The SIU and its secret probes
Majority of reviews kept from public
The SIU opened 17 investigations last year involving Hamilton Police. You were only told about six of them.
Across the province there are secret Special Investigations Unit probes the public will never know about.
Ontario’s police watchdog refuses to send out media releases about most of the work it does, meaning the public doesn’t know what the majority of those incidents are about or if they were properly dealt with.
The SIU has a logic-defying policy not to issue news releases about sexual assault investigations unless a charge is laid.
It also rarely tells the public of investigations into custody injuries that don’t involve a firearm.
The SIU is the much-criticized agency mandated to investigate all deaths, serious injuries or allegations of sexual assault involving police officers.
There is a long list of reasons why it isn’t trusted by its critics: most of its investigators are former police, resulting in a police-investigating-police scenario; the vast majority of investigations end
with no charges laid; it often takes months if not years to conduct its investigations; and until now (thanks to the newly released recommendations by Justice Michael Tulloch regarding incidents involving deaths) the actual SIU reports have been kept secret — even from complainants and their families.
Now it has come to light the public is only told about a fraction of the incidents the SIU investigates.
That discrepancy became apparent here at last week’s Hamilton Police Services Board meeting.
A report says that in 2016 the service notified the SIU 18 times, with the unit invoking its mandate in 17 of those incidents.
The 17 include: 3 vehicle related injuries; 9 custody injuries; 4 sexual assaults; 1 custody death.
The death was on September 30 when police shot and killed Tony Divers on James Street South.
His family is still waiting for the results of the SIU investigation.
Of those 17, four were concluded without a full investigation.
As for the rest, “none of the SIU investigations that commenced in 2016 were concluded in the same year,” according to the Hamilton police report.
Two were completed by the end of February of this year.
A search of SIU news releases (all are archived on its website dating back to 2005) finds only seven were sent out last year in connection to Hamilton police.
One is about the shooting of Divers.
Two are about collisions, another is about a pedestrian struck by a police vehicle.
Two more are about injuries sustained after use of a Taser.
Another simply asks for witnesses to an arrest, without indicating if there was an SIU investigation.
The public was not told anything about the four sexual assault investigations.
Nor was it given anything but scant details of the incidents it did hear about.
And those two 2016 investigation that were concluded by the end of February?
There are no news releases about those at all. It is not publicly known what incidents they involve or what the result was.
It is ironic — and to the credit of Hamilton police — that they have been more transparent than the SIU about its investigations, particularly since the SIU places a gag-order on police forbidding them from discussing SIU probes.
Having said that, an interview request to Hamilton police for this column went unacknowledged.
In a statement, SIU spokesperson Monica Hudon shared the SIU’s policy on media releases.
“To protect the identities and privacy of the complainant and the subject officer, the SIU does not release information in cases involving allegations of sexual assault, unless there is an appeal for witnesses or information, or the director causes a charge to be laid.” It is a ridiculous statement. Not only does the SIU never identify any officer unless a charge is laid, a sexual assault victim’s identity is protected by an automatic publication ban under the Criminal Code of Canada.
When pressed on this, Hudon sent another email: “Releasing any information about the incident — time, date, location, incident details — could potentially result in identification of the individual who is alleging a sexual assault occurred.” So the SIU says nothing. Not a word. Sexual assault allegations are the second most frequent cause of SIU investigations.
“We need to have a sense of what is happening,” says Lenore Lukasik-Foss, executive director of the Sexual Assault Centre of Hamilton and Area.
“We need to have transparency so we can have confidence that this issue is being taken seriously and survivors can have confidence coming forward.
“And we need to encourage survivors to come forward.”
Hudon said all those other investigations are kept secret because the SIU is only committed to alerting the public in cases involving death, cases when a firearm is used or major vehicle collisions.
“SIU receives notification of hundreds of incidents every year,” Hudon said.
“At this point in time, given the SIU’s limited resources, our ability to issue news releases in all cases is not feasible.”
The public was not told anything about the four sexual assault investigations.