The police-shooting legislation: not good enough

Too often the Charest government has to be prodded repeatedly into doing the right thing.

This was prominently the case with the inquiry into construction-industry corruption, which the government initially tried to set up as a toothless entity without the power to compel testimony. It was only after a thunderous public outcry, led by the Quebec Bar Association, that the inquiry was armed with the power to subpoena witnesses.

It is once again the case with the proposed legislation governing the investigation of police shootings that is now before the National Assembly.

The practice of having shootings by a member of a police force investigated by another police force has long been controversial. Legitimate doubts have been cast on the thoroughness and impartiality of such investigations.

Critics of the system maintain that Quebec should follow the example of Ontario, which has established an independent civilian body, the Special Investigations Unit, to investigate shootings by police.

This, however, is not part of the plan in the new Quebec legislation. Instead it calls for a continuation of the practice of police investigating police, proposing merely to add a layer of civilian oversight.

The bureau of civilian observers would be empowered only to review the reports of the police investigations of their fellow police. It would have no direct contact with the officers under investigation, or with officers from the outside force conducting the investigation.

The legislation was rightly slammed during committee hearings this week by the provincial civil-liberties union, as well as Quebec’s ombudsman, Raymonde Saint-germain. She dismissed the proposed oversight structure as “a blatant waste of public money” because of the certainty that it would be ineffective.

Without investigative powers of its own, it is hard to figure how the civilian oversight body could function as more than a rubber stamp to lend a patina of legitimacy to a flawed system.

The president of the province’s municipal police officers federation maintains that only the police have the expertise to investigate police shootings. This has been roundly refuted by reliable authorities, including a veteran member of Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, himself a former police officer, who was cited by Saint-germain in her presentation.

And Ontario’s ombudsman, André Marin, who is a former director of the SIU, says the public is right to suspect that police do not investigate other police “with the same level of dispatch and impartiality as when they are investigating a civilian.” One thinks of the case of the shooting death of teenager Fredy Villanueva in 2008, where the officers involved were given ample time and opportunity for collusion in formulating their version of events.

One police force investigating another could, in due course, find itself in turn being investigated by that same force. Both sides must surely be keenly aware of that possibility, and log-rolling is bound to ensue. In any other area of endeavour, such a system would be recognized by authorities as a standing conflict of interest.

Marin maintains that the reason this is not the case here is that police unions enjoy disproportionate clout with governing authorities in protecting their special interests.

At the very least, the government should heed the recommendations the Quebec Bar Association presented this week. These included allowing civilian overseers to speak to the officers under investigation and the investigating officers, to visit the scenes of shootings, and to have officers involved in a shooting interviewed promptly and be kept apart until they are questioned.

Police solidarity, whether within a force or among different forces, is understandable, given the difficulties of the job and the special nature of police work. But police should recognize that it is in their own interest to have a credible system of oversight and investigation that is worthy of public confidence.

They should realize that their dogged resistance to such a system is costing them respect and making their jobs that much harder and possibly more hazardous.