Citizen story on police oversight gets nomination

The Citizen’s Tyler Dawson has been nominated for a Canadian Association of Journalists award for his July 2016 feature on the turbulent issue of how Ontario polices its police.

The story, Police oversight: How the stakes got so high, examines the province’s slow march toward police accountability that began with the formation of the Special Investigations Unit in 1990. Dawson interviewed lawyers, police officers, a former SIU investigator as well as former directors of the unit in light of recent racial tensions surrounding police killings in Canada and the U.S. The story focused on the shooting of Andrew Loku by Toronto police in 2015.

The story was published on July 8, around three weeks before the death of Abdirahman Abdi, which led to the SIU charging an Ottawa officer with manslaughter, assault and assault with a weapon.

“It is always nice to see significant projects like Tyler’s recognized,” said Citizen editor-in-chief Michelle Richardson. “His feature on police oversight in Ontario shines a light on a process that is quite complex and opaque.”

Dawson’s story is one of five nominated in the CAJ’s Text Feature category. Dawson is the Citizen’s deputy editorial pages editor.

Winners will be announced at the CAJ’s annual conference in Ottawa on April 29.