members. But he said the main recommendation is problematic because it’s not always possible, especially in isolated areas of Canada, to call in members of outside police forces to investigate a death.
“I think Mr. Kennedy should realize there are severe capacity issues,” he told a news conference in Prince Edward Island that was piped to Ottawa over the telephone.
Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan, who is responsible for the RCMP, was silent on specific recommendations, but said in a statement the report “will provide important input to our review concerning oversight of the RCMP.”
The issue of police investigating police has become a subject of intensified public debate following such high-profile cases as the death of Robert Dziekanski in 2007 after he was Tasered by RCMP officers at Vancouver International Airport; and the death of Ian Bush, a 22-year-old mill worker in Houston, B.C., after he was arrested in 2005 outside a hockey rink for having an open beer and giving a false name to officers.
In his report, Kennedy slammed the RCMP for not having a consistent and coherent national approach to either investigate RCMP officers linked to instances of death and assault or to track the results. He urged the creation of a national RCMP registrar to co-ordinate development of such a policy.
Kennedy made no secret of his impatience with what he portrayed as a haphazard approach to investigations that, he says, raises serious questions about the potential for conflict of interest.
The report found, for example, that 25 per cent of primary RCMP investigators knew the person under investigation; that in almost one-third of cases, the primary investigator was of the same or lower rank as the member under scrutiny, something that creates the potential for intimidation; and that in 60 per cent of the cases, the case was assigned to a single investigator.
While Elliott said he objected to Kennedy applying non-existent criteria to the study, Kennedy told reporters “common sense” dictates that an investigator should not be investigating someone he or she knows.
Kennedy stopped short of calling for totally independent investigations with no police involvement. He said the middle-ground approach of referring cases to outside police forces and adding some civilian oversight is more workable at this point.
Liberal Mark Holland, the party’s public safety critic, applauded the report and said the Grits will use it to push the minority Conservative government and the RCMP to accept more civilian oversight of the national police force.
“If we are going to continue to have confidence in the RCMP as a national institution, these are the kinds of changes that have to be brought forward and done so immediately,” he said.
But some critics said the only way to ensure the outcome of criminal investigations aren’t tainted is to keep all police forces out of the mix.
New Democrat Don Davies, the party’s public safety critic, said the Canadian public is far ahead of the RCMP and politicians in knowing there is something wrong with police investigating police.
He said Kennedy’s proposal is not good enough because it would merely amount to “cousins” as opposed to “brothers” investigating each other.
The report is the culmination of a study launched almost two years ago into how the RCMP handled 28 cases involving accusations against one of their own, including 14 incidents of assault causing bodily harm, eight cases of sexual assault and six involving death.
Though the report gave the force high marks on several fronts, it found the RCMP behaved partially or entirely inappropriately in 68 per cent of the 28 cases reviewed.
Appropriateness was determined by looking at actual or perceived conflicts of interest, appropriate reporting relationships and how proportionate the RCMP response was to the gravity of the incident.
“While the intention of the RCMP requesting that member investigations be handled like any other investigation may be an honourable one (meaning without bias), the very nature of an investigation by one police officer into another is fundamentally different from the police investigation a member of the public for the exact same crime,” the report said.
“Police are held to higher account by the very nature of the work they do. Like other professionals that directly impact the safety and welfare of those they serve, there is a public expectation requiring that a higher standard of behaviour be upheld.”