‘Unacceptable’: Critics call for stronger civilian oversight of Mounties,
Critics call for stronger civilian oversight of law enforcement agency
The federal civilian watchdog for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police says it investigates just a fraction of public complaints about officer conduct, leaving the RCMP to probe the vast majority of complaints itself.
That’s an example of what one expert says are shortcomings to the public oversight of Canada’s national police force.
“We’ve got the RCMP investigating RCMP and it’s totally unacceptable,” said Darryl Davies, a criminology professor at Carleton University, who is sharply critical of the federal oversight regime.
“Nobody in their right mind today accepts the idea that a police agency is capable, independent and unbiased, yet they are the ones that do the investigations,” he said.
A federal agency called the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission (CRCC) is charged with overseeing public concerns about RCMP conduct. Kate McDerby, a spokesperson for the commission, told the Star it receives about 2,500 complaints per year about officer conduct that are within its mandate. While the CRCC chair can step in to investigate if they believe it is in the public interest, the vast majority of these complaints — “99.9 per cent,” McDerby said — are sent to the RCMP to investigate.
The RCMP reports its findings to the complainant, McDerby said. If the complainant is still not satisfied, they can complain again and the CRCC will review the RCMP’s investigation. The commission undertakes about 250 to 300 of these reviews per year, she said.
“The CRCC is governed by the RCMP Act. We take it very seriously. We follow the rules of the RCMP Act,” McDerby said when asked about concerns with the oversight model.
“We carry out what parliamentarians have told us they want.” The RCMP did not respond Wednesday to questions about the complaints process.
At a time of increased scrutiny of police and calls to address systemic racism within the RCMP and other institutions, some critics have called for more stringent civilian oversight of law enforcement. This week’s cross-party declaration from the Parliamentary Black Caucus in Ottawa — which was signed by more than half of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet — included a demand that all police boards in Canada “be accountable to civilian oversight.”
The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls also called for increased civilian oversight of police when it published its final report last year. On Wednesday, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh — whose party is calling for a ban on RCMP street checks amidst a wider “overhaul” of the police force that includes reviews of the use of force in its activities — said there is a need for greater accountability of police conduct for the RCMP and other agencies.
“There needs to be better work when it comes to investigations of complaints,” Singh told reporters on Parliament Hill.
“We’ve been calling for heightened accountability, more oversight, but also independence in investigation. I think those are all crucial things.”
Singh was later ejected from the House of Commons after he refused to apologize for calling a Bloc Québécois MP racist for opposing an NDP motion that called on Parliament to recognize systemic racism in the RCMP. The failed motion also called for a review of the police agency’s budget and to “ensure the RCMP is truly accountable to the public.”
Christian Leuprecht, a professor at the Royal Military College and Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., said it may make sense for the RCMP to investigate some complaints against its own officers to weed out those that are unfounded or “spurious.” The larger problem he sees with the current oversight system is a lack of transparency.
In most cases, Leuprecht said, there is “virtually no paperwork” about the internal probe or any consequences for the officer whose conduct was questioned by the complaint. “The real problem here is that, on just about any of these complaints, there’s nothing there,” he said. “The complainant will find out that this has been dealt with” and nothing more. And when the CRCC does investigate complaints, it often takes a “significant amount of time” for the RCMP to respond to its findings, which delays complainants from learning the results, Leuprecht said.
McDerby said the CRCC can’t release findings to complainants until the RCMP responds to its reviews, and that the agency is “definitely concerned” about delays. The commission signed a memorandum with the RCMP in December in which the police agreed to respond to CRCC reviews within six months, but the deal doesn’t apply to those previously submitted to the Mounties, she said.
Asked about delayed responses Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged his government would work to address concerns about systemic racism in Canadian institutions. “We are going to move much quicker on responding to these things, on making changes to our institutions to really go after systemic discrimination,” he said.